Crazy 1980 'Star Wars' Theory Suggested Obi-Wan is Jesus's Clone

Star Wars fans are coming up with all sorts of crazy theories about Rey’s parentage in the upcoming Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but it’s certainly not the first time the fandom has concocted wild guesses about the secrets of Star Wars. Apparently, some crazy theories were running amok after the big reveals of 1980’s Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and an off-the-rails sci-fi magazine from that year memorialized them in print — though it probably didn’t intend for fans in the 21st century to laugh at them now.

Lucasfilm Story Group creative executive Pablo Hidalgo took to Twitter on June 1 to share a thread featuring the December 1980 issue of Fantastic Films, a sci-fi and fantasy magazine that ran from 1978 to 1985, right on time for the original Star Wars trilogy to get caught up in its fervor. A quick Google search reveals that you can still purchase copies of the original magazine online, but Hidalgo breaks down some of the best gems in the issue.

The two main takeaways from the thread (which is definitely worth the read as a whole) are that Boba Fett was speculated to be the “other one” that Yoda spoke of in The Empire Strikes Back and that Jedis are clones of Jesus Christ.

Let’s delve into the whole Jedi-Jesus thing first. Buckle up, guys. While the Star Wars universe definitely has its own immaculate conception with Anakin Skywalker, this “speculation” from Fantastic Films is less speculation and more swinging a bat around in a dark room, blindfolded, while attempting to hit something. One section Hidalgo shared reads:

The Jedi Knights have preserved the Republic for a thousand generations. In Biblical days, a millennium was only a thousand years, but Lucas thinks big — a thousand years of peace under divine guidance before the Antichrist appears to fight the ultimate war. And who is the Antichrist, who serves Satan, an ex-angel who succumbed to the Dark Side of Evil? You tell me. Better yet, tell me what Jedi stands for. In Latin, the plural of Jesus would be Jesi, but that’s too obvious. If the early Christians cloned Jesus to preserve his unique DNA, they might have built the Jesus Eugenics Development Institute. It provided a home for the galaxy’s greatest minds, robot as well as human. No mere human brain can comprehend the complexity of a DNA molecule. That task remains for computers, and artificial minds such as Artoo’s, that unobstructive observer from the JED Institute.

Even by today’s Reddit standards, this speculation seems a little out there. Of course, Star Wars fans at the time had two films to go off of. Now, fans have almost countless resources from canon (and non-canon) materials.

And then we enter the complicated world of Boba Fett’s identity. It was speculated that Boba was the “other” Yoda talked about in The Empire Strikes Back (remember that Leia hadn’t been outed as Luke’s sister yet).

Of course, Boba Fett turned out to be much less consequential in the original trilogy than fans wanted him to be. But it seems to be that the idea here was that Darth Vader lied to Luke about being his father, and that Luke’s real father is actually Boba Fett, disguised as a bounty hunter named “Roberta.” Roberta was thought to be the “last survivor of a group of Commandoes the Jedis exterminated during the Clone Wars, so she could rightfully hold a grudge against all Jedis, including Skywalker. Removing her armor, she tricked Luke’s father into falling love with her, and led him to Vader’s trap.” Then, maybe, Luke’s “real” father defeated Roberta, took her suit, and assumed her identity to reach Luke (this part’s unclear from what Hidalgo provided)?

Oh, and, last but not least, did you know that another Jesus clone of Obi-Wan was actually in disguise as Emperor Palpatine, just wearing glasses (and blind) to block out the vile visions of the Dark side?

If you liked this wild ride, you might also be interested in: “5 Crazy Theories About Snoke’s Identity in ‘Star Wars’.”