"It's true, all of it. The Dark Side. The Jedi. They're real."

Those words, spoken by a haunted and haggard-looking Han Solo, turned out to be the most controversial part of the Force Awakens trailer that dropped like an atom bomb Monday night.

At a stroke, it became clear that this latest chapter of the Star Wars saga was set in a galaxy that had forgotten the Jedi all over again, one that had dismissed the lightsaber-wielding space knights as "stories," to quote Daisy Ridley's character Rey. You know, just as characters in the original movie — including Solo himself — dismissed the Force as "sorcerer's ways" or a "hokey religion" or "simple tricks and nonsense":

Fans and pundits couldn't resist expressing their skepticism. Wasn't this just a cheap way of rehashing the original film in a movie set a mere two decades after the eradication of all but two of the galaxy's once-numerous Jedi? How believable is it that this Jedi extinction would happen all over again —especially after Luke Skywalker became a fully-fledged Jedi and turned his Sith dad away from the Dark Side?

Indeed, wasn't that previous movie about the Jedi returning?

Am I the only one, despite being incredibly excited- is also super let down that there apparently still isn't a new Jedi order? #StarWars — Billy Lauko (@Billayyy123) October 20, 2015

In the STAR WARS universe anything that happened 30 years ago is lost to the mists of time. — Devin Faraci (@devincf) October 20, 2015

"I HOMESCHOOLED my child so he wouldn't be exposed to the dangerous notion that Jedi are real" -Star Wars dad with lots of bumper stickers — Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) October 20, 2015

The cultural amnesia part is easy to deal with. There are plenty of people in America today who are unaware of events that took place in 1985; heck, some kids still don't even know anything about Back to the Future.

Consider also that every Jedi-like act in the original trilogy takes place in secret. When Luke and Vader clashed in Cloud City in Bespin, no one was around to report on it. The final father-son lightsaber struggle took place in the throne room aboard the second Death Star, not on galactic Pay-per-view.

Even Han had a hard time believing his Force-filled friend had enrolled himself in a defunct order:

Remember, Han was Luke's best friend in the rebellion. And even he didn't believe it. pic.twitter.com/5iuvFCHcqh — Ben Kuchera (@BenKuchera) October 20, 2015

Still, the lack of Jedi in the galaxy thirty years after those events was especially galling for the tenacious old-school fans of what used to be called the Expanded Universe. These were the hundreds of Star Wars novels and comics published between 1991 and 2014, which continued the story after Return of the Jedi.

In that timeline, Leia became a Jedi herself while Luke constructed a Jedi Academy and painstakingly rebuilt the Jedi Order — which boasted nearly a thousand fully-trained members three decades later.

Then Lucasfilm made the fateful decision in 2014 to wipe over the old timeline, rebranding those novels as "Legends" and making it clear they would play no part in the run-up to the new movie. Now we have one more reason for the company to take this drastic step (apart from the uneven and often contradictory quality of the novels): The resurrection of the Jedi Order was entirely the wrong direction in which to take the galaxy.

But why? What's wrong with the Jedi? And why does Luke appear to be in hiding in the new movie?

To answer that question, start by taking a look at the prequel movies — which are, to put it charitably, an acquired taste. Even prequel defenders agree that the Jedi are hard to sympathize with in those movies. They are unsmiling, sexless superheroes, a monk-like police force, simultaneously arrogant and naive.

This, by the way, was a deliberate choice on the part of George Lucas the history buff. He was inspired by the Knights Templar, a medieval order destroyed by the French state after it was weakened by participating in the Crusades.

The Jedi Council steps blithely into a galactic conflict, taking charge of a Clone Army of dubious origin, completely unaware that their greatest enemy has become chancellor and is plotting their destruction via that Clone Army. You couldn't blame Luke or Leia for wanting to leave all that behind, or the screenwriters for not wanting to give us more endless, dull Jedi Council sessions.

And let's talk about the "prophecy" to which the Jedi Council constantly refers — that there will be a "chosen one" who will "restore balance to the Force." The Council believes the chosen one is Anakin Skywalker — but again, in its arrogant and naive way, fails to ask what "restoring balance" to the Force actually means.

This isn't explicitly stated in the film. But as Lucas has pointed out, there is balance between the Dark Side and the Light Side of the Force from that point on. The Jedi are massacred, with only two — Obi-Wan and Yoda — left to balance the two Sith characters, Anakin Skywalker (a.k.a. Darth Vader) and Darth Sidious, a.k.a. the Emperor.

That's a kind of "restoring" balance. But even more restorative is what happens at the end of Return of the Jedi. Vader kills the Emperor, then dies himself, leaving Luke alone as the only Jedi in the universe.

Or is he?

Here's the question that could have massive ramifications for The Force Awakens and beyond. What if there's still balance between the Dark Side and the Light — only now it's all contained within one person? What if Luke is now torturously poised between good and bad, Jedi and Sith?

Well, that would be a pretty good reason for going into hiding for thirty years — and a very good reason for Leia to stay far, far away from her Jedi abilities. It would also explain why J.J. Abrams, Force Awakens' director and co-screenwriter (with old hand Lawrence Kasdan, who helped create a lot about the way we see the Force) was motivated to make this film by a fateful question from Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy: Who is Luke Skywalker?

We'll be getting the answer to that question in less than two months. Don't be surprised to find that being a Jedi is more difficult than you can possibly imagine.