Star Wars is the story of Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One – and here's everything to know about how he fulfilled his destiny. When George Lucas launched the prequel trilogy with 1999's Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, he began the process of reinterpreting the saga. No longer was it the story of Luke Skywalker, but rather it was the tale of his father Anakin. In order to cement this idea, he revealed Anakin Skywalker was the Chosen One, a mysterious being with a unique destiny.
This added a new Messianic element to the Star Wars franchise, with Anakin considered a human vergence in the Force. And yet, as important as the concept of the Chosen One may have been, Lucas avoided exploring it in detail. He never revealed the explicit words of the prophecy, and in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith even suggested (via Yoda) that it could have been misinterpreted. The one thing that could be said for certain was that Anakin Skywalker ultimately fulfilled his destiny on the Second Death Star, when he tossed Palpatine down a reactor shaft in Return of the Jedi. But even that now seems ambiguous, given Palpatine survived for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Here's everything known about the Chosen One, along with some of the implications raised by recent tie-ins.
The Origin of the Chosen One Prophecy 
It's important to understand the early Jedi were very different to the order viewers saw in the prequel trilogy. Star Wars: The Last Jedi featured a mural dedicated to the Prime Jedi, the founder of the Jedi Order, and it suggested he was a servant of balance rather than dedicated to the light side of the Force. The dark and light aspects of the Force were given equal prominence in the mural, with the Prime Jedi representing the darkness in the light, and the light in the darkness. Cavan Scott's audiobook Dooku: Jedi Lost supports the idea the original Jedi were agents of balance, introducing an ancient Jedi mantra that considers balance another aspect of the Force, and venerates it.
The prophecy of the Chosen One appears to date from this time, and it is part of a collection of ancient Jedi prophecies foretelling a terrible trial that would threaten to overwhelm the galaxy. As revealed in Claudia Gray's novel Master & Apprentice, the Chosen One should be seen as a shining light of hope in a dark time:
"A Chosen One shall come, born of no father, and through him will ultimate balance in the Force be restored."
The interpretation of such prophecies is tricky, and over the millennia the Jedi seem to have seen several of their number fall to the dark side through studying them. As Master Yoda taught, it is one thing to receive a vision of the future from the Force; it is another to pursue such visions, attempting to control the flow of events. Those who sought to understand the prophecies risked becoming so focused on their visions that they tried to do the latter, hence falling under the sway of the dark side. For this reason, for fear of the dark, only a handful of prequel era Jedi had ever studied the prophecies in detail. Qui-Gon Jinn was one of the few.
