You say “blaze of glory,” I say “unearned and insincere.” From my perspective, it feels less like a deed of a good man and more like a serial killer repenting on their deathbed. If we take the PT into account, it’s essentially a school shooter getting rewarded for one good deed.
Again, the idea of Death of the Author (in the actual sense, not the “your fave is problematic” sense) plays in my interpretation here. The work should speak for itself, not the author rationalizing shit in interviews. Hell, look at what Truce of Bakura said about how Leia would find redeemed Anakin.
“Wait.” He did not move away from the wall. If anything, he seemed to shrink in size and proximity. “I am no longer the man that you feared. Can you not see me as a stranger, not an old enemy?”
She’d lived too long with the fear of Darth Vader. “You can’t restore Alderaan. You can’t bring back the people you murdered, or comfort their widows and orphans. You can’t undo what you did to the Alliance.” Old pain jabbed her like a fresh wound.
“I strengthened the Alliance, although that was not my intent.” He extended a glimmering arm. The mellow voice sounded wrong. The mild, naked face didn’t look as if it’d hidden for decades behind a black breath mask. “Leia, things are changing. I may never be able to return to you.”
She glanced away. Maybe she couldn’t harm him with her blaster, but it would feel good in her hands. If she stretched, she could almost reach it. “Good.”
“There is no justifying … my actions. Yet your brother saved me from darkness. You must believe me.”
“I heard Luke.” She crossed her arms and clenched her hands around her elbows. “But I’m not Luke. Or your teacher. Or your confessor. I’m only your daughter by a cruel trick of fate.”
I know she changes her mind later in the book, but that’s still how I view Vader as ROTJ presents him. Maybe Luke buys his redemption, but I see it as entirely unearned and rushed. The movie gives him one legitimately contemplative scene (the landing platform exchange) and then the throne room stuff is him just resigned to his fate of dying evil. The decision to save his son is a first step towards redemption and possible forgiveness, not the whole process.
I’d rather have Vader slowly redeem himself, go through hiccups in shaking his thought processes he’s had for decades, before finally joining the side of good. A purely visual confrontation of his harm would also be nice, something like this:
But we don’t get that. Instead, we have a rushed redemption for a character who (as depicted) never deserved it.
Maybe I’ll feel more charitable to ROTJ again, I don’t know. I currently find it a deeply dissatisfying end to the OT and to the six-film interpretation of the series.