Blind Jedi Ko Hoshino proves that you don’t have to be able to see to fight darkness. In fact, taking your eyes out of the equation might make you stronger. Using the Force in concert with her other senses, Hoshino is living, breathing, fighting proof that the Force and those who use it are much, much more powerful than we know.
A new Star Wars fan film called Hoshino centers around Ko Hoshino, a blind Jedi Master whose approach to the Force is fundamentally different from other Jedi we’ve seen in the Star Wars universe.
Hoshino begins her Jedi training with her sight, but suffers an accident and loses her sight in the course of said training. She must learn to adapt in order to continue on the path to becoming a Jedi. Eventually, she emerges highly skilled and deeply focused, using the Force in transformative ways to make herself a formidable threat who not only levels the playing field, but tips it back in her favor.
Even before losing her sight, Hoshino was taught that fighting darkness sometimes means fighting blind. Hoshino’s Jedi instructor subjected her to an exercise in which she was blindfolded as she attempted to dodge attacks from a small floating drone. It’s a callback to the scene in which Luke sparred with a similar attacking drone while effectively blinded by a helmet with the blaster shield in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
As Obi-Wan Kenobi said, “Your eyes can deceive you. Don’t trust them.”
Hoshino wouldn’t be the first blind warrior in the Star Wars universe, though. Chirrut Îmwe, who we’ll meet in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, is a blind and extremely skilled warrior. He doesn’t have Force abilities like Hoshino, but believes strongly in the Force and uses his mental and physical abilities to do battle.
With every new Star Wars story, we learn something new about the Force. That’s certainly the case with this fan film, which takes what we know about the Force a step further. Hoshino can’t take her blaster shield off, but perhaps she can see more clearly because of it.
