What happens when you’re told, “Don’t think about the elephant?” Chances are, you’ll immediately think of an elephant.

I think that’s the problem with the Light Side of the Force as we have known it: So many of the doctrines and practices of the LS, such as the Old Jedi way of not forming attachments, are premised on resisting the temptations of the Dark Side.

If your goal is not to  turn Dark, then what are you going to be thinking about? The Dark Side. This is why puritanism of all stripes is destined to fail, because it’s consumed more with what it’s against (sex! rock ‘n roll! murder!) than what it’s for (eh, love and peace I guess?).

Anakin Skywalker’s story from the prequel trilogy is a prime example of this in the Star Wars saga, walking backwards into the one place you were determined not to go. Intentionally or not, the prequels were an indictment of the Jedi way.

I think similarly, trying not to turn to the Light Side has a polarizing effect on those who turn to the Dark Side of the Force. You can see this with Kylo Ren in the new trilogy, thinking too hard about how not to go Light and then running to bugfucking extremes in the other direction.

The results of such extremism, in turn, are so horrific that the other side becomes understandably all the more preoccupied with, you know, NOT BEING THAT HELL NO and, again, being more anti-Dark than anything else. This doesn’t make the LS morally equivalent to the DS, but it does mean that LS practitioners can fall into the trap of puritanism.

Going to extremes seems to be a major theme of the upcoming movie, The Last Jedi, and Adam Driver who plays Kylo Ren has discussed mass murder committed by “both sides” (maybe this is his character’s perspective, I don’t agree with it) and how he took inspiration from the absolute moral certainty of terrorists in playing his character. Since director Rian Johnson has repeatedly said the movie will showcase moral ambiguity, it’s a safe bet that we’ll see the good guys go to extremes, too, something we have also seen in Rogue One.

We can reliably tell where many of the characters old and new fit into this increasingly polarized galaxy: Leia, Poe, Holdo, Rose, Paige, and others on one side, Snoke, Kylo Ren, Phasma, and Hux on the other.

Other characters, on the other hand, stand in notable contrast to the characters whose allegiances are well known. Luke, the character we thought was the Rebel to end all Rebels and the Jediest of them all, not only stayed away for years but still seems reluctant to join the fight. Rey is definitely Resistance-allied, but is still trying to find her place in all this.  “DJ,” a new character, is a cynical outsider who’s only in it for the creds.

Then there’s Finn, who has been in and rejected the First Order and fought alongside the Resistance, but as of the beginning of TLJ is not a committed fighter. Like Luke, he’s wounded from past experience; like Rey, he’s still figuring himself out after his life was turned upside down; and like DJ, he has cause to be cynical of causes in general, something I have previously discussed.

In a universe of absolutes Finn stands out with the other uncommitted characters for his refusal, at first, to choose a side. Turning against the First Order does not mean he automatically chose the Resistance, though he has worked with them.

Interestingly, for someone who rejected absolute evil he seems to have very little to prove. He’s not obsessed with trying not to be evil, or with trying to be good by fighting evil. He suffers the undeserved shame of the abused, but he’s not consumed by it. He doesn’t beat himself up over killing Stormtroopers to defend himself or wonder if that makes him as bad as them, a lack of self-flagellation that some fans have criticized him for. He doesn’t agonize over whether he might be a bad person for lying to the Resistance so he could go back for Rey.

Finn is, in other words, the opposite of a puritan. He refuses to do evil, and that’s enough. He’s not consumed by the thought of it. He tries to be good to the people he meets and distrusts causes and grand theories.

Finn is most definitely not Dark Side, but he’s also not the Light Side as we’ve come to understand it, an anti-Dark puritanism. His allegiance, I believe, is to the Balance as near as I understand it, a goodness that is defined by what it supports, not what it opposes, a space that has room for human ambiguity and fallibility without fear of turning to irrevocable evil.

It’s significant to me that right after his arguably most morally questionable and admirably badass decision was revealed–that he had lied to the Resistance to come get Rey–Finn immediately brings up the Force to a livid Han.

Sure, it may read like a funny deflection, but think about the juxtapositions here: At this moment, we know Finn lied to the Resistance to walk into the heart of the First Order in an act of selfless love. He rejected an evil authority in the most final terms possible but also showed himself not to be following the authority that stands against it. Finn is beholden to no one, standing between all the lines, standing for nothing but the purest love and courage, as he invokes the Force. And he does so in a humorous way, like the trickster figure he is.

This is why I like the Stormtrooper uprising theory so much for Finn’s story, and why I believe it’s the cause that he found to fight for. Finn is not going back to the First Order other than to kick their collective butts across the galaxy (hi, Phasma!). But what does the Resistance mean to him? They stand against the First Order, true, which is why he’s worked with Leia and Poe and the others.

The Resistance is, however, also a Republic-affiliated organization, and what is the Republic to him? If he was ever a Republic citizen, it was by chance of birth and it certainly means very little to him now. This is something I also touched on in my Cassian meta and my Finn and Rey parallels meta, that the forgotten children like Finn and Rey, much like Cassian before them, were essentially failed by the Republic. The Republic is not the Empire or the First Order, sure, but it has to mean something other than that massively low bar.

Finn and his friends can fight the First Order and win. But what comes next? They know what they’re against. What are they for? Without answering that question they will fall into the same elephant trap as traditional Light Side practices, and of the Republic itself. In their shadow loom the Dark Side and Empire.

If there’s one thing we know Finn has always stood for, it’s the freedom and dignity of every individual. That’s why he refused to fire on the villagers in Tuanul. That’s why he escaped at the risk to his own life, and why he meant to flee to the ends of the known universe, to be free. That’s why he came back for Rey.

That is why, I believe, he will find a cause to fight for in the freedom of other Stormtroopers like himself. It’s a cause greater than himself, greater than Rey, and to him, greater than the First Order or the Resistance or the Republic or anything else. He is likely to ally with the Resistance again so far as their goals match his, but much as in Act 3 of TFA, except on a greater scale, he may not concern himself with loyalties or scruples other than his own true North.

He might not always be squeaky clean in the process, either. He could be ruthless. He could be violent. He could be dishonest. He has proven himself capable of all of this in the past.

What he will always be is committed, not to being Not Evil or a perfect vision of Good, but to being free. And he will realize, I think, that he cannot be free alone. His journey to freedom was always with others, from the moment Slip’s death marked him forever, to having to free Poe first to get away, to realizing he could not be free while Rey was in captivity, and finally, I hope, to seeing that others who were abducted and enslaved like he was must also be free.

This is what the Balance could mean for Finn’s story: not two opposing sides locked in extremes, not a cynical equivalence or sophistic compromise between the two, but a moral code that has meaning outside of what it is not. Now that is a code worth living and dying for.