SPECULATION Luke's plan to redeem Vader

If Luke successfully turned Vader back to the light he would almost certainly have to go into hiding like Yoda did. Now where?, I don't know.

I imagine Luke coming to Leia and having a long drawn out goodbye explaining to her that he has to leave and he doesn't know when He's coming back.

Leia would almost certainly know thru her connection with Luke but doesn't say anything, just that she knows.

So what would father and son do whilst in exile? Maybe train a new breed of Jedi, a commando/jedj hybrid. I can't really imagine what they would or could do with their free time.

 

I too imagine that Vader would have to go into hiding. At least for a while... perhaps another life support suit could be fit to him in secret, and he could simply take on another identity.

As for what he would do, I suppose he would probably be compelled to meditate on his life and actions, but without regret and more to understand the nature of the Force and the pull of the Dark Side. The trick would be for Luke to work with and monitor him, to make sure he stays on the Light path, as well as to learn from his knowledge of a time long gone.

 

What a great thread! I have to say, I agree with @John Crichton above in the sense that it makes sense to replace or heavily modify Vader's current suit into something infinitely less recognisable. I think meditation would definitely be a massive part of Vader's rehabilitation, but I also wonder whether there might be some kind of redemption that he could be doing in order to try and balance himself karmically, if you will.

I definitely think that Luke & Vader almost have a responsibility to rebuild some form of Jedi Academy, since they can't just pretend that more Force-sensitive beings are not going to be born, or that those that are Force-sensitive will self-regulate and be benevolent. So therefore, if some form of educational establishment is put in place by the last two known Force-sensitive living beings in the galaxy, they could prevent (as much as possible) another situation like the previous Sith Uprising. It'd be a completely different school of thought from the traditional teachings of the Jedi and Sith, giving students a very mixed, balanced view of the Force- a sort of "grey Force", if you like. In complete fairness, it'd definitely have brought about a balance to the Force, with students learning about how to effectively use both light- and dark-side Force abilities. Most interesting....

 

The Dark Side in Star Wars seems to be what alien spore organisms are in Star Trek or what demonic possession is in Charmed or a mind-control spell is in the Potterverse. That is, it is a force which compromises the judgment of its victim/host to the extent that he is not held accountable for his actions while under its influence. It's kinda the sci-fi world's reset-button insanity defense. Ergo, Luke converts Vader back to the light side. Luke messages Leia and Han that this has happened, and maybe father and son take off for Dagobah or somesuch, where Yoda's Force Ghost says, "Saw this coming all along, I did." Leia and Luke have a heated disagreement for the first time, with Leia wanting Vader to come to Coruscant to stand trial, and Luke wanting to allow him to go into exile, as his overwhelming guilt over his wicked deeds is punishment enough for a lifetime. But maybe Leia and Han eventually show up where Vader is. They convince him to come quietly. He stands trial and tells his tale. He has the ultimate trump card, since the Devil literally made him do it! Whether he is acquitted or not is up to the writers.

Or Luke converts his father back to the Light Side, and reborn Anakin fights so heroically for the Light Side heroes that all is forgiven. Everybody loves a Prodigal Son story, after all!

Or the most likely other possibility is that Luke converts Vader back to the Light Side, but advanced Padawan Luke has severely underestimated the Emperor, who seizes the boy by the cerebellum and swiftly turns him, leaving him to turn on his father, whom he slays with the enhanced Dark Side power flooding his synapses, and he becomes the new apprentice Sith Lord. Fortunately, Luke turned out to be too completely good for that outcome.

 

I'm right there with you, Darby. I have written a fanfic treatment in which Vader inadvertently fakes his death and goes into hiding, then is brought back by Skywalker to redeem himself. Want to know the rest? Heh, buy the rights!

Re: Leia spearheading a roundup of bad guys, well there really were only two bad guys, weren't there - Vader and Sheev, other than the regimented Imperials, who as of TFA, if rumors are to be believed, still control their corners of the galaxy and are fighting with the Republic over every possible planet in a non-Force-tolerant manner (which is the reason that Moraband has perhaps found a way to cloak itself, hiding from both Empire and Republic). Besides, I think that Leia is trying too hard to keep the Republic together after succeeding Mon Mothma to go on a witch hunt. It's the Empire that is trying to stamp out Force users - light and dark. The war isn't really over, so the time for war crimes trials has not yet come.

 

Right now this thread is bringing back images of Werner Von Braun, who was the lead Nazi scientist on Hitlers V2 rocket.

Project paperclip brought these Nazi scientists over to America and thus was born the Apollo program then the moon landing.

I'm not sure the people forgave Von Braun but our government sure did, with Von Braun becoming the father of NASA.

So Vader in my opinion would have to do something ultimately heroic or sacrifice himself for the greater good with lots of people witnessing to be forgiven.

 

Well that nazi scientist knew his rockets were used to kill people, Vader was on a killing spree involving rebels & imperials alike he cared not because he was Palpatine's weapon to wield at his command.

 

I think, that Luke thought that he could beat Vader and the Emperor, he was ready to pay the price, he accepted to sacrifice his own life therefor if needed.

I know the Von Braun story very well, Nasa held him back at first.
By the way, one of his pupils who died on a air strike in Peenemunde was much brighter then Werner Von Braun.
If he didn't die, I bet he would have become a very famous scientist and maybe better known as Von Braun itself.
I saw his bluprints and other stuff from him in a Museum in Peenemunde, he had really a bright mind.
Peenemunde is the place where Nazi Germany built the V2 Rocket.
It's a museam nowadays, but in WWII it was a huge forbidden/secret area and testing site with a Power Plant/Workshops/Laboratories.
There was even a rare black and white film in the Museum that showed, that the Germans where the first unmanned race in Space.
The short movie was taken from a rocket in a near earth orbit, Sad that the Nazi's misused this new technology later.
I know this is off topic but if someone is interessted, here are some pictures from the Nazi testing plant:

 

Excellent stuff there, Ed!

As for whether or not Luke had a plan to redeem Vader, I think it's obvious that he didn't. He was just trusting in the Force to guide him. He first tried to get his father to turn from the dark side when they first met on the landing platform on Endor. Had that worked, Luke would never have set foot on the Death Star. When that didn't work, Luke just went with the flow, figuring that something would work.

 

But what if Luke turned Vader to the light side on the landing platform, they could have met the Emperor like in Ep.VI and then both start to attack him.
After beating the Emperor, they could have conduct a self destruct of the Death Star and escape.
It's a possible scenario but I prefer the original climax of the movie.
Interesting to speculate, what would have happened if Luke joined Vader at Bespin.

 

Remember, though... Luke's line to Vader on the platform was "Come with me." He wasn't concerned with facing off with the Emperor, he was just thinking about getting dear ol' Dad the hell out of there.

After all, with Vader having been in thrall to the Emperor for all those years, turning him back from the dark side and then hauling him up to the Death Star to go after the Emperor would have been like getting a cokehead clean and then taking him right back over to the local crack house. "What could possibly go wrong?"

 

Thank you for that informative post. I didn't mean to go off topic with the von Braun reference. I was just correlating Nazis with the empire and how Vader, to me anyways, couldn't do anything short of sacrificing himself to be at least partially forgiven for His crimes.

Not exactly sure if von Braun was forgiven but anyone who loves NASA should know a Nazi monster had his hand in its creation.

 

If Vader survived,he could've been hidden on Dagobah.Nobody knew about that planet except Luke,Ben,Yoda and R2 (And if you count the Prequels,Qui-Gon).I had always figured Vader had multiple suits,because his changed within the trilogy,so if he was injured,maybe he had one on his shuttle.

 

Vader could have attained a measure of redemption in the eyes of the Rebels if he had given over to them his extensive knowledge of Imperial operations and if he had gone on to fight for the Rebel Alliance. Still, if he went into hiding, it would be not only from the Rebels who wanted to exact revenge on him, but from the Emperor himself, who surely would have hunted him down and killed him at his earliest opportunity. One does not simply resign from a position as a Sith Lord.

 

Luke's plan for redemption of Anakin only worked because Anakin hated being the emperor's puppet.

 

Great question! I remember back in '83, reading the novelization of ROTJ. Vader had a plan - Luke and Vader would combine powers and kill the Emperor, then rule together in his place. The Emperor also had a plan - to replace Vader with a younger apprentice. The novel made both men's plans quite clear.

But it never even guessed at Luke's plan.

Why? I can only speculate it's because Luke didn't have a plan. He had absolutely no idea what he wanted. All he knew is that he could not kill his own father.

Remember on the moon when Luke says to Vader, "Come with me"? My son and I watched ESB together this weekend, and it certainly didn't seem like Luke had a plan. It seemed more like an idea that just occurred to him right then and there.

But back to the point - the Emperor and Vader were both operating according to plans. Luke was operating on principle. He would not kill his own father, he would not give in to hate. He knew what he would NOT do, but I don't think he knew what he would do, or should do.

And somehow, in some mystical way, I think the story is stronger because of that. Yeah, you could call it a plot hole and I really wouldn't be able to refute you. But a boy standing on principle somehow gets what he wants, while two far more experienced men, each executing a plan, fail to move him away from his principles and end up destroying themselves in the process. That tells me the character matters, that doing what you know in your heart is right is more powerful than the strongest plans out there if those plans ignore the value a man places on his integrity. Because character > scheming, and integrity > strategy, and being true to yourself > the Force.

 

Think back to Episode III. Anakin tells Padme that he can overthrow the emperor. I think that was his plan all along. Just hadn't for so long because he was a damaged man.

 

Everybody knows Vader's plan was to put Chief Chirpa and Logray in power and rule silently from the village.Luke was his in with the ewoks.