I love ROTJ and Luke’s story in it, but his “temptation to the dark side” is one of it’s most poorly handled elements. Maybe on paper his actions at Jabba’s palace seem like he might be slipping to the dark side, but they ultimately play the sequence as completely heroic. His “temptation” is never explicitly a struggle for him until the throne room, and by then he’s been the hero for so long the idea that he might turn has strains credibility.
I disagree. I feel like Luke’s first appearance at Jabba’s palace shows very explicitly that Luke is being tempted by the dark side, and it helps set up his struggle in the throne room. The sail barge scene was a heroic moment, but Luke’s earlier actions are explicitly dark.
TROS is a much worse film, but at least they show moments where the darkness explicitly gets the better of Rey. It’s one of the few ways that film works much better than ROTJ.
When do they show those moments? Whenever Rey in TROS does something dark, it’s because she lost control. She didn’t mean to blow up that transport, and she didn’t mean to stab Kylo in the chest. When Luke in ROTJ does something dark, he does it on purpose. He force choked those guards on purpose, and he almost killed his father on purpose. You need to show that the protagonist is consciously turning to the darkness before you show them rejecting the darkness, and I feel like that’s something ROTJ does very well.