My biggest problem with Dark Empire is that Luke’s plan works. It’s an understandable error for a hero to want to infiltrate and sabotage the enemy from the inside. It’s understandable why that’s a bad idea when the dark side is involved. But it basically does everything it was supposed to with no lasting consequences. He gets the world devastators shut off and saves everyone. Then when he would go evil, Leia saves him and he’s fine. It trivializes the whole concept of turning to the dark side and makes the Emperor look idiotic for gambling everything on trying to turn Luke twice in a row.

I think Timothy Zahn noticed it and tried to retcon in the idea that there were lasting effects. I think it’s in Vision of the Future. Mara Jade tells Luke that there’s always been something off about him ever since those events and it affected his judgment during a lot of the other EU stories.

Still though Luke’s plan seems like it was the only way out of that situation, at least in the short term when Palpatine had everyone dead to rights.