What exactly did Yoda and Kenobi think that Luke would be able to do? Sure Luke could kill Vader, but then what? The Emperor was too much for Yoda to handle and they thought Luke could do what to him after Luke killed Vader? They Emperor did not seem to have any trouble smoking Luke’s ass with force lightning (they could have warned Luke about that). They thought Vader was too far gone to be saved and Leia was in no shape to help out. So they wanted Luke to kill Vader and then do what?
Also, could the Rebels have blown up the second Death Star if the Emperor wasn’t dead? Did his force powers offer any protection?
I’m pretty sure Yoda and Kenobi didn’t have a plan because George Lucas didn’t have a plan. Besides, by the time the time Death Star II gets smoked, both Yoda and Kenobi have crossed over and are likely less concerned with postwar reconstruction.
As the novelization of Ep. 6 implied, force-lightning was supposed to be a shockingly unexpected perversion of the Force. It’s effect is somewhat watered-down by prequels showing the Palpatine has been one with the bug-zapper for several decades.
It was watered down long before then. Just about every Lucasarts game that allows you to use force powers has Force Lightning as a basic Dark Side power.
That’s interesting, though. I’ve always seen it as simply the epitome of Dark Force use, in that it’s purely a direct attack, whereas most Jedi simply use the Force to boost their physical prowess so they can then use a saber. Having it be something that no Jedi could even have conceived of, that only the Emperor was evil enough to think of and use, puts a new light on it.
In the Zahn trilogy of novels, it’s said that the Emperor’s will was so strong that it was reinforcing every Imperial pilot, soldier, and officer’s mind subconsciously, giving them more focus and determination to fight. When the Emperor died, the Imperials lost morale, which caused crew cohesion, battle plans, and the like to become disorganized and fall apart, which enabled the Rebels to gain the upper hand in the space battle.
We don’t know if they had a plan as such, and it may not have involved confronting the dark lords of the Sith for a very long time. Of course, the Death Star and Luke’s unexpected talent (He learned the basic force powers on his own in a mater of a few years!) may have changed their plans considerably.
Effect on the audience, yes. However, IIRC the only characters who saw Palpatine use force-lightning are either died* or turned to the Dark Side shortly afterwards.
*presumably without showing up later as a ghost to clue Yoda or Ben in on the matter
The only ones who saw Palpatine use it , sure. However we have Yoda dealing with Dooku’s force lightning in Ep II, and if the apprentice can do it, the assumption would be so can the master. I can’t remember whether or not Obi Wan was conscious when Dooku was a zapping.
Yes. In fact, Obi Wan handled a lightning attack as well, by using his lightsaber. Yoda was able to handle Dooku’s lightning with his own control of the Force.
I don’t think Ben and Yoda’s plan for Luke was to personally take out Vader and the Emperor, I think their plan was for him to found a new Jedi order. Vader and Palpatine were expected to be killed in the course of the rebellion against the Empire, without Luke having to personally confront either of them. They are both, after all, very well aware that it doesn’t take a Jedi to kill a Jedi.
I agree that George Lucas probably didn’t think that through carefully enough.
We know if you want a decent Jedi, you should start the training really young. So, it seems Yoda & Obi-wan weren’t intending on training either Luke or Leia. The only reason Obi-wan came out of retirement was when Luke showed up with a message from his sister, which seemed to indicate she was in Vader’s clutches, which was the last thing they wanted.
It kind of seems like the plan might simply have been to let the Jedi die out, and hopefully the Sith would die out with them.
It apparently didn’t bother the Emperor that he & Vader were the last of the force users, Jedi or Sith. Just as long as the Emperor got his revenge on the Jedi.
Now after the events of episode IV, when Yoda was finally convinced to train Luke, I think it’s quite possible the plan was to fully train Luke into a Jedi Master, and have him take out both Vader and the Emperor.
Was it ever stated in the movies what Luke’s potential power with the Force was? Who’s to say, if after Luke confronted Vader and “completed his training” that he couldn’t have gone on to confront the Emperor in a few more years? We know a powerful, well trained Jedi can deflect Force Lightning.
The greatest danger may simply have been that until Luke was fully mature, the Emperor might turn him. He might have some nasty lightning bolts, but he’s never been able to turn a mature Jedi Master.
Oh wait, there was Dooku. But Dooku kinda converted himself, didn’t he?
I read that but I still don’t buy it. Frankly, I’d think that any fighting force is going to have quite a bit of trouble not falling into a rout if they had lost
1.) Their flagship
2.) Their secret weapon(Death Star II)
3.) Their Emporer
only minutes apart. It would be a massive blow to morale which isn’t going to help organizational disipline at all.
And if I were in charge of an Imperial Star destoryer and had just seen the Death Star explode, orders or not, you can bet I’d probably be saying “Screw this” and immediatly try to go into hyperspace.
It think it’s quite reasonable to assume that Obi-Wan still very much loved and missed Anakin. He would have loved to see him reclaimed from Vader. Since Padme’s death, Anakin had had no one but the emperor. A secondary purpose in training Luke might well have been to prepare him for the confrontation in which he either defeated Vader . . . or turned him.
I think the way it’s explained is that the Emperor’s death was responsible for so many losses at once. My memory’s fuzzy on the exact timing of each of the events, but presuming the Emperor was the first to go down, little things started happening that turned into big things. For example, a TIE Fighter with a lock on the Millennium Falcon while racing through the superstructure lost his concentration for a split second, which was enough to turn him into a grease smear on a pylon. Little mistakes that wouldn’t have happened had the Emperor not died snowballed into huge strikes against the Imperial Fleet.
Keep in mind, too, that it’s very likely nobody actually knew, consciously, about the Emperor’s death, so that wouldn’t necessarily have affected morale unless it was actually affecting their minds. Vader and Luke were the only ones with him at the time, and once the bantha poodoo hit the fan, everyone had other things to worry about, like surviving.
This is all from memory, mind. I haven’t read the Zahn trilogy in years.
It’s quite credible to me that Yoda and Obi Wan didn’t have a plan. Their plans had all just been kiboshed by Palpatine. All the Jedi killed, the Dark Sith in charge of the Empire, themselves fugitives … they were totally routed at that point, and were just picking up whatever pieces they had and going into hiding in hopes that circumstances would improve over time. They didn’t need a plan, just a strategy, which was, “Keep ourselves and Vader and the Anakin kids out of the Dark Sith’s sights long enough to get something going.”
Nah, the Jedi weren’t really big on the profit motive. I think the plan was to make sure that when Luke finally did found a new Jedi order, complete with a series of novels, everyone would be prepared to go into battle wearing clean underpants.
Yeah, but once the Death Star went up, I think everyone would have probably assumed that the Emperor went up with it(Why should he bother to abandon his battlestation at the moment of certain victory. Tarkin didn’t).
Or maybe they didn’t know he was dead when it blew, but if nobody knew where he was, that can be just as bad. Missing, Presumed dead and all that.
True 'nuff. Even though they stop showing any Imperials once the DS2 goes up (the movie makes it look like dead Death Star = Rebels win the game), you have to think that on every surviving Destroyer, every living Imperial looked at a screen or out a window and thought “Shit.”
Really, though, I think Yoda and Obi-Wan didn’t have a plan as such when they started. They planned to live their lives out in seclusion and become one with the Force, and things only started happening 'cause R2-D2 and C-3PO landed on Tatooine. Obi-Wan had to enlist Luke’s help, and when Luke picked up the Jedi stuff quickly, Obi-Wan thought “Hey, this could work” and convinced Yoda to help once he became a blue glowy.