Star Wars and the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer have long had a prominent connection, in the real world as well as in the worlds and characters they’ve established. Buffy creator Joss Whedon has attended Star Wars conventions and even staged mock lightsaber duels on the set of the show with his crew, many of whom are also fans. Star Wars references are sprinkled throughout the series, and Buffy's theme music is even performed by a band called Nerf Herder.1 Both series center on an archetypical Hero, a prophesied Chosen One, who is faced with a great destiny to uphold (and inevitably struggle with).
One recurring presence in a Hero’s tale like that of Anakin Skywalker or Buffy Summers is that of the archetypical Mentor -- the figure or figures whose purpose is to provide the Hero necessary guidance on their journey until the point it is deemed the Hero must proceed forth on their own. Were it not for the Mentor, the Hero would wander blindly, perhaps never finding their intended path. He does not go on the Hero’s journey himself, but provides the Hero with the knowledge to do so.2 As stated in an old proverb, the Mentor opens the door -- but it's the pupil that must walk through it.3 However, not all Mentors are equally successful in their purpose.
The methods by which Anakin was trained by his Jedi teachers and Buffy was trained by her Watcher Rupert Giles have significant differences between them. Looking at those differences can illuminate a key part of why while both Chosen Ones’ journeys were colored by struggles -- both internal and external -- against the “Dark Side,” one Chosen succumbed fully and tragically to it, while the other did not.
I. Prophecy Girl (and Boy)
"You were the Chosen One! It was said you would destroy the Sith, not join them! You were to bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!”
-- Obi-Wan Kenobi to Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, Revenge of the Sith
"In every generation, there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of Darkness. She is the Slayer."
-- Opening monologue, BtVS season one and two
The surface comparisons between the series’ central characters are obvious to viewers of both. Anakin and Buffy are young, blonde, attractive, supernaturally powerful, willful, have plenty of emotional baggage, and fatal taste in romance. Both are the specifically labeled Chosen Ones4 of their respective series, one in their entire world prophesied at a young age to fulfill a greater destiny, and imbued -- not by choice -- with a great power to do so.
Both are Heroes in the archetypically defined sense, individuals who commonly possesses superhuman capabilities or idealized character traits that enable him/her to perform extraordinary, beneficial works for which he or she is famous.5 It is Anakin’s prophesied duty to destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force; it is Buffy’s to protect humanity from the numerous supernatural evils that would otherwise prey on it unchecked. Anakin, perhaps conceived by the Force itself, has perhaps more raw potential in it than any other being in the galaxy; strength in the Force typically lends to traits like well-above average physical and mental strength, coordination, and a degree of clairvoyance. Buffy, like all Slayers, upon her “calling” is imbued with above-average physical strength, coordination, and recuperative powers, and also a slight clairvoyance that occasionally manifests in dream-visions, all of which are intended to make her an ideal instrument to fight evil that the typical human is incapable of surviving.
At the beginnings of their journeys, both Anakin and Buffy are inexperienced, naive youths who would likely have continued on unremarkable lives had they not been shoved into the spotlight. Anakin, had Qui-Gon Jinn and Padmé Amidala never walked into the dusty shop where he worked as a slave, might have lived out his life a slave on Tatooine, never becoming a Jedi, marrying Padmé and fathering Luke and Leia, or even becoming Darth Vader. Meeting Qui-Gon and Padmé thrusts Anakin into events occurring on a galactic scale, putting him in place to become one of the most crucial shapers of the Star Wars galaxy. Buffy, had she never been Called, would likely have continued as a stereotypical Southern California girl, with no more pressing concern than waiting for a boy to beg her to go to a dance with him. When the series begins, Buffy has already lost her ‘normal’ life, having been kicked out of her high school for burning down the gym (populated by vampires, unknown to the administrators). Her newly-divorced mom is forced to relocate from Los Angeles to the small town of Sunnydale, the only school that would take Buffy. Despite her hopes to regain her old life, on her first day of school Buffy finds her duty has followed her, that Sunnydale has a huge demon problem of its own that she must deal with.
II. Master and Padawan, Watcher and Slayer
When Anakin’s and Buffy’s characters are introduced, neither of them lives in an "intact" family. Both are only children6 who live with struggling single mothers. Anakin has no father and his slavemaster Watto provides little in the area of guidance; Buffy's father appears a couple of times early in the series but eventually disappears from her life completely. At the beginning of their journeys, a father figure is notably absent, setting the stage for their meetings with their mentors -- Anakin his Jedi teachers (and unfortunately Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious), Buffy her Watcher.
The Watcher/Slayer relationship, at its most textbook form, is closely analogous to the Master/Padawan Jedi one. The Watcher, like a Master to a Padawan, trains with the Slayer one-on-one, and is the Slayer’s primary source of training and guidance. Both pairs report to a Council -- the Jedi Council in Star Wars and the Council of Watchers on Buffy -- steeped in centuries of tradition. The two Councils share similar strict codes about what is expected from that master/pupil relationship. Both councils consider deep emotional attachment detrimental for student as well as teacher, be it inside their Order or out (both Anakin and Buffy wholeheartedly reject this idea). Some Potential Slayers, like most Jedi, are identified by the Council at an early age to begin training.7 In Buffy’s case, she only becomes aware of her status upon the death of the current Slayer (a new Slayer is called from a predetermined line of Potentials the moment the reigning one dies). Anakin and Buffy both began their training late enough that they had both become extremely set in the ways of the world outside the controlled circumstances of their Orders -- particularly in the need for meaningful relationships with other people -- and do not find these new circumstances an easy fit, and the difference in their ability to adapt comes in the form of the Mentor they are paired with.
Anakin in The Phantom Menace is already a passionate individual who knows clearly what he wants -- to get himself and his mom out of slavery and off Tatooine and see the galaxy. At the very beginning of his journey, his ideal mentor seems to fall right into his lap. Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn senses Anakin the moment he sets foot on Tatooine, and the two seem to click almost immediately. Anakin is full of questions, which Qui-Gon easily answers. He does not sharply curb Anakin’s passionate impulses, but rather finds useful ways to direct them, such as advising on how to succeed in the Boonta Eve pod race. He readily shows praise and affection when Anakin displays impressive character or intelligence. When Qui-Gon does offer guidance, Anakin does not unquestioningly follow all of it (as shown in his interpretation of Qui-Gon’s “stay in that cockpit” order), but nor does he bristle or outright reject it. Upon meeting Anakin, the boy becomes a foremost item in his mind -- he genuinely believes him to be the Chosen One, freeing him from slavery and even standing up to the Council (and against his own apprentice) proclaiming he will train Anakin himself if the Council won’t approve it. Qui-Gon also recognizes Anakin’s need for family, attempting to free Anakin’s mother along with Anakin. Qui-Gon is compassionate, innovative, gentle, and patient --seemingly the perfect teacher for Anakin's unique upbringing.
However, before his journey can even truly get started, Anakin loses Qui-Gon. His replacement is Qui-Gon's by-the-book apprentice, barely out of apprenticeship himself, who takes Anakin on more to fulfill Qui-Gon’s dying wish than from any desire or readiness to train a pupil. Though Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi do eventually grow to love each other, from the beginning it is a far rockier pairing than Anakin's short time with Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan, who has grown up knowing nothing but the ways of the Jedi, simply does not have the psychological vocabulary to comprehend why Anakin can’t steadily curb his more passionate emotions or get past his need for attachment and find the same satisfaction in the Order that Obi-Wan himself has. Many of the problems that plague Anakin -- his unresolved attachments to his mother and Padmé, his frequent attempts for affection and validation from Obi-Wan -- Obi-Wan misinterprets or dismisses completely as something Anakin can/must simply grow out of “in time.” The most obvious such instance is Anakin’s nightmares about his mother in Attack of the Clones -- which obviously turn out to be far more than mere dreams, and set the stage for Anakin not entrusting to Obi-Wan his similar nightmares about Padmé in Revenge of the Sith, leading to ugly consequences for everyone. Even in the moments when Anakin's headstrong nature yields positive results, Obi-Wan is reluctant to concede it. It is not until Anakin is on the verge of spiraling downhill in Sith that Obi-Wan is able to verbalize how proud he is of Anakin and how much Anakin means to him, and by then it’s too little, too late.
Like Anakin, Buffy’s mentor finds her, already working at Sunnydale High when Buffy arrives. There is some abrasion at first, as Buffy has no desire to reclaim her Slayer mantle. Giles finds her willful and stubborn; Buffy finds him bookish and stodgy. Buffy insists on keeping her life as normal as possible, such as trying to get back into cheerleading and dating (neither of which has much success), which Giles initially frowns upon as a distraction. Though insisting on a regular course of training, from the beginning Giles does permit some concessions in the rules for Buffy, mainly in allowing her a small circle of friends who are aware of her secret identity as Slayer and assist her in said duties. As they work together he learns to become more relaxed and trusting of Buffy's decisions, not even discouraging her when she and a noble, ensouled vampire named Angel (vampires in the Buffy world are typically soulless, therefore evil) fall in love, and is there to support her when that relationship ends badly. He treats Buffy as more of an equal in the decision-making process when she goes on missions, allowing her input instead of using his position as Watcher to simply bark orders -- knowing she'd likely rebel if he tried to do that anyway. Like Qui-Gon, he does not attempt to simply cut off his pupil’s passionate impulses, but finds a way to help her integrate them into her training.
While Giles and Buffy frustrate one another at times, they do come to love one another. Giles’ greatest fear is Buffy dying, failing her as a guardian, as shown in a late season one episode. When Buffy needs guidance, it’s Giles she always runs to first. In season three, Giles chooses to defy the Council when he believes Buffy’s life is unduly threatened by an archaic Watchers ritual, causing the Council to fire him for having an inappropriate “father’s love” for his Slayer. In season four, Buffy openly acknowledges Giles is more of a father to her than her biological father. Buffy does not lack a father figure -- she has already found a satisfactory one, and therefore the lack of one does not leave her susceptible to someone who might play on that desire to snare Buffy's powers for his own advantage -- as happens with Anakin.
III. “I Have Failed You.”
While the search for a suitable mentor is not a lingering factor in Buffy’s journey, it is for another Buffy Chosen -- the rogue Slayer Faith, whose journey closely mirrors Anakin’s. Faith grows up with no significant guiding figures, leaving her a fiercely independent individual who doesn’t take to authority well. When Faith arrives in Sunnydale, Giles is assigned to both her and Buffy, but his attention lies more on Buffy. Next, Faith's new Watcher turns out to be someone manipulating Faith to get a powerful mystical object in Buffy's possession, which severely bruises Faith’s shaky ability to trust others, Buffy and friends included, and especially Watchers. Her next Watcher is naive, inexperienced, and expects Faith to adhere strictly to his orders with no questioning; she rejects him instantly. She is pushed even further away from Buffy, becoming more reckless, even accidentally killing a human and not caring, believing her power as a Slayer makes her superior to those who don’t have it. Not finding suitable authority on one side, she turns to the evil but charismatic Sunnydale Mayor Wilkins, who shows a very caring and fatherly interest in Faith and makes her his most trusted assassin. Eventually, Faith -- like Anakin -- is redeemed, but it's a long road before she reaches that point.
As said, what happens to Faith in many ways mirrors Anakin’s own descent into the grasp of evil. He loses in short succession both his mother and the first father he’s ever known, and is placed with a mentor who -- while well-intended -- is not a well-suited match for him, which leads Anakin to seek more sympathetic mentoring elsewhere. In Clones, ten years on in their relationship, Obi-Wan still finds Anakin too brash and overconfident and reprimands him often; Anakin is resentful because he believes Obi-Wan is holding him from his true potential. Though the two of them do share a few genuine moments of affection, Anakin is not satisfied with Obi-Wan’s mentoring, as he admits twice in unguarded moments of frustration to Padmé, and he has begun to seek filling that gap elsewhere in Chancellor Palpatine, the unknown Darth Sidious, who desires Anakin’s power to supplement his own. Palpatine, like Mayor Wilkins, is on the surface a very charming and congenial guy. He shows no hesitation in expressing affection or praise for Anakin, who is too naïve to realize that someone who praises him might have a motive that has nothing to do with caring about him as a person.
By the time of Sith, Anakin and Obi-Wan seem to be on more even footing as peers with Anakin’s elevation to Knighthood, but problems still remain, particularly with trust. Anakin has still not confided his and Padmé’s secret marriage to Obi-Wan, and refuses to even consider asking Obi-Wan for help with his nightmares about her, likely believing Obi-Wan will -- like before -- dismiss his dreams as nothing, or worse, reveal his forbidden marriage to the Council. Anakin wastes no time going straight to the top in seeking -- indirectly -- counsel on how to address his visions. But Yoda’s counsel only compounds Anakin’s frustration, as Yoda advises him to simply accept the inevitability of his loved one’s death and find peace in it. When the Council, who has always been mixed about Anakin's presence in the Order, appoints Anakin to their ranks with the intent to use him to spy on Palpatine, whom Anakin sees as a friend, Anakin’s trust in all the Jedi -- Obi-Wan included -- is damaged further. Again, Palpatine is there to offer the well-timed sympathetic ear, and is all too willing to stir up Anakin's resentment of the Jedi and offer advice on how to save Padmé -- and Anakin is all too willing to listen. As observed in one online essay, it is Anakin's choice of mentors that creates the true tragedy of the Star Wars prequel trilogy.8
Though Buffy does not slip to the dark side the way Anakin or Faith does, she does go through extremely dark stages, and it is the loss of her mentor figures that heralds those periods of her life, with the loss of first her mother, then her father figure shortly after. In Buffy’s fifth season, Buffy's mother dies suddenly of an aneurysm, leaving Buffy in charge of not only her Slayer duties, but raising her sister Dawn as well, and the pressure is almost too much for Buffy.
At the end of Buffy’s fifth season, Buffy sacrifices her life to stop Hell from being unleashed on Earth. At the start of season six, Buffy’s witch friend Willow -- believing Buffy’s spirit is trapped in Hell -- resurrects her. After her resurrection Buffy is disconnected emotionally, taking no joy in anything, and is overwhelmed with the responsibilities that await her upon awakening. (It is revealed that when she died Buffy was actually in heaven, was finally at peace, and was torn from it.) Believing that the only way Buffy is going to be able to find her way is if he is not there for her to constantly lean on, Giles returns to his home of England. But after his departure, Buffy goes even lower. She is unable to go back to college and has to take a lousy job at a fast-food joint simply to pay the bills left behind by her mother’s death, and her sister’s delinquent behavior worsens. Things become bad enough that she almost allows a demon's poison to convince her that she's actually in a mental hospital and her Slayer life is just a hallucination. Desperate to feel anything, she embarks on an addicitve, violent affair with one of her oldest enemies, the vampire Spike. She does not love Spike, and realizes she is using him. She eventually does break off the affair, after which Spike attempts to rape her. It is Giles’ return that begins the cycle of repair, him realizing that part of letting Buffy grow up is her being able to ask for help if she does need it. This enables Buffy to step out into the role of Mentor herself in the final season, to her sister and to Potential Slayers.9
IV. The Inflexible Tree
"The tree that is inflexible will snap."
-- Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher
Buffy: "Wait. Handbook? What handbook? How come I don't have a handbook?"
Giles: "After meeting you, Buffy, I realized that, uh, the handbook would be of no use in your case."
-- BtVS 2.10, "What's My Line, Part II"
The Watcher's Council, like the Jedi Council, has had a long-established standard for training that has been in place "since the dawn of civilization." A young girl would be chosen, trained in relative isolation with her sole purpose to be a demon-killing machine. The Council felt no need to adapt their ways to individual cases, each Slayer and potential Slayer trained in the same mold. This worked adequately, but not brilliantly -- the line of succession ensured there was no worry about where to find the next Slayer to be called into duty, but the reigning Slayer still never lived very long -- until Buffy is Called. The existing standards for Slayer training do not take someone of Buffy's background into account, one not trained from girlhood and allowed to develop social and familial attachments before being thrust into her training.
This is almost exactly the case for Anakin as well. For a thousand generations, the Jedi were all trained in more or less the same manner, and, to be fair, it seems to have worked fairly well. Though occasionally someone like Count Dooku comes along who finds himself dissatisfied with the mold and leaves the ranks, there does not appear to be an epidemic of rogue Jedi running all over the galaxy. Every potential Jedi is taken from their birth family early, raised from the beginning to be emotionally detached, and schooled in the ways of the Jedi. Since their technique has worked so well for so long, when one individual who has not been raised by their standards is accepted into training -- Anakin -- the Council sees no need to adapt in this case, and their unwillingness to address the unique issues Anakin's case brings up leading them to be completely blind to the circumstances that will lead not only to Anakin's downfall, but theirs as well.
The fatal flaw of the unquestioning, rigid textbook-style training favored by both Councils is illustrated prominently on Buffy in the case of another Slayer, Kendra.10 Kendra represents a concept very similar to that of the Jedi Order, a life of pure duty, free of emotion and attachment, who follows preset codes to the letter, and unwilling to adapt those rules even in extreme circumstances. Kendra has been trained in the textbook way for Slayers: given up by family at a young age, nearly all her time devoted to her Slayer training, which occurs in almost total isolation, in a very controlled environment. She is well-studied in mystical lore and fighting technique, the latter of which Buffy observes is technically flawless. But Buffy, who has learned to incorporate her emotions into her fighting style, is quick to observe Kendra's key flaw: she would defeat Kendra in battle because Kendra has no imagination, no ability to use her emotions to adapt to the constantly changing flow of a fight. True to Buffy's assessment, Kendra meets death in an almost unremarkable manner: her training did not teach her how to think, and she is easily put under the thrall of the clairvoyant vampire Drusilla – who Buffy has repeatedly faced -- who simply slits Kendra's throat with her fingernails without any fight whatsoever. As Anakin would say, “[Mind-tricks] only work on the weak-minded,” and Kendra proves that point gruesomely.
When Giles begins to train Buffy, it is unclear how long he has been a Watcher, but it appears to have been a number of years, and that he was trained to be one from a very young age, multiple generations of his family having also been Watchers. Giles is clearly experienced enough to recognize almost immediately that the long-established methods of Slayer training will not work on Buffy -- at least not without some modifying -- but all Obi-Wan has to go by in training Anakin, only recently having been a student himself, is the established method.
Since Obi-Wan has no frame of reference for someone of Anakin’s background, he does not realize or believe any need to adapt the existing Code -- which has never had to take someone of Anakin’s upbringing into account -- exists for his pupil. While Anakin is forced to abruptly drop all connections to his former life, to anything outside his oath to the Jedi Order, and to constantly keep a tight rein on his more passionate feelings -- Buffy is not. Giles allows her to stay in school, date, keep friends, and eventually even reveal her identity to her mother, to integrate them all into her life as the Slayer, and this makes all the difference in the world. (As Spike observes to Buffy in a season five episode, the reason Buffy's lived longer than any other Slayer is because she's got a reason to stick around - her friends and family, connections to the world -- which previous Slayers lacked.) It's a difficult integration at times, but at least she has the choice, whereas Anakin is forced to keep his attempts at a personal life -- chiefly, his marriage to Padmé -- a secret from his Jedi superiors. Giles' willingness to adapt his methods gives Buffy a crucial emotional support network to deal with the stress of her duties, whereas Anakin is forced to find his own in what ends up being the most dangerous place possible.
The Jedi Council and the Watcher’s Council both come to their own gruesome ends, like Kendra, because of their inability to innovate or adapt, leaving them blinded to outside threats. Mace Windu dies when Anakin, whose emotional torment has gone almost completely unnoticed by the Council, turns on him to save Palpatine (and therefore his wife), paving the way for Sidious to electrocute him and throw him from a window. The others -- with the exception of Yoda and Obi-Wan, who end up in permanent exile -- are murdered like the rest of the Jedi by the very clone troopers they are commanding when Order 66 is executed, having not realized the unthinking clones could turn on them in an instant if ordered to. The Watcher’s Council, in their isolation from the true horrors the Slayer faces, is unable to foresee a plot against them, and they are killed when an evil plotting to take out the Slayer line of succession for good blows up their headquarters. When the Council is rebuilt, it is with Giles at its head, just as the new Jedi order is headed by Anakin’s son Luke, the Jedi who was successfully able to integrate the codes of the Jedi with those of a personal life, and who was finally able to guide Anakin to his destiny and redemption.
Rupert Giles is Buffy's Qui-Gon Jinn, the one who is able to recognize his pupil’s situation as a unique one the established protocol is not designed to accommodate, and who can quickly adapt his methods to his pupil’s unique conditions. Obi-Wan attempts to adhere strictly to established protocol, believing that the only adaptation needed is on Anakin’s part, not his or the Code’s. Both Obi-Wan and Giles have handbooks for training their assigned Chosen, but unfortunately, only one of them realizes that in some instances, the handbook is completely useless.
References
1. Gross, Dave. "Jedi Knights and Vampire Slayers: The Star Wars/Buffy Connection," Star Wars Insider issue #65, February 2003.
3. Ancient Chinese proverb.
4. There has been debate in some circles as to whether the "Chosen One" label refers to Anakin or his son Luke; George Lucas specifically states in the "The Chosen One" featurette on the Revenge of the Sith DVD that the "Chosen One" is indeed Anakin.
6. In the first four seasons of BtVS, Buffy is indeed an only child. However, in season 5, a sister -- Dawn -- is suddenly introduced, who it was gradually revealed was created by outside forces and inserted into Buffy’s life for the purpose of protecting her from demonic powers; Buffy’s and her loved ones’ memories of the past were all altered to make it seem as if Dawn had always been there.
9. "Obey Your Teacher, Except When He's Wrong: Spiritual Mentors on the Path to Maturity," from What Would Buffy Do?: The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide, by Jana Riess. Jossey-Bass Publishing, 2004.
10. Ibid.
