Force Ghosts have been a part of Star Wars ever since A New Hope, with Obi-Wan reaching out from beyond the grave to remind Luke to “use the Force.” In The Empire Strikes Back, we finally got our first look at what would become a common sight in the franchise; a glowing blue spectral figure calmly dealing out advice to Jedi having a tough time.
But what does it actually mean to be a Force Ghost, and what are they doing when they’re not in spectral form? This is being busily debated on r/StarWars, and many fans have their own take. We’ve always imagined a Force Ghost chill-out room where Anakin, Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon and the rest just kinda hang out. Others think they might be up to mischief in ghost form, perhaps stealing socks or misplacing car keys.
However, there is an actual answer. The 2017 short story collection Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View contains Claudia Gray’s “Master and Apprentice,” which gives Qui-Gon’s perspective on being a Force Ghost:
“Awareness precedes consciousness. The warmth is luxuriated in and drawn upon before the mind is cognizant of doing so. Next comes the illusion of linear time. Only then does a sense of individuality arise, a remembrance of what was and what is, a knowledge of one’s self as separate from the Force. It provides a vantage point for experiencing the physical world in its complexity and ecstasy, but the pain of that separation is endurable only because unity will come again, and soon.
That fracture from the all, that memory of temporal existence, is most easily summed up with the word the fracture was once called by. The name.
“Qui-Gon.”
The name is spoken by another. Qui-Gon has been summoned. He draws upon his memories of himself and takes shape, reassembling the form he last had in life. It seems to him that he feels flesh wrap around bones, hair and skin over flesh, robes over skin—and then, as naturally to him as though he had done so yesterday, he pulls down the hood of his Jedi cloak and looks upon his Padawan.
“Obi-Wan.” It is worth the travail of individual existence just to say that name again. So he says the other name, too. “Ben.”
So, it seems that Force Ghosts really do exist outside of “linear time,” and lose a bit of their individuality as they merge with the living Force. Judging by this, they’re sensitive to their living name being mentioned, and can focus in order to conjure up their old body to appear in (with Anakin flashing back to his body at the moment he stopped being a Jedi). We suspect that the longer Force Ghosts spend immersed in the Force, the harder it is for them to assume a physical form, to say nothing of their name being mentioned less and less as the years pass.
That’s about as much as we want to know about Force Ghosts, as we’ve always liked that they lean hard into the mystical and magical side of Star Wars, and these are things that don’t need a strict scientific explanation (cough, midichlorians).