Son

"What if I could show you the future?"

- The Son

The Son was a powerful male Force wielder who embodied the dark side of the Force and could change his physical form at will. He was the son of the Father, the patriarch of his family, and the brother of the Daughter. Due to the nature of their power, the Son and his family retreated to the planet Mortis, where they existed outside of the material world. There, they remained in balance and under the control of the Father, whom the Son grew to resent, as the Daughter embodied the light side of the Force in contrast to the Son.

After the Father lured Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker to their realm, seeking to convince the prophesied Chosen One to replace him on Mortis, the Son sought to use Skywalker to leave Mortis and return to the galaxy. The Son betrayed the Father and kidnapped Skywalker's Padawan, Ahsoka Tano, before corrupting her with his power, using the Togruta learner against her Jedi Master. This forced the Daughter to seek out the Dagger of Mortis, a weapon that could kill the Force wielders, and use it against the Son. Tano, however, intercepted the weapon for the Son before it could be used against him, at which point he used it to kill the Padawan.

The Son attempted to kill the Father with the dagger next, but the Daughter intervened, resulting in her death by his hand instead. Distraught by the death of his sister, the Son fled, and Tano's life was restored using the Daughter's remaining life force. Soon after, the Son lured Skywalker to the Well of the Dark Side and corrupted him with a Force vision of Skywalker's future, promising to help the Chosen One destroy both the Jedi and the Sith in order to bring peace to the galaxy and end the ongoing Clone Wars. However, before the duo could leave Mortis, the Father wiped Skywalker's mind of the visions, freeing him from the Son's control. The Father then stabbed himself with the Dagger of Mortis, which left the Son vulnerable to a deadly attack from Skywalker's lightsaber and, thus, restored balance to Mortis.

Anchorites of the Force
"My children and I can manipulate the Force like no other."

- The Father, speaking of the Son and the Daughter

The Son was a male individual of the enigmatic Force wielder species, and a member of the family known as the Ones. He was the son of the patriarch of the family, the Father, and the brother of the Daughter. The Son was an ambitious user of the Force, and, like all Force wielders, was a powerful Force-sensitive. Unlike his sister, however, the Son aligned himself with the dark side of the Force, acting as the embodiment of selfishness. The Father sought to maintain balance in the Force after realizing his children could rip the very fabric of universe apart and, together, the Ones retreated to the Wild Space world of Mortis. There, by abandoning the material world, the Father was able to control both the Son and the Daughter to keep the siblings in balance. After the Son and his family adopted the Mortis realm as their new home, few eventually remained with knowledge of their existence.

While Mortis acted as both a sanctuary and a prison for the family, the realm was believed to be have been origin point of the Force itself, acting as a conduit for all things connected through it, which allowed the Father to keep watch over the balance in the Force throughout the galaxy. During this time, the Son grew tired of waiting to take his father's place, and continued to succumb to the seduction of the dark side. When news reached the Father that the Chosen One, a prophesied Jedi legend, had been found, he made his move to bring the Chosen One to Mortis, which intrigued both the Son and the Daughter.

Seeking the Chosen One
"What are you?"'' ''"Your fate!"

- Anakin Skywalker and the Son

In order to lure the Jedi Knight believed to be the Chosen One, Anakin Skywalker, to Mortis, the Father sent out a 2,000 year-old distress signal during the Clone Wars. The signal was received by the Galactic Republic Admiral Nils Tenant, who relayed it to Skywalker and two other Jedi, his Padawan Ahsoka Tano and the Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. When Skywalker attempted to rendezvous to the point of the distress signal, he and his Jedi companions instead encountered the Mortis monolith, which blocked their communications and pulled them into the realm of Mortis. There, the Daughter approached the trio and offered to take them to the Father. The Son, however, intervened, causing a rockslide and separating Skywalker from Kenobi and Tano as they traversed a mountainous path. The Daughter ordered the group to wait for her to return, warning them that her brother's work put them all in danger and that they needed shelter before nightfall.

Skywalker, however, insisted that Kenobi and Tano return to their shuttle and attempt to send a distress signal, meanwhile he would follow the Daughter. The Son, in cohesion with his father's plan to test if Skywalker was truly the Chosen One, hid away the Jedi's shuttle and confronted Kenobi and Tano when they arrived looking for it. The Force wielder, with curiosity, asked if Skywalker really was the Chosen One, which prompted the two Jedi to draw their lightsabers against him in suspicion. The Son implored the group to wait and told them they could not leave Mortis yet, using the Force to effortlessly deactivate their lightsabers. When Kenobi asked the Son if he was a Sith, the Son replied he both was and was not, and that the Chosen One's test was about to occur regardless of their efforts to stop it. Before leaving the duo, the Son warned Kenobi and Tano that the storms on Mortis were lethal, forcing them to take refuge in a nearby cave as he shapeshifted into his gargoyle form and flew away. By nightfall, Skywalker had already reached the Father's monastery and had reluctantly remained as his guest, due to the storm outside and having nowhere else to go. While Skywalker slept, the Son disguised himself as the Jedi's deceased mother, Shmi Skywalker Lars, and awoke Skywalker with the promise of a secret. Skywalker, despite being wary of the Son's form, opened up to the Force wielder and admitted that he believed he had failed both Shmi and the Jedi Order when he indulged in vengeance the night his mother died. The Son promised Skywalker that he was destined to become more than a Jedi, but that he could only fulfill his destiny if he renounced his love for Padmé Amidala, his wife, whom the Son called the "poisoner." Skywalker, seeing through the Son's form, confronts the Father about seeing his deceased mother, accusing him of being a Sith Lord. The Father tells Skywalker of his family's origins and explains that they revealed themselves to him in order to learn if he truly was the Chosen One, in an effort to maintain balance in the Force.

Unbeknown to Skywalker, the Father planned to force the Jedi into a test to see if he was indeed the prophesied one. Under the Father's orders, the Son and the Daughter transformed into their gargoyle and griffin forms, respectively, and went after Kenobi and Tano the following morning, grabbing them as they exited the cave they had sheltered in the night before. The siblings brought the two Jedi to the monastery arena, where the Father and Skywalker were already waiting. The Father then revealed that Skywalker was to choose which of the two Jedi to save, as the Son and the Daughter had been instructed to kill them both, implying he could only save one. Skywalker refused the ultimatum, however, instead using the Force to overpower both the Son and the Daughter, proving he was, in fact, the Chosen One. After the Son was forced to kneel before Skywalker, he and the Daughter both reverted back to their humanoid forms. Following this, the Father informed Skywalker that the Chosen One's destiny was to remain on Mortis to keep the balance between his children, but Skywalker rejected the Father's warning of dooming the galaxy and chose to leave Mortis.

Behind the scenes
The Son debuted in the Mortis trilogy of third season of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series in 2011. He appeared in all three episodes of the trilogy arc, "Overlords," Altar of Mortis," and "Ghosts of Mortis." He was voiced by Sam Witwer, who had done voice work for the Star Wars Legends brand prior to appearing in The Clone Wars. While masquerading as other characters, the Son was voiced by their respective voice actors from The Clone Wars, with the addition of Pernilla August as Shmi Skywalker, who had originally portrayed Shmi in the 1999 film Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace.

The Son and the story of the Mortis trilogy were created by George Lucas, the original creator of Star Wars. Originally, the specters of the Sith Lords Darth Bane and Darth Revan, two Sith Lords from the Legends brand, were supposed to be behind the Son's influence and complete fall to the dark side. However, this was ultimately cut from the Mortis arc, as both Lucas and The Clone Wars supervising director Dave Filoni believed that the Sith Lords existing beyond death or outside of the Force contradicted the established aspects and meaning of the Force in Star Wars canon.

Some of the character concept designs of the Son and his gargoyle form were created by Randy Bantog. In the spinoff television series to The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, Filoni and lead character designer Kilian Plunkett created a character with an unintentional resemblance to the Son, the Pau'an villain known as the Grand Inquisitor. Filoni believed that the close resemblance made sense, as the Son's arc in The Clone Wars was metaphorically intended to represent both the past and the future within the Star Wars lore.