Star Wars' Bacta Tank Obsession Is Getting Beyond A Joke
Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Obi-Wan Kenobi
After playing a prominent role in both The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars' multifaceted bacta tank is becoming something of a punch line. The device, which ostensibly aids healing from even the most serious of injuries, has featured extensively across the Star Wars franchise, including the original trilogy. Yet recent Disney series' over-reliance on the device is transforming it from a useful narrative device to a meaningless joke.
In Star Wars canon, bacta tanks have been used as far back as the Clone Wars, in which they were used to treat injured soldiers. Over the course of the series, they have appeared everywhere from The Empire Strikes Back (when Luke is recovering from his ordeal on the Hoth ice fields) to The Book of Boba Fett, where both Fett himself and Cobb Vance used the technology to recover from injuries. However, it is since the tanks have cropped up twice in Obi-Wan Kenobi that some viewers have started to take umbrage with their ubiquity.
Related: Why Does Obi-Wan Kenobi Look So Cheap
Not only does the Disney+ series reveal Darth Vader lounging in his own personal bacta tank, outside of his life-supporting armor suit, but it also shows Obi-Wan himself using a different tank to heal from his Vader-inflicted injuries. As a utilitarian MacGuffin, the frequency with which bacta tanks are appearing across almost all Star Wars media is almost becoming a distraction. In fact, it's reached the point where any character injury that isn't followed by a cursory bacta healing shot is actively surprising. By making bacta tanks so central to the aftermath of almost every Star Wars conflict, the franchise is inadvertently making them an object of ridicule,
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