From Empire to First Order

The shift from Empire to First Order is the most important change from Return of the Jedi to The Force Awakens.

I’m being hyperbolic, of course, but not as much as you might think. I’m aware, of course, that the similarities between the Empire and the First Order are significant: the stormtroopers, the uniforms, the TIE fighters, the Star Destroyers, the lust for power, the unsubtle naming conventions—not to mention the black-clad, mask-wearing, dark-side-using, red-lightsaber-wielding fanatics.

Furthermore, JJ Abram’s comments about the First Order being Argentinian Nazis, when taken with all the held-over hardware, seem to suggest that the new bad guys are basically continuous with the old ones—that the First Order is just Empire 2.0, with Snoke and Kylo Ren sliding neatly (more or less) into the roles vacated by the Emperor and Vader. And, really, “Supreme Leader” basically means “Emperor,” right? I’m pretty sure Queen Victoria had both honorifics in her long-ass title.

But also: it was JJ Abrams who flat-out said that the First Order were a bunch of expatriated Imperials who tried to get the band back together, which means that it’s almost certainly misleading in some crucial way.

I had just finished reading Yevgeny Zamyatin’s WE when the name changes were revealed, which definitely influences my overthinking of the significance of “First Order.” Zamyatin’s almost-utopian vision of the future details a regimented society—the One State—in which all Numbers (none of which are designated TK-421, sadly) are happy little cogs. Everything is made of glass: the City is a literal panopticon. There’s a ruler, the Benefactor, who’s little more than a figurehead; One State is actually governed by a sprawling, faceless bureaucracy. That’s the crucial difference, I think: an Empire requires an Emperor to keep it together, but an Order is elemental, a fundamental fact of nature; self-perpetuating and incontrovertible.

The change from Rebellion to Resistance follows from the shift to Order: where an Empire can be overthrown, an Order cannot be changed. Resistance happens, but it’s … well, futile. The moment at which the Resistance chose to call itself that is the same moment it admitted defeat, or at least that its struggle is perpetual.

There’s obviously a huge amount of political turmoil that happens in the years after Return of the Jedi: Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath shows us an Imperial remnant in the midst of an internecine conflict and a fledgling New Republic trying to not be another Empire, but there are no clear indictations of how those groups become the First Order and the Resistance. (There are a few hints, though.) Maybe the New Republic absorbs the Imperial remnant, becomes infected by it, and turns into the First Order. Maybe it’s totally straightforward: the New Republic is just too disorganized to maintain power, and a strong leader pulls the Empire back together under a sexy new name. Maybe everything is fucked for three decades, and the First Order and Resistance have risen from the ashes of a galactic dark age.

Whatever the case may be, I hope that the new names are descriptively significant, and weren’t chosen just because they sound cool. Fingers crossed.