Could E.T. Be A Jedi?
The friendship between George Lucas and Steven Spielberg dates back to their time at the University of Southern California. When Lucas showed his friends a rough cut of Star Wars (well, a very rough cut that included only two special effects shots), Spielberg was the only one who got Lucas’ intention and saw the movie’s potential.
Later, Lucasfilm’s special effect department, Industrial Light and Magic would work on many movies directed and/or produced by Spielberg, from Close Encounters of the Third Kind to the Indiana Jones movies, Poltergeist, Back to the Future or the groundbreaking effects for Jurassic Park.
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When Star Wars replaced Jaws as the most successful movie at the box office in late 1977, Spielberg paid a full-page newspaper advertisement congratulating Lucas, and when E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial overtook Star Wars 5 years later, Lucas kindly returned this favor. But there is one more example of this back-and-forth between the two friends: Besides a few senses that include Star Wars action figures, in the Halloween scene from E.T., the titular alien encounters a kid dressed in a Yoda costume. Naturally, E.T. tried to follow the kid, uttering “home” several times.
Again, to return the favor, Lucas promised to include E.T. in his next Star Wars movie, and while it took 17 years, he made good on his promise: In The Phantom Menace, in the scene in the Galactic Senate, three is a pod that is inhabited by three E.T.s. It’s a blink, and you miss it moment, but this still made this race, which was later identified as Asogian canon.
The fact that E.T. associated Yoda with his home is curious in some aspects (and also quite “meta,” considering that the Star Wars films were just that in our galaxy…). True, during the time of the Old Republic, Jedi were more common throughout the galaxy, but they were far from being an everyday sight. The Jedi had no interest in P.R. matters, and though Yoda was probably the best-known member of the Order, he wasn’t its poster boy.
So, what if Yoda had actually traveled to E.T.’s homeworld, which was called Brodo Asogi (Green Planet), once and actually met the little brown alien? Be it a coincidence or not, E.T. himself has several similarities to Yoda: besides his size and the many wrinkles, he walked quite slowly and could probably use a cane, he had his troubles with proper grammar (“E.T. phone home”) and acted a bit wacky at the beginning, much like the Jedi Master when Luke arrived on Dagobah.
But more importantly, E.T.’s behavior on Earth shows clear signs that he is Force sensitive: He was able to “heal” with his (glowing) finger, and he could levitate things (in this case, a bunch of kids on their BMX bikes) with his mind and he could sense the return of his ship from a great distance (something that actually brought him back from the dead).
It’s not clear if these abilities are common throughout the Asogians. William Kotzwinkle’s 1985 novel E.T. – The Book of the Green Planet, which acts as a sequel to the movie’s events, presents E.T. as a kind of outsider, but not necessarily because of his abilities more because of what he had done on earth.
If E.T. was actually able to tap into the Force, Yoda could have visited him to decide if he should be trained. However, Kotzwinkle describes the race as scientists and botanists, but no warriors, which would still offer the possibility for a place in the Jedi Order, so maybe E.T. was simply too old.
All this is, of course, pure speculation. The former Expanded Universe had a few stories that featured or at least mentioned the Asogians or the home planet (some of them were even retconned), and one of them mentioned their intention to fund an extra-galactic expedition shortly before the beginning of the clone wars, which was intended to link the events of Star Wars to those E.T. But none of these sources do imply any notion of Force sensitivity. In the current canon, this species has, besides from Episode I, only appeared in the background of a panel of issue 2 of War of the Bounty Hunters.
Neither Spielberg nor Lucas have ever confirmed that E.T.’s abilities had anything to do with the Force, but as the Asogians do exist in the Star Wars galaxy, it is at least possible, and willingly or not, Spielberg gave his titular hero some powers and abilities that would have made him a great Jedi.
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