How Luke Skywalker Was Going To Replace Darth Vader In 'Return Of The Jedi'

Almost every Star Wars fan will know that George Lucas had a plethora of ideas for his overall space opera story when writing the original trilogy. Some of these ideas would eventually find their way into the story via the prequels, sequels, and TV shows, but not all of them were great and so ended up being scrapped.

As the years went by, and technology started to become more advanced, he would go on to make several changes to his original trilogy via CGI, not always for the better. But there is one idea he had that could have changed the saga forever and had a huge impact on the continuation of the story.

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Return of the Jedi, at the time of its original release, was the final chapter in Lucas' story. During the film, the Rebellion makes a final stand against the Empire above the forest moon of Endor, whilst a band of them land on the moon to take out the shield generator. During the final confrontation between Luke and the Emperor, Vader can no longer stand by and watch whilst the Emperor attacks Luke with a barrage of Force lightning, so ends up throwing his once master down the reactor shaft, seemingly ending his reign of terror, sacrificing himself in the process and returning back to the light side of the Force as a redeemed Anakin Skywalker.

Luke does his best to save his father, dragging him to a ship to escape, but Vader asks him to remove his helmet to look upon him with his own two eyes. Understanding that this will likely lead to his death, Luke at first questions his father's choice, but does comply, and a beautiful scene of redemption takes place between father and son.

The ending of the original trilogy serves as a really poignant moment within the overall saga, and, although Vader committed some major atrocities during his time as a Sith Lord, he ends up being the one to bring an end to the Sith, seemingly fulfilling the Chosen One prophecy brought up in the prequel trilogy.

However, George intended the ending to be much darker than what we got. In his original plans, Vader would still kill his master, but instead of the beautiful redemption scene we got between him and Luke, Luke was going to don his father's helmet and declare himself the "New Vader" after slaying his own father.

Now, had this plan gone ahead, this would have led to a completely different outcome for pretty much the entire galaxy. By the time Luke faces Vader and the Emperor, he is deemed to be a fully fledged Jedi Knight and has a ton of power behind him. If he took over as the new ruler of the Empire, one can only imagine just how that would go. It's obviously only speculation, but had this happened, Luke would have made an extremely powerful Sith and could potentially have been much worse than what we saw from Vader. He would not be held back by cybernetics, and his connection to the dark side would have no doubt been extremely strong.

Having said that, with the absence of the Emperor or anyone to properly train Luke in the dark side, it is also possible that him taking on this new role could have led to a balance between both. Over time, Luke could have possibly merged what he learned from Yoda with what he learns as a Sith and fallen into the mindset Palpatine used to seduce Anakin - "If one is to understand the great mystery, one must study all its aspects." Who knows?

It's also worth mentioning that this alternate ending would have had a profound effect on any sequel trilogy, as the story would need to focus on Luke taking over from his father. Perhaps this may have led to a better set of films than what we got?

Regardless of the ideas, we know how it all turned out in the end, but it's fun to imagine just what would have happened if it went the other way.

What do you think? Do you think this would have made the ending better or worse? Would you have liked seeing Luke ruling Empire? Be sure to let us know.

Until next time!

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Written By Jordan McGlinchey

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