The Psychology of Star Wars II: Anakin’s Transformation

In this part of my analysis of Star Wars I will discuss Anakin’s fall to the dark side and return to the light. This is a coomplex subject and, since we never see Anakin or Vader’s internal thoughts, there are multiple ways to interpert his actions and decisions. Some believe Anakin was always a jerk, or that Vader is only pretending to be on the dark side. Those interpertations, I believe are the result of people not wanting to believe a good person can turn evil. I believe the best way to prevent from turnig evil is to seek to understand why good people turn evil and thus when I watch Star Wars, especially episode III, I attempt to interpert why Anakin turns evil and then later back again. I will now explore my personal interpertations of the tale and how it may be useful in real life.

Anakin Skywalker is first introduced partway through Epidoe I. He begins the saga as young boy, probably 8-10 years old. He is a slave on the dessert planet of Tattooine. He lives with his mother, who claims he never had a father. His owner is a Toydarian (alien species) named Wattoo. Wattoo is greedy and not particularly kind but not particularly unkind either. He seems to like Anakin but he also doesn’t mind endangering Anakin’s safety by making him join in the podraces. Only Anakin’s mother has a problem with this, Anakin loves racing pods. This may be foreshadowing, as later in the saga Anakin goes along with someone who is using him for personal gain rather than those who love him. When we first meet Anakin he is innocent. Qui-Gon accurately describes him as a boy who “gives without any thought of reward”. We also learn quickly that Anakin is good at fixing things and seems to immediatly develop a crush on Padme (who is a young teenager at the time) and asks her if she is an angel. Anakin has a rivalry with a tough podracer named Sebulba. Shortly after we meet Anakin, Sebulba threatens to hurt Jar-Jar and Anakin rescues him. This scene shows Anakin’s kindness but also his dark side. It shows how he is around his enemies: tougher and less human. Growing up as a slave has probably taught him to harden himself when dealing with an enemy. Anakin invites his new friends back to his house, believing that it would be too dangerous for them to walk back to their ship in the sandstorms. It may have also been because he wanted to spend time with Padme. Back at the house he shows her the droid he built; C-3P0. Qui-Gon and Padme are in need of money to fix their ship and so Anakin hatches a plan so he can win it for them in a podrace, again giving with no thought of reward. Another thing we learn about Anakin in the scenes leading up to the podrace is that he has big dreams of leaving Tatooine. He wants to see all the stars and to be a jedi knight. He believes that a jedi cannot be killed, foreshadowing his wish to prevent death later in the saga. Upon seeing Qui-Gon’s lightsaber he immediatly figures out that Qui-Gon is a jedi. Qui-Gon believes Anakin to be the one who will bring balance to the force and so wants to train him as a jedi. Without telling Anakin, Qui-Gon makes a wager with Wattoo so that Anakin may go free if he wins the race. Anakin does win and gets very excited upon learning that he will get to be a jedi like he always dreamed of. I believe the chain of events leading to his turn to the dark side begin at the moment he suddenly realises his mother won’t be coming with him. He doesn’t want to leave her. She reassures him that her future is on Tatooine and she will be fine. He continues to miss her on the way to Coruscant and is comforted by Padme, who he eventually falls in love with. Anakin goes with Qui-Gon to the jedi temple where he is tested by the jedi council. Yoda senses how much Anakin misses his mother and fears loss. “fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering”. The jedi council does not want Anakin to be trained as a jedi. When Master Windu informs Qui-Gon of this, Anakin and Windu exchange antagonistic looks. It is the first time we see Anakin truly angry. He badly wants to hurt the guy who is denying him his dream. In the climax of the film, Anakin helps with the battle of Naboo by accidentally destroying a droid control ship. At the end of the film, the jedi agree to let Obi-Wan train Anakin as a jedi. Qui-Gon has been killed by Darth Maul, which makes Anakin sad but nothing like what is to come in the next two films.

Episode II is set ten years after the events of Episode I. Anakin is now in his late teens/early twenties. He and Obi-Wan are good friends but also get very frustrated with each other, like a parent and tennaged child. Anakin and Obi-Wan are protecting Padme (who Anakin hasn’t seen in ten years) from someone who is out to assasinate her. Anakin has been thinking of Padme for ten years which, considering he only knew her for a few days as a kid, is a sign he has psychological issues. Padme marrying him by the end of the film is either a testament to how much she loves him or a sign she has issues as well. Probably both. I wish there had been more backstory for Padme to explain why she would fall for Anakin. Anakin insists on trying to find out who is trying to kill Padme, which he and Obi-Wan fight about. Most jedi join the jedi order at a younger age than Anakin did, too young to remember their families. Jedi are expected not to have attachments to anybody and it is likely that most of the jedi like to pretnd Anakin doesn’t have a mother. Anakin still has nightmares that something bad will happen to his mother. Obi-Wan seems understanding but the other jedi probably pretend Anakin has no mother, making him feel like they don’t care about him. We also learn in this film that he has become close friends with Chancellor Palpatine, who we later learn is an evil sith lord conspiring to destroy the jedi and turn the republic into an empire. He boosts Anakin’s ego and also makes him feel cared for, planting the seeds that will eventually make Anakin choose him over the jedi, and subtly encouraging him to give in to his darker impulses. Anakin uses Padme as bait to try and catch the assasin, which in all fairness was her idea but foreshadows his villainous future. Ankin and Obi-Wan herocially chase down the assasin. When they catch her, Anakin is desperate for her to tell him who hired her and his temper comes out. The assasin is shot by Jango Fett before she can tell them.  As Anakin and Padme prepare to travel to Naboo, they vent to each other about their problems. Anakn shows maturity when trying to give her advice but then starts to get frustrated when venting about how Obi-Wan doesn’t recognise his maturity. Like a typical teenager, Anakin sees himself as more mature than he really is (because in some ways he has grown a lot from when he was a child) and is angry that his mentor doesn’t see it. As they leave for Naboo, both Obi-Wan and Padme’s guard express worry that Anakin and Padme will do something foolish. Anakin and Padme start to fall in love even though, being a jedi, Anakin is not allowed to have a romantic relatonship. Padme tries to talk sense into Anakin but he really wants to be with her. This may partly be because she somewhat reminds him of his mother, who he misses and worries about. Partway through the film, Anakin has a prophetic dream about his mother being in danger. Padme comforts him, he says he finds her presnce soothing. He decides to go to Tatooine to save his mother, insisting he has no other choice. When it comes to people he loves, Anakin always puts them above all else. On Tatooine, he meets Wattoo again. Wattoo recognises him when he fixes a droid, reminding us that Anakin has always been good with fixing things. Anakin gets Wattoo to tell him where his mother is. She has married a man named Cliegg Lars, who bought her freedom. When Anakin arrives at the Lars home, he is not as kind as he normally is. He is too worried about his mother to bother introducing his step-family to Padme. He learns that she has been kidnapped by tusken raiders. He leaves Padme with his step-family and sets out to rescue her. He makes it just in time for her to see him before she dies but not in time to save her. She dies before she can even finnish saying “I love you”. This is the first time Anakin sees his mother in ten years. This is one of the worst things that can happen to him and it fills him with rage. Since it is too late to save the one he loves, he wants revenge against those who have caused him and his mother such pain. He slaughters the entire tribe of tusken raiders (some viewers have said that at this point he is already turned evil but honestly i think in the Star Wars universe tusken raiders are our equivilent to a pack of wolves; considered to be viscious and unintelligent. we would feel guilty about killing puppies but it is not the same as murdering human children.) At the funeral, Anakin vows he will not fail again, planting another seed for what later makes him decide to turn to the dark side. Later Padme comes to talk to Anakin. He is fixing something, it momentarily makes him feel better because it is something he CAN control. He mentions he has always been good at fixing things but couldn’t save his mother. He laments not being “strong enough” to save her. He thinks if he can fix machines, he should have been able to save his mother. He blames himself (we all want to believe we have control over our lives and thus sometimes blame ourselves when something goes wrong) and then blames Obi-Wan for holding him back. He needs to blame someone. Padme senses something else is wrong and asks him. He tells her he slaughtered the tusken raiders and he cries in remorse (note the Darth Vader theme music). He is angry with himself for killing a whole tribe. He thinks he should be better than that because he is a jedi. He wishes he had more self-control. He wishes he could be what he used to believe jedi were. His dream as a child was to be a jedi, now he is realising it isn’t all that he thought it would be. He tells Padme that he will someday be the most powerful jedi ever and learn to stop people from dying. Another seed that is planted in this film to explain what makes him decide to turn is when he and Padme discuss politics and he hints that he would be in faour of a dictatorship, albeit one that looks out for what is in the best interest of all the people. R2-D2 delivers a message from Obi-Wan indicating he is in danger. Anakin hesitates to go and help him until Padme insists she’s going. Last time Anakin tried to rescue someone he was unsuccesful and now he is reluctant. He and Padme fail to rescue Obi-Wan and get captured instead. Before being brought into a battle arena where they expect to be killed, Padme confesses her love for Anakin. Oddly, we never hear Anakin utter the phrase “I love you”. He instead goes to great lengths to show he loves people. Anakin and Padme battle the monsters in the arena and are later joined by other jedi and discover a bigger war has begun. Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Padme are all on the way to fight Dooku whe Padme falls out of the ship. Anakin desperatly wants to stop and help her but Obi-Wan reminds him of his duty. For the entire next film, Anakin will be choosing between his devotion to Padme and his sense of duty to the jedi. He battles Dooku and gets his arm chopped off. The film ends with a secret wedding between Anakin and Padme. He holds her hand with his real hand and then he holds her other hand with his new, mechanical hand, symbolising his gradual transformation into an inhuman machine.

A few years pass before Episode III. Anakin and Obi-Wan now get along better and are great friends. Unfortunatly his relationship with Padme has changed for the worse. She is not as good at comforting im in this film as the previous one. Anakin is still close friends with Palpatine, who continues to feed his ego, and at odds with the jedi council. His marriage to Padme is a secret which he has not even told Obi-Wan or Palpatine. In the film’s opening sequence, Anakin and Obi-Wan are working together to rescue Palpatine from General Grevious. The sequence has examples of all the things that make Anakin who he is; he cares about his friends and will not leave without Obi-Wan, he is clever, talented, and knowledgeable, but also reckless and impatient (Obi-Wan describes him as “always on the move”), he is very trusting and confident in R2-D2’s abilities, and he has very intense emotions. Many of his good traits are gone by the end of the film. Most of his negative traits are shown in his second face-off with Dooku. After Obi-Wan gets knocked out, Anakin chops off both Dooku’s arms. Anakin is angry with Dooku but wants to control himself and not kill him. Palpatine (who is secretly trying to turn Anakin to the dark side) encourages him to kill Dooku. Anakin does so but then feels guilty because he killed an unarmed prisoner, which is “not the jedi way”. It is against his current set of morals and he laments not being a better person again. Palpatine insists that Dooku was “too dangerous to be left alive” (very important later). He is still a good man and refuses to let Palpatine convince him to leave Obi-Wan behind. Upon returning home, Anakin learns that Padme is pregnant. He is happy but they also worry about how they will keep it secret. That night, Anakin has a prophetic nightmare that Padme will die in childbirth. When he wakes up, he looks like he’s thinking “not again”. I believe there are two things he is desperatly hoping to prevent from happening again: the death of a loved one and the darkness inside of him coming out. Padme fails to comfort him and then he goes to Yoda for advice. Yoda says “train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose”. This does not help Anakin much and probably makes him feel misunderstood. I often wonder if Yoda spends a lot of the time between trilogies lamenting not being able to give Anakin better advice. Especially considering when Yoda’s friends die later in the film, he is very sad and he had been expecting Anakin not to worry about his loved one dying. Palpatine appoints Anakin to be his personal representative on the jedi council. Although Anakin is now part of the jedi council, they refuse to grant him the rank of master. He responds by getting visibly upset, showing precisely why he doesn’t deserve to be called a jedi master yet. I do believe he would have become one later had he not turned evil. Obi-Wan later explains to Anakin that the only reason he is on the council is because of his close friendship with Palpatine. This upsets Anakin because he wants his achievements to be his own. Obi-Wan further explains that the council is unofficially expecting him to spy on Palpatine. This upsets Anakin even more, as it goes against his morals and makes him feel used. He asks Obi-Wan “why are you asking this of me?” to which Obi-Wan replies that it is the council and not him. Anakin has now been made into a double agent without intending to be, and is unsure where his loyalties lie. Anakin later vents to Padme that that the war is destroying everybody’s principles. Padme believes that they may be on the “wrong side” and the “democracy we thought we were serving no longer exists”. Anakin is angry at the suggestion because he trusts Palpatine. He is also upset when Padme asks him to tell Palpatine to stop the fighting because too much is being asked of him already. Anakin later sits with Palpatine while watching an opera and Anakin admits that his trust in the jedi has been shaken. Palpatine begins convincing him that the jedi have lost faith in the rebublic and in democracy. He also says that he suspects the jedi asked Anakin to spy on him. Anakin, who has been loyal to the jedi for most of his life, does hs best to defend the jedi but it’s easy to see he doesn’t fully believe what he is saying anymore. He has begun to question whether he should remain loyal to the jedi. Palpatine then begins to tell him a story that the jedi seem to have been keeping from him: a sith legend. A sith lord called Darth Plagius was so powerful he could save the ones he cared about from dying. This captures Anakin’s attention as it is what he wants most. Plagius was killed by his apprentice (implied to be Palpatine). Anakin of course begins trying to figure out how he can learn this power. The jedi council send Obi-Wan on a mission to defeat Grevious. Anakin is dissappointed they don’t send him. This pushes him more toward Palpatine, who says that they should have. As Anakin says goodbye to Obi-Wan, he tells him he is grateful for his training and sorry for the times he has been arrogant. This scene is a ray of hope that Anakin may not turn but I also see at as evidence that a part of Anakin knows the end is near and he wants to say what he needs to say before too late. He has another vision of Padme’s death and tells her how lost he feels. It is realistic that he is having ups and downs. He was just showing hope but now is back to feeling hopeless, as often happens to a person who is either breaking down mentally or recovering from a breakdown. He feels that Obi-Wan and the council distrust him. Padme unsuccesfully tries to convince him they trust him. He then tells her he found a way to save her. He refuses to let what happened with his mother happen again. The next time he sees Palpatine he brings up things about the force the jedi are not telling him, looking to learn more about how to save Padme. Palpatine continues to tempt Anakin with good things about the dark side of the force. When he refers to Padme as Anakin’s “wife”, Anakin clues into the fact that Palpatine is actually the sith lord, Darth Sidious, because that’s the only way he could have known about the marriage. Anakin remains loyal to the jedi and tells Master Windu. Windu rightly feels Anakin has a lot of confsion in him, and refuses to bring him when he goes to capture Sidious. All Anakin can think about is the fact that he needs Sidious so he can save Padme and fears Windu will kill Sidious. Anakin arrives in Sidious’s office to find Sidious has lost his weapon and Windu has him pinned down. Sidious puts on an act and makes himself look helpless and pitiful. Anakin tries to talk Windu out of killing him saying “it’s not the jedi way”. WIndu says “he’s too dangerous to left alive” which is exactly what had been said to justify Anakin killing Dooku. Anakin feels that killing Dooku was a mistake and doesn’t want it to happen again. He has also been questioning the jedi’s morality and strongly disagrees with Windu. His main goal is to save Padme, which he feels he needs Sidious alive for. Sidious is offering him everything he wants while Windu has aleways withheld the things he wants (ever since Anakin was a kid). In a moment of desperation Anakin chops off Windu’s hand to stop him from killing Sidious. He then pts away his lightsaber and lets Sidious kill Windu using force lightning. Anakin feels guilty but there is no going back. It would be hard for him to stay with the jedi even if he wanted to now, and besides that he wants to learn to use the dark side of the force so he can become more powerful than the jedi and save Padme. He pledges himself to the sith, desperate not to lose Padme. Sidious makes him his new apprentice and renames him Darth Vader. Sidious and Vader both agree that the jedi are going to overthrow the senate. Sidious declares every jedi is an enemy of the republic including Obi-Wan. Vader goes along with this but is sad about it. He doesn’t want all the jedi dead and he especially doesn’t want Obi-Wan dead. Sidious orders Vader to kill all the jedi in the temple, including younglings, and then go t0 Mustafar and kill the sepratist leaders. He convinces Vader that this is the only way he can become strong enough to save the ones he loves (as he has wanted since the death of his mother). Vader kills all the jedi in the temple, including the younglings who trust him. He looks as though he really doesn’t want to be doing it but feels he has no other options. Before going to Mustafar, Vader goes home to check on his wife. He tells her what is happening but twists the truth. He doesn’t lie, he tells her what he has convinced himself is true in order to justify his actions. He says that the jedi are trying to overthrow the republic and that he saw Master Wind try to assasinate Palpatine. He says that his loyalties lie with the republic and he hopes Obi-Wan has remained loyal to the republic as well. Vader then goes to Mustafar and kills the sepratists. By the end of it, it has become less about saving people and more about power in general. His eyes turn yellow, signifying that his dark side is consuming him. I believe that at this point he is no longer “Anakin”. Anakin has always had psychological issues, probably caused by his life as a slave and seperation from his mother, evidenced by his obsession with Padme and with his paranoia that the jedi are holding him back from being as strong as he could be (blaming others for his shortcomings). Now he has done so many thigs that go against his moral code he finds it easier to avoid the guilt by ceasing to be “Anakin”. He pushes hiis sense of self and his sense of right and wrong away because it is now the only way he can live with himself after all that has recently happened to him. It’s now easier for him to be evil, easier not to care about it all in order to protect hiself from the guilt. After killing the sepratists, Vader stops to think about what he has done and a tear rolls down his cheek. He never wanted any of this to happen but now he s trapped. Anakin barely exists anymore. Darth Vader has been born and has brutally destroyed most of Anakin’s enemies as Vader’s purpose for the time being is to hurt those who have caused him to become what he is.; a soulless, merciless machine. Padme arrives on Mustafar and starts to beg Vader to come away with her and stop the insanity. Vader is now convinced that he is powerful enough to overthrow Sidious and rule the galaxy with Padme. His psychological issues are now full-blown. He wants power to make everything the way he wants it to be. It all goes back to how he acted towards Sebulba back in Episode I: he must act stronger to feel safe from his enemies. Now he sees almost everyone as an enemy, including Sidious who he will eventually try to overthrow. As Obi-Wan comes out of Padme’s ship, Vader accuses her of having brought Obi-Wan to kill him and chokes her to unconcioussness (he says later that he could sense she was still alive) and then accuses Obi-Wan of having turned her against him. Vader insists that he has brought peace and security to his new empire (remember he has always been in favour of the idea of a dictatorship so long as it works) and also has convinced himself that the jedi are evil and were plotting to take over. Vader and Obi-Wan fight. He no longer remembers Obi-Wan as his friend. All he can focus on is how Obi-Wan held him back, didn’t see his potential, refused to listen to him, and put him down. He takes out all of his hatred on Obi-Wan. This is the dark side of Anakin: completely merciless toward his enemies. Deep down I think the thing that is upsetting him most is that he feels that he might not have become evil if Obi-Wan had been a better mentor. Obi-Wan was a great friend to Anakin, but that is not what Vader is able to focus on right now. Vader loses the fight when Obi-Wan chops of his real arm and legs. Vader catches on fire, which leaves him deformed and bald. He yells that he hates Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan replies “you were my brother, Anakin. I loved you” and leaves Vader to die. Obi-Wan sees that Anakin is already dead and misses him. Vader is rescued by Darth Sidious and gets put into the famous Darth Vader suit. He has news legs and an arm. He is inside a walking life support machine, he cannot breathe without his suit. His suit includes a mask and so we can no longer see his face, symbollic of how he is hiding behind the Darth Vader persona to avoid dealing with his emotions. After the surgery, Vader immediatly asks about Padme. Sidious informs him that she is dead and claims Vader killed her (actually she lost the will to live) and Vader breaks things and shouts NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! All that he has been through was to save Padme and now he has lost her too. He has lost everything that was important to him including his sense of self and for nothing. Now “Anakin Skywalker” has no reason left to exist and “Darth Vader” is all that is left. Obi-Wan describes him in the next film as “more machine now than man” which he likely means in both the literal and figurative sense. Darth Vader’s only purpose now is to serve the empire. The last time we see him in this film, he is watching the construction of the death star whic will be used to destroy planets. He crosses his arms in discomfort. His true self would want to stop the superweapon from being built but now he has lost the will to care. He is forever trapped inside the suit, reminding him what he lost and all the terrible things he has done including killing his true love.

By Episode IV, approximately twenty years have passed. Darth Vader is still serving the empire, exerting his power by choking people to death in attempt to make himself forget what he did to Padme. The first time we see him he is barking orders at people and chokes someone he is trying to pump information from as he captures the ship Leia is on. He is probably secretly waiting for a chance to overthrow the emperor, since his original purpose in turning evil, besides saving Padme, was to become the most powerful force-user in the galaxy and he probably partially blames Sidious for Padme’s death and for generally ruining his life. He wants to forget everything that happened and no longer considers himself and Anakin to be the same person, in the next film we hear him and Sidious speak of Anakin as though he were a seperate person. he is unaware that he has two children. His daughter, Leia, is the princess of Alderaan and his son, Luke, lives with the Lars family. After he captures Leia on the Death Star, it seems strange he doesn’t sense that she is his daughter. I know this is probably because the writers didn’t know at the time it was written but let’s speculate on what is happening in-story, shall we? I think Vader does sense it to some degree. Notice how defensive he gets when Tarkin suggests “an alternative form of persuasion”. Vader just isn’t ready to confront himself and has no reason at this point to suspect he has children anyway. Darth Vader actually does little in this film, most of the villainy is left to Tarkin, who blows up Leia’s home plannet. I make a note of this because for some strange reason, people think Vader did this. He is just sort of there and doesn’t directly have anything to do with it. Vader’s main goal in this film is to find the rebel base and doesn’t mind killing people and torturing Leia in order to achieve it but he does not do the most evil things in the film. Still he is evil and in stark contrast to Anakin from Episode I. He is Anakin’s dark side: power hungry in order to protect himself from his enemies. He is now cold and heartless as well. Toward the end of the film, Darth Vader senses his old master, Obi-Wan Kenobi aboard the Death Star and insists he must confront him alone. The battle against the rebellion is Tarkin’s battle as well as the rest of the Empire but Obi-Wan is Vader’s personal enemy. Vader wants to be rid of the last thing tying him to Anakin’s identity. He also wants to show Obi-Wan how powerful he believes he has become. As Vader and Obi-Wan duel, Vader declares “when I last saw you I was but the learner, now I am the master”. Obi-Wan replies that Vader is “only a master of evil”. Vader kills Obi-Wan and continues on with trying to defeat the rebellion. Vader joins the space battle and is luckily not on the Death Star when it blows up. Upon seeing Luke use the force to blow up the Death Star, Darth Vader realises that Luke may be his son.

In Episode V, Darth Vader’s main goal is to find his son and convince him to join the dark side and help him kill Sidious. I believe his earch for his son is subconciously about something more: Luke represents everything Anakin used to be and everything Anakin used to care about. Luke, like Anakin once was, is a young man who; desires to become a jedi without fully understanding what it means, desires to bring peace to the galaxy, makes his loved ones his top priority, and has a dark side. Luke is also the son of Padme and has both Obi-Wan and Yoda as mentors (but more importantly Obi-Wan). Luke represents who Anakin was, Padme, Obi-Wan, and the jedi order. In short everything that was important to Anakin that he lost when he turned to the dark side. Vader doesn’t conciously know it but his search for Anakin’s son is really his search for Anakin. Using the force he deduces that Luke is definitly on the plannet Hoth and attacks the rebel base there. Of course Luke escapes and the search continues. Darth Vader continues to choke people who make mistakes and is all-around evil. He decides to capture Luke’s friends and use them as bait. At one point in the film, Vader and Sidious have a conversation about Luke. Sidious tells him that Luke is the son of Anakin Skywalker, refering to Anakin like he and Vader are seperate people as Vader wants to believe because it is too painful otherwise. Vader asks how this is possible, attemoting to cover up that he knows Luke is his son. Sidious replies with “search your feelings, you know it to be true”. Sidious wants to kill Luke but Vader insists on attempting to turn Luke to the dark side instead, not wanting to destroy all that is left of who he used to be. Vader says “he will join us or die” and bows down the exact same way he did in Episode III when he promised to do whatever Sidious asked as long as Padme would be saved. This shows that Vader is still too afraid to break loyalty with Sidious even though he does not want to kill Luke any more than he wanted to kill the rest of the jedi. It also shows his desperation to save Luke is as strong as his desperation to save Padme because he is all that is left of her. There is another scene where a soldier catches a glimpse of Vader’s head under the mask, reminding us how fragile he secretly is. Vader captures Lukes friends to use them as bait for Luke. He plans to freeze Luke in carbonite. Since he does not want Luke dead, he tests the carbon-freezing device on Han Solo. Han is in love with Leia. Vader does not yet realise that Leis is his daughter but I suspect her mannerisms and personality still partially reming him of Padme. Right before Han goes into the freezing chamber, Leia admits to being in love with him. I suspect this brings back flashbacks to Vader about Anakin and Padme’s romance (remember she declared her love for him right before they were about to die) and prepares him to face who he really is. Darth Vader then meets Luke Skywalker for the first time and taunts him about not yet being a full jedi, something Anakin was sensitive about in Episode II. The two duel and Luke acts a lot like Anakin used to when dueling his enemies. Vader attempts to carbon-freeze Luke but is unsuccesful. Once he finally has Luke cornered, Vader asks Luke if Obi-Wan told him what happened to his father. Luke responds angrily “He told me enough. He told me you killed him”at which point Vader dramatically reveals “No, I am your father”. He emphasises the word “I” as Luke emphasises “you”. The “you” and the “I” are both refering to Darth Vader but Luke’s father is really Anakin Skywalker. When Vader says “I am you father” with strong emphasis on “I” asin Darth Vader, what he is really doing is confessing that he, Darth Vader, is really Anakin Skywalker and is finally admiting it to himself after more than twenty years. I cannot for the life of me figure out why he does not rescue Luke when Luke falls down the shaft but, anyway. After this, Darth Vader is a changed man. His men assure him that the hyperdrive on the Millenium Falcon is deactivated, but the R2-D2 fixes it and the ship gets away. Everybody around Vader is sure he is going to choke someone for failing to deactivate the hyperdrive but instead he just walks away. We never see him choke anybody again because he has remembered who he is and Anakin does not want to kill anybody.

In Episode VI we do not see Darth Vader act particularly evil, his main focus is on turning Luke to the dark side so that he will not have to kill his own son. Luke is captured and brought aboard the second death star. Luke senses the good in Vader, just as Padme did. Luke pleads for his father to return to the light side but Vader insists that it is too late. This indicates that deep down he wants to be Anakin again but has felt since partway through Episode III that it is too late to turn back from the path he has chosen. Luke does not believe Vader will bring him to Darth Sidious. Luke seems to be proven wrong as Vader does bring him to Sidious, however Vader then stops to contemplate things and seems to be rethinking which side he is on. Even though Vader insists the name Anakin Skywalker no longer means anything to him, you can tell he is merely in denial. Darth Vader and Luke have a very long drawn-out duel in which they chat some more about the situation. While Luke is hiding, Darth Vader reads Luke’s feelings and realises that Leia is Luke’s sister, and Anakin’s daughter. He threatens that if Luke won’t turn, he’ll attempt to turn Leia to the dark side. Luke gets angry and flips out at Vader, chopping his hand off. Sidious attempts to persuade Luke to kill Vader and turn to the dark side. Luke refuses, tossing aside his lightsaber and helping Vader realise that it may not be too late to turn back to the light side after all. Sidious attempts to kill Luke using force lightning. Luke begs his father for help. Darth Vader probably has a flashback to the moment he first turned to the dark side; when he was forced to choose between Sidious and Master Windu. Once again he is choosing between the jedi and the sith. This time he does not want to make the same mistake again. When he first turned to the dark side, Sidious promised to save Anakin’s loved ones. He did nothing of the sort but this time Anakin will make sure the one he loves is saved. Anakin now chooses the good side and throws Sidious down a ventalation shaft. In the process he sacrafices himself, for he is part machine and picking up Sidious while he was using force lightning destroyed his life support. Anakin’s last wish is for Luke to take the mask off. “But you’ll die” Luke protests. Anakin reminds him that “nothing can stop that now” and explains that he wants to look at Luke through his own eyes rather than the mask. Luke removes the mask and we finally see Anakin’s face again. He looks humble and sad but proud of his son. This probably also helps him reconcile some of his old feelings about his mother’s death, since she died satisfied at seeing her grown up son. Luke says “I will not leave you here, I’ve got to save you” which Probably reminds Anakin of his pursuit of saving people that tempted him to the dark side. He does not wish the same fate on his son and says “you already have” for Luke has saved Anakin from his dark side and deafeated Dath Vader. Anakin’s last words are “you were right about me, tell your sister you were right” indicating that he wants to ensure that both his son and his daughter know that he had good in him all along. Through most of his time with Leia, he did not realise she was family, it is nice he remembers her in his last words. The very last time we see Anakin in the film, a ghost of him appears alongside Obi-Wan and Yoda. Since there are two versions of the ending, you can decide whic you prefer. One has Anakin as an old man who has grown a lot from his experience while the other depicts him restored to the same old Anakin he was before it all fell apart, his sense of who he is regained.

Anakin’s story is a powerful one which gives us insight as to what can make a good person change to evil and vise-versa. It teaches us what we should be careful of and that redemption is always possible.