What Are The Midi-Chlorians?

The Midi-Chlorians in Star Wars are the microscopic life-forms responsible for determining the strongest Jedi and Sith lords. They co-evolved with other life forms from the primordial source of life when the galaxy was in its infancy. They exist inside every living creature. They are also an example of bad writing.

Alright, lightsabers out y’all, I’m ready to fight this one to the death.

The Midi-Chlorians in Star Wars are an overly-scientific explanation to something that does not need to be explained. What am I talking about? Why, The Force, of course. What is The Force? Simple answer: it’s the thing that Luke uses. Complex answer: it is a sort of energy field that permeates that universe and connects all life forms to each other. That’s cool, right? Mystical. Deeply spiritual. Some people would argue that our actual universe contains a sort of “force” like this as well. Just ask anyone who has ever done mushrooms. All life is connected to all other life, and the concept of separation is only an illusion. We are all but facets in a great cosmic jewel called absolute reality. I am you, you are me. We are the universe, and the universe is us. Pretty beautiful concept, right?

And then the midi-chlorians come along and fucking ruin it.

It wasn’t always this way. In the original Star Wars trilogy, The Force was explained as unexplainable, and everyone was fine with that. Then the 90s came along, and with it a new trilogy whose only ambition seemed to be to ruin the legacy of the old one. How? Well it did it in a lot of ways. Jar-Jar Binks is most of them. But those movies really mucked it up with the Midi-chlorians. Suddenly space magic can be explained by silly little microscopic life forms that live in your blood. Gross. The Force stops being a metaphor for a sort of spiritual enlightenment that anyone can achieve, but now is something that you need Midi-chlorians to access.

Could anyone be Jedi in the first movies? Yup. Can they now? Nope. What if they train hard enough and open their mind to the mysteries of reality? Doesn’t matter, they don’t have enough Force bugs in their blood. Tough break. It makes The Force, which is defined as an energy field that is shared equally among all life forms, to be something that isn’t equally available to all life forms. You can’t access it unless you were born with the ability to access it. Why is Anakin Skywalker so powerful? Not because of any character based reason, but simply because he was born with the most Midi-Chlorians. Fate is suddenly not yours to control. Enlightenment is now a luxury available for the few, not for all. I don’t know why the writers wrote it that way, but they did. I want to be able to trip on space mushrooms and figure out how to move things with my mind, and I want everyone else to be able to do that too. Is that really too much to ask?

Featured image credit: Lucasfilm