SPECULATION Will Luke actually help the Resistance? After DS1, he didn't really help the Rebels.

There was plenty of time to evacuate DS2 before it blew. Without Luke defeating the Emperor, old Palpotron would have escaped and rallied his Imperial forces similar to the loss at Yavin. It was the power vacuum introduced after the Emperor’s ‘separation’ that caused the Empire to collapse from within. That doesn’t happen without Luke. He saved the Galaxy. Simple as that.

 

Go back and watch the OT again, especially VI. The battle turns when, and only when, the Emperor becomes distracted with the battle between Luke and Vader. By saving Vader he saves the galaxy.

 

Everything in the trilogy hinged on that moment. The entire saga is about (according to Lucas) the fall and redemption of Vader. The moment Luke strikes at Palpatine and draws out Vader is important as it means Palpatine is no longer giving the battle any attention.

Are you saying that without Luke the Rebellion wins the battle? Counterfactual history is fun to engage in, but the facts are against you. Luke WAS on the DS2. Luke drew Palpatine's attention away from the battle. Without Luke Vader does not turn and the battle would not have been won by the Alliance. That's why Luke is the hero of the story. Luke redeems his father. Saying Luke did nothing after episode IV is just trolling.

 

I like the thread starter here, it's a thoughtful question and is "true" in a literal sense. I don't think it's trolling at all.

However, it assumes the war between the Empire and Rebellion isn't a complex system of contingent desires and events. It ended the way it ended precisely because of all of the interrelated parts -- take away one, and the ending could be quite different.

In ROTJ, for example, Palpatine considered the conversion of Luke to the dark side a high priority. His orchestration of the 3rd act is an attempt to kill two birds with one stone: lure the rebel fleet into a trap, and bait Luke into becoming his apprentice. I think you could argue that without Luke, Palpatine's strategic approach would be quite different, up to and including the events of ROTJ. E.g. Would he or Vader have even allowed Luke's "friends on the Endor moon" (who end up shutting down the shield generator) to have reached the moon in the first place, if not for Luke's presence? Additionally, as mentioned above, Palpatine was preoccupied with the Luke/Vader drama in the throne room during the final battle; had his full attention been available, it may have played out differently. I'm not suggesting he's a tactical military genius or anything, but he's obviously a cunning strategist and his Force intuition (and possibly other Force powers) may have had an impact if not otherwise occupied.

Another argument: Luke's circuitous and somewhat questionable and definitely self-centered non-Rebellion-focused personal journey -- to Yoda, then to Cloud City, then Jabba, back to Yoda, etc -- was precisely the journey he needed to take in order to 1) find himself alone in the throne room with Vader and Palpatine, 2) convince them (if unintentionally), via his actions leading up to this, that he was weak-willed and impressionable enough to be turned to the dark side, and 3) summon the "good" within himself to persuade Vader to murder/suicide Palpatine. Also as mentioned above, I don't think it's a given that Vader and Palpatine would have died on (or trying to escape) the Death Star if you remove Luke from the equation. In fact, it's possible they may have even been at a remote location, managing things from afar (cf. Snoke during the Starkiller base attack at the end of TFA), so we could make a case here that he's personally responsible for decapitating the leadership of the Empire, arguably a feat as significant as taking out the first Death Star.

 

I think Luke was vital to the Rebellion to the very end of the OT. Had he not distracted and then inspired the destruction of the Emperor, then the Empire wouldn't have fallen. Luke's influence as a Jedi on galactic affairs cannot be taken lightly, and it seems this remains the case. In the opening crawl of TFA it says how the FO rose in the absence of Luke, in that the absence of the Jedi is the important thing.

The Emperor was not like Tarkin, in that he had the ability to foresee future events. When the Death Star was infiltrated, had Luke have turned or be dead then the Emperor and Vader would've escaped.

WIthout the Jedi, there can be no balance in the Force.

 

Luke played his part, plus had a different journey than everyone else, so he will do the same in the rest of this trilogy too I'm sure.

As for the question"Will he help...?" In his own way just like in the OT. But if you expect him to hop in an X-wing and have a go, I highly doubt it.

 

In a fantasy-fairy tale like SW, where this is true of the galaxy:



you just have to accept that the mystical elements, especially the Force, make their presence felt in the destiny of the main characters. The military aspect is usually the "face" of the good guys--it's what we can see--but the Force is always working behind all that, surrounding and binding the story, as it were. So Luke, as a Jedi, may never be a military leader again, but you can rest assured that he will always be helping the good to defeat the bad in a more significant, overarching way that transcends pew-pew and X-wings.

 

Palpatine knew the Rebels were planning a two pronged attack. He was confident it wouldn’t work, but if it had, he would have known about it pretty damn quick. Luke had enough time to carry an armor- plated, half-dead cyborg all the way to the shuttle bay to make his escape. Do you really think the bloody Emperor wouldn’t have had a quicker, more well-guarded, escape plan? He’s overconfident, but he’s pragmatic enough to see the writing on the wall.

Palpy had full faith that his control over Vader was absolute - that the guy was beyond reach and Luke would suffer the same fate. He was wrong. Luke resisted the darkside and redeemed his father at the same time. It was that victory that defeats the Emperor. That’s the whole point of that scene. Luke defeated the Emperor and ultimately the Empire along with him.

 

If Luke hadn't been on DS2, neither would Vader.
He'd have either been on his Star Destroyer which would not have then been destoyed, or even worse, waiting inside the shield generator to go Rogue One on Han, Leia, Chewie and the rest of the rebels.
Meanwhile, Palpatine would have been focused on the battle instead of Luke and ordered the Death Star to blow up Endor the minute the shield was down.

 

In ESB, Luke went to save his friends, and if he hadn't tried to fight off Vader, Han and Leia and Chewie would have died, which would have either led to the end of the rebels or the biggest defeat for them which would eventually lead to their defeat. in ROTJ, only HE thought he was endangering the mission. He saved his friends from being cooked and eaten during the mission. The only reason the imperials allowed the stolen shuttle to get passed the shield generator was because Vader felt Luke's presence on board. Luke turned himself in to Vader as a distraction to help the ground forces of the rebels blow up the shield generator and then defeated Vader, who in turn killed the emperor, which effectively brought on the end of the empire besides a few factions and some last battles to fight. So Luke didn't literally blow up the death star but he was responsible for all the major pieces coming into place.

The whole point of the chosen one was that vader had the ability to turn from the light side to the dark side and back to the light while defeating the sith once and for all.

As of now we have no idea as to why Luke disappeared and didn't help the resistance during TFA besides running off to find the jedi temple stuff as well as his jedi temple massacre. In TLJ, Luke will probably be some sort of major catalyst in the events that transpire during the movie similar to how he has been. .

 

I’m sorry, but I find it exceptionally difficult to believe Vader would have up and betrayed his master if not for Luke’s desperate appeals for his father. Anakin himself credited Luke as his savior at the end. It’s pretty hard to argue this position, man.

I think you missed the point of that scene. Luke wasn’t there to fight Palpatine. He fully expected to die there on that station. He was there to save his father. To release him from the Emperor’s grip and overcome his own darkness. And that’s precisely what he did. Saving his father had the immediately repercussion of ending Palpatine’s life and reign. That wasn’t Luke’s plan, but that was the net result and he deserves the credit for it.

I’m not handing Luke credit for the victory at Endor, but the collapse of the Empire that followed shortly after.

I’ve never recommended anyone read “Aftermath” . . . and I won’t start now. But that book made it very clear, the Emperor didn’t have a very well thought out plan for continuity of leadership. His absence led to fractures and infighting – warring factions jockeying for power. That’s what ultimately led to the Rebellion’s success. Their enemy was too busy fighting amongst themselves.

Simple fact is the Empire’s rapid decline between Endor and Jakku is chiefly due to Luke’s dogged insistence that his father could be saved – no matter what everyone else had told him. He never lost hope – that’s the moral of the story. Give the guy his props.

Maybe so. I’m curious what sort of role Luke will actually play. Just a passing of the baton-saber? Looking forward to finding out.

 

Except if Vader isn't on the Death Star and is in command of the fleet, there's no way that he doesn't have them destroy the Millennium Falcon at the outset of the battle. Lando would be dead WAY before the shield went down after all the trouble that ship has caused Vader.
Maybe Wedge lives long enough to still blow it up, but that battle would have gone very differently if Vader was in charge and not the Imperial guy who kept getting promoted because all of his commanding officers were executed by Vader.