Star Wars is awash in mysteries, and even after the Skywalker Saga told us what makes Ray unique and how Palpatine rose to power, some pretty big questions remain unanswered. Why was Anakin the Chosen One, and where did that prophecy even come from? Ahsoka has raised further questions: what’s the purpose of the Mortis Gods and the World Between Worlds? Now, a clever theory uses an unusual inspiration to explain away all of these issues at once.
Ahsoka’s use of the Mortis Gods, which represent aspects of the Force, and the World Between Worlds, a place outside of time and space, was one of its more confusing elements. These plot points were borrowed from Rebels and The Clone Wars, and to casual fans, it wasn’t really clear what their whole deal was. The World Between Worlds lets visitors travel through time... but how, and to what end?
Redditor lolzycakes suggests this otherworldly plane works the same way time works in the beloved NBC sitcom The Good Place, in that it’s a non-linear path constantly overlapping and looping in on itself, seemingly at random. The World Between Worlds is where these streams of time overlap. If that’s making your head hurt, then the point is this: changing events through The World Between Worlds is essentially impossible. When Ezra saves Ahsoka from Darth Vader using the World Between Worlds in Rebels, he’s fulfilling a time loop. There was never a world in which Ahsoka was doomed to fall in that battle.
This theory further posits that the Mortis gods have been traveling throughout this flow of time, looking for the Chosen One. By doing so, they inadvertently seeded the prophecy throughout time. This established a Bootstrap Paradox, a time loop where something has no discernable origin. Essentially, the Mortis Gods were looking for the Chosen One because the Mortis Gods were looking for the Chosen One. The prophecy didn’t come from anywhere, but always existed.
This makes Anakin’s Chosen One identity all the more mystical. Like the prophecy, Anakin has no discernable origin: he was apparently “born of the Force.” He’s the Chosen One by the sheer fact that the galaxy later needed a Chosen One. It’s the perfect twist to his story, a self-referential loop that solves the mystery of where the prophecy came from without really solving it. It’s also a subtle reminder that every single plot point in every single story doesn’t need to be explained: you can just enjoy the fact the story exists.
