Early on March this year, I started a discussion with Jorge Ávila, moderator of Star Wars Perú, about an article published there, about the Jedi Council.

My comment was that a Jedi apprentice (also known as Youngling) does not take the name of Padawan until a Jedi Knight apprentices him, contradicting the author's sayings. The main reason of this being Yoda's line on Episode II where he names "Padawan" to one of the young Jedi apprentices.

Well, I'm not fond of keeping doubts so I sent my question to StarWars.com and essentialy forgot completely about it.

Imagine my surprise when I received the Official Star Wars Fan Club magazine, Star Wars Insider issue 88, and I found my question in the Ask the Master section, written by Pablo Hidalgo on page 39.

I'm still in shock, since it's a great honor appear in Star Wars main magazine in the whole world... although I'm honored this is not my first appearance at all in the magazine, but I should write about that later.

Here's the complete text of my (edited) question and Pablo's answer:

In several books, like the Power of the Jedi Sourceboo, a Padawan is a Jedi apprentice who has been chosen by a Jedi Knight. But in Episode II, Yoda clearly designates the younglings as Padawans in his conversation with Obi-Wan Kenobi. So, who's right? Or is Yoda merely using the term loosely?
-Mario A. Escamilla. Pachuca, Hidalgo. Mexico.

The formal definition of a Padawan is a youngling who has been apprenticed to a Master. That term was defined in Episode I and became the basis of the Jedi Apprentice series published by Scholastic starting in 1999. In the original shooting script for Episode II, Yoda's troublesome line "The Padawan is Right", is not spoken. That was only added later during a looping session when Frank Oz was laying down Yoda's voice.

Rather than scrap the definition that became the foundation of a books series, we're left with the following explanation: Yoda, as you guessed, was speaking loosely, and the term Padawan can be thrown around as freely as the term "Master Jedi" is. This jibes with Yoda's later use of "Padawan" in Episode II during his duel with Cound Dooku. Yoda refers to Cound Dooku as his former Padawan, yet Dooku was never directly apprenticed to him. Instead, Yoda instructed Dooku as part of a youngling clan.



If you're interested in the Spanish version of this entry, you can read it in my other blog.