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I think the original back-story circa the Third draft of Star Wars was that Annikin (Luke’s father) had actually killed the Sith knight Darth Vader and took his identity - possibly to usurp/infiltrate both the Empire and the Sith organization, and either Ben Kenobi knew or didn’t know this*. With the Revised Fourth draft via Kenobi’s dialogue Lucas reverses this, and this reversal was set-up imho to function in two different ways: a ‘literal’ sense (especially had Star Wars not done so well at the box-office) and a ‘metaphorical sense’, keeping his options open either way. Also, Kenobi become implicitly aware of what happened to Luke’s father and Vader. With Empire (ESB), Lucas either went with the ‘metaphorical’ sense of Vader having ‘killed’ or ‘destroyed’ Luke’s father, or…he decided (at least for the time being) to go back to his ‘original’ idea from the Third draft ('Annikin killed Vader, then ‘became’ Vader). Kurtz at least may have thought Lucas intended to stick with this; see his later remarks on what he thought the original ‘redemption angle’ for Vader vis-a-vis Luke was going to be about. We can only be certain that by ROTJ, Lucas decided on Anakin turning to the dark side and becoming Vader. At least with my theory, Luke’s father and Vader indeed were originally two separate people. The father twist came before Lucas had actually ‘merged’ the two characters. Edit to add: Luke’s father Annikin doesn’t seem to have had the ‘pilot’ aspect added to his character until the Fourth draft, which may indicate he’d already merged them together.
*also keep in mind that in this draft, Ben didn’t seem to be hiding in exile on Utapau (Tatooine), and the Rebel Alliance didn’t seem to know or care that he was there (they don’t seek out his help in this draft)