Were Vader and Palpatine lying to Luke about turning to the dark side if he had managed to strike them down? IIRC in Empire Vader makes some mention about Luke unleashing his hate in order to defeat him during their duel in Cloud City. It’s again brought up when Luke is fighting Palpatine at the end of RotJ. If he had somehow managed to best Palpatine, would it have really hurt him in any way? I suspect it wouldn’t have made a difference. As evidence in support, take Obi-Wan’s victory over Darth Maul, who he beat without turning to the dark side. There’s also Mace Windu’s near victory In Revenge of the Sith. Presumably had he finshed off Palpatine, he wouldn’t have gone to the dark side. What say you all?
For purposes of this debate, let’s ignore that it’s unlikely Luke had the ability to beat Palpatine. Let’s also ignore the weird Sith stuff Palpatine (or some defective Palpatine clone?) was trying to pull off in Episode IX.
It’s not so much that he beat them, it’s how he beat them. They were telling him that the only way to beat him was by embracing his anger and hate. Of course, we know this was a lie, because we saw people like Qui-gon fighting Sith while maintaining their calm, but Vader and the Emperor are hoping that Luke will be too poorly trained to realize he’s being lied to.
Vader and the Emp never expected to actually lose, but they thought that Luke would turn to the Dark Side just in the attempt to kill them. Turns out they were wrong.
Thank you for the reply. As a related debate, would Vader have survived had Luke managed to defeat the Emperor on his own? It seems like he was already severely weakened by the effort he exerted in fending off Luke even before he (Vader) turned on Palpatine. Let’s say he hadn’t had to that. Would he have died shortly thereafter anyway?
Well, I think what killed Vader was his confrontation with the Emp, trying to save Luke. If Luke had struck down the Emp first, that conflict would not have happened, so Vader would live.
A more interesting question is, would Vader have turned back the the Light Side, if he hadn’t had to see Luke being killed right in front of him? It was the clear suffering of his son that made him turn on the Emp. Without that, would he have changed, or would he and Luke have gone on to fight again?
That’s a tough one. The impression I had was that he had genuinely lost to Luke. Had Palpatine not been there at all, Vader faced the choice of surrendering, whatever that might entail (perhaps similar to whatever Mace WIndu had in mind for Palpatine in their confrontation?), or fighting to the death. I’m not sure if losing to a more powerful Jedi, even his own son, would have been enough to redeem him.
Y’know, the bit that interests me isn’t so much what happens after the Luke-v-Vader bout in front of Palpatine, sparking What Could Have Been questions; it’s the bit before that, where Luke ignites the lightsaber and swings on Palpatine and Vader parries.
The Emperor busts out his force lightning and starts frying Luke, just a bit earlier than when it actually happened. One hand for Luke, the other for Vader. I don’t think Luke had yet learned the ability that Mace Windu used against Palpatine back in the day, so having his light saber ready to go wouldn’t have been of any help. Vader might well know that skill, but being cybernetic to a large degree, the force lightning likely kills him anyway. Although I suppose there might be a small chance Luke is talented enough to learn that skill on the fly and finish the job that Windu started.
Just to mix Harrison Ford movies here for a moment, it’s not like Luke fires up the sword from way the heck over there before he starts advancing on the Emperor, such that he can be gunned down from a safe distance; he’s right next to the guy, less than a blade-length away, and Vader’s sword gets in the way at the last moment. How long does it take Palpatine to extend his fingers and start the show?
If you go by the games and such, Vader had been trying to develop his own apprentice for awhile, so if Luke somehow strikes down the Emperor before the lightning I think the fight would have been back on between Luke and Vader. He wanted to be the Master.
This. The difference between the Light Side and the Dark Side is mental state. The Light Side is all about self discipline and self awareness. The Dark Side is giving up those up to fulfill passions.
Is it though? Maybe I’m just misreading the characters, but I see the Vader In A Suit as a cold calculating guy who’s all about business, while the flesh and blood Anakin was the one who was full of passion.
Love of offspring is also a passion, so I don’t buy the “redemption” of Vader. Never have, never will.
To the OP, I don’t believe Luke would have turned even if he had given into his hate during the fight. He always had a solid core that Vader/Palpy couldn’t touch. Luke had his flaws, but that wasn’t one of them.
Anakin was Dark Side for a long time. I’d say by the time he killed everyone in that Tusken village, he was fully Dark Side. It just took him a while to switch from the “good-guys” team to the “bad-guys” team.
Vader wasn’t cold; he killed anyone who made him angry. A calculating guy doesn’t kill trained officers, he demotes them to their level of competence.
It’s kind of interesting: the Jedi line is, what, that if you once succumb to the Dark Side, that’s it, you’re forever lost, that man is dead now, and thus and such? Like, they want people who haven’t succumbed to believe that (so they won’t succumb); and, well, the Sith presumably want folks who have succumbed to believe that (so they won’t turn back).
What if the answer, all along, was, nah, it’s not that big a deal; this isn’t a You’re An Alcoholic So Don’t Even Drink One Beer Or You’ve Fallen Off The Wagon scenario; it’s just, y’know, Make Sure To Drink Responsibly, Okay?
Good points. It could just seem that way to me because of James Earl Jones’s voice acting giving the impression of someone who is confident, in charge and has the situation under control (even when it isn’t) vs. the portrayal Hayden Christiansen gives of a young man who is still unsure of himself and his place in the world.
That’s a really interesting idea, that the Emperor was simply wrong about Luke having the potential to turn to the dark side by giving into hate for a moment. Certainly Jedis have made momentary slips before without going fully dark. Luke himself strangled a Gamorrean guard at Jabba’s palace with the force, which seems like a pretty dark act to me. “The force is used for knowledge and defense, never for attack,” is what Yoda said in ESB.
If the emperor had been right about Luke’s turning to the dark side, then shouldn’t he have turned right then? When he attempted to slash the Emperor in half? Seems like from Luke’s perspective, the deed was done at that point, his decision was made. And yet he stayed true afterward, even throwing away his saber rather than killing Vader and saying “I’ll never turn to the dark side.”
The emperor had full confidence in Vader’s support to block Luke’s kill shot. He was never worried about what would happen to Luke if he were to actually die – that is never a calculation that a Sith would make. Unlike how Obi-wan went out.
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