George was telling the truth about the Father Vader twist going back to ANH, but so was Kurtz: — Page 2

Personally, I’m more inclined to believe Marcia Lucas here. It really wouldn’t make sense to invent the whole “from a certain point of view” retcon if Vader was always supposed to be Luke’s father. Having said that, I did feel that there was slight anti-George Lucas bias with Icons Unearthed, and George, Marcia, and Sir Alec Guinness have all separately claimed to have been responsible for killing off Obi-Wan Kenobi, so there are, at a minimum, two liars in the bunch.

patrickmollohan said:

Personally, I’m more inclined to believe Marcia Lucas here.

2012 is rather late to spring that kind of anecdote though, wouldn’t you say? In order to add ‘suspense’ to the story/plot , all Lucas would need is Vader to claim to be Luke’s father. It doesn’t have to be true on a deep-below-the-surface story level. Huyck could make the suggestion, of course: “hey, have Vader claim to be Luke’s father”. But Huyck saying “make Vader Luke’s father” is overreaching. EMPIRE (ESB) is transitional either way - it is not the origin point of the twist. The twist either originated with JEDI, or with the first film, STAR WARS (ANH). Any honest assessment of EMPIRE not colored by hindsight, would see that it’s not conclusive either way in isolation (whether the film or the various scripts/drafts).

patrickmollohan said:

It really wouldn’t make sense to invent the whole “from a certain point of view” retcon if Vader was always supposed to be Luke’s father.

Actually, it does, for several reasons. The “certain point of view” came about because: One, Kasdan thought that Lucas needed to give the audience an in-story reason why Obi-Wan told Luke what he did in the first film, not because he (Lucas) needed to give the audience a reason why he (Lucas) told them one thing and not another. Two, because come JEDI, the premise for the Father Vader twist had changed: this is where Luke says that there’s still good in Vader. I don’t think this was in the first two drafts that were written solely by Lucas. Three, “He betrayed and murdered your father” was a cover-story from the get go. One, it appears rather late in the story/scriptwriting process for STAR WARS - it’s in the very last draft. That and the fact that this element appears some almost three months AFTER Lucas told collaborators in a late December 1975 meeting: “in the next film/story (the sequel), the audience will find out who Darth Vader is”. This last bit, is likely pointing to the earlier version* and origin point of the twist, that Luke’s father had taken on the identity of Darth Vader (whom he had killed) for noble intentions perhaps, but which had consequences later on. This is very aligned with 1970’s Lucas and Kurtz and their mutual admiration for Kurosawa’s films and the moral message that accompanied them. With JEDI, Lucas changed this to: Anakin (Luke’s father) had turned to the dark side. And here too, likely Lucas added the redemption subplot, which is largely based on Luke’s somewhat baffling retroactive perception of Vader’s behavior and actions in the previous film that lead him to believe that Vader was acting out of some ‘buried’ goodness. Essentially, Luke - and Lucas - was retconning EMPIRE’s Vader. In the 1983 “From Star Wars to Jedi” documentary, Lucas only claims that Vader being Luke’s father, and the helmet coming off were part of ‘the original story’. He doesn’t say that the redemption part was part of that story originally.

*the subplot from the PT about Dooku and Anakin replacing him are likely echoes of this older idea. Same with the idea Lucas had for the second draft of TPM, where Obi-Wan the master is actually killed, and his student Qui-Gon takes on his name and identity thereafter.

Very cool stuff! I love studying the history of SW and the “when was Vader made Luke’s father” debate is one of my favorite topics to research. I’ve done a lot of analysis on the topic (based off of both the discoveries of other people, a few discoveries I’ve made myself, and the confirmed documented SW history like the Lucasfilm books and the public older drafts) and as of now I personally believe that Lucas is genuinely telling the complete truth that he had the Vader=Anakin twist fully conceived in its entirety by the third draft of ANH and just briefly considered scrapping it during ESB’s writing. I’ve gathered a lot of evidence to back this up, which I’d be happy to share with you guys if you’re interested.

I highly doubt Marcia’s claim is real. In that same interview that she said that, she said so many other things about SW’s history and her role in stuff that’s just blatantly not true; An example includes her saying “I never even knew there were two stories” which is obvious nonsense because the second ANH draft ends with a sequel teaser, Lucas said to Foster in December 1975 he planned two sequels and a prequel, and Mark Hamill said the actors were all signed on for a trilogy and Lucas mentioned an Episode IX to him in 1976, and I highly doubt George wouldn’t have told his own wife and editor about these plans especially since he already asked her for help with story related stuff multiple times before. Other examples include Marcia saying she suggested to Lucas to cut the Luke and Biggs scenes when Rinzler’s book says Marcia fought to keep them in, Marcia saying the idea of killing Obi-Wan was entirely hers when George said in a 1977 interview (which is years before the divorce so there’s no bias there) that he was already considering the idea of killing Obi-Wan at the time Marcia suggested it, and more. So for now I’m taking Marcia’s claim with a grain of salt because it doesn’t seem like Marcia’s recollection of SW’s history in general is very accurate or unbiased.

@Tosche Station, I’ve read through your posts on both here and the Jedi Council forums on this topic, and I just want to say I really admire your research and theories; you’ve come up with some fantastic and really well ideas and takes on this topic that I never even thought of. I would like to know though where this “google search link” where you found this alleged Kurtz quote is located; I copied and pasted the contents of your quote into Google multiple times and nothing came up. It sounds very intriguing and I’m curious to see it myself. But even if it’s real, it seems to make very little sense to me for two reasons:

1. The idea that Lucas had Vader being Anakin planned in the third draft, but then completely dropped it by the fourth draft, is pretty hard to believe because as far as I know, almost nothing about Vader and Anakin actually changed between the third and fourth draft. The only thing that changed was mention of Luke being raised by Anakin as a young kid being removed, but we know that was still Lucas’s intention even after it was removed from the script because Lucas told Brackett in the ESB conferences that Anakin was the one who brought Luke to Owen and Lucas also said in an interview in 1979 “The prequels are about the early life of Luke’s father when Luke was a little boy”. We’ve also got things you mentioned like Anakin being a pilot and being killed by Vader being mentioned in the fourth draft for the first time, but I think that’s likely just a result of Lucas deciding Luke shouldn’t know his father is a Jedi and Ben telling Luke about him, which was decided by a random note as shown in Rinzler’s Making of Star Wars book.

2. I found a video showing a clip where Kurtz is interviewed where he mentions that he doesn’t believe Vader was always intended as Luke’s father, and he mentions nothing about a “Anakin killed Vader” version of the twist at all. It’s shown in the youtube video “how to watch Star Wars: the George Lucas sequel trilogy” by Rick Worley at 1:40:51

Avimo said:

Very cool stuff! I love studying the history of SW and the “when was Vader made Luke’s father” debate is one of my favorite topics to research. I’ve done a lot of analysis on the topic (based off of both the discoveries of other people, a few discoveries I’ve made myself, and the confirmed documented SW history like the Lucasfilm books and the public older drafts) and as of now I personally believe that Lucas is genuinely telling the complete truth that he had the Vader=Anakin twist fully conceived in its entirety by the third draft of ANH and just briefly considered scrapping it during ESB’s writing. I’ve gathered a lot of evidence to back this up, which I’d be happy to share with you guys if you’re interested.

I highly doubt Marcia’s claim is real. In that same interview that she said that, she said so many other things about SW’s history and her role in stuff that’s just blatantly not true; An example includes her saying “I never even knew there were two stories” which is obvious nonsense because the second ANH draft ends with a sequel teaser, Lucas said to Foster in December 1975 he planned two sequels and a prequel, and Mark Hamill said the actors were all signed on for a trilogy and Lucas mentioned an Episode IX to him in 1976, and I highly doubt George wouldn’t have told his own wife and editor about these plans especially since he already asked her for help with story related stuff multiple times before. Other examples include Marcia saying she suggested to Lucas to cut the Luke and Biggs scenes when Rinzler’s book says Marcia fought to keep them in, Marcia saying the idea of killing Obi-Wan was entirely hers when George said in a 1977 interview (which is years before the divorce so there’s no bias there) that he was already considering the idea of killing Obi-Wan at the time Marcia suggested it, and more. So for now I’m taking Marcia’s claim with a grain of salt because it doesn’t seem like Marcia’s recollection of SW’s history in general is very accurate or unbiased.

@Tosche Station, I’ve read through your posts on both here and the Jedi Council forums on this topic, and I just want to say I really admire your research and theories; you’ve come up with some fantastic and really well ideas and takes on this topic that I never even thought of. I would like to know though where this “google search link” where you found this alleged Kurtz quote is located; I copied and pasted the contents of your quote into Google multiple times and nothing came up. It sounds very intriguing and I’m curious to see it myself. But even if it’s real, it seems to make very little sense to me for two reasons:

1. The idea that Lucas had Vader being Anakin planned in the third draft, but then completely dropped it by the fourth draft, is pretty hard to believe because as far as I know, almost nothing about Vader and Anakin actually changed between the third and fourth draft. The only thing that changed was mention of Luke being raised by Anakin as a young kid being removed, but we know that was still Lucas’s intention even after it was removed from the script because Lucas told Brackett in the ESB conferences that Anakin was the one who brought Luke to Owen and Lucas also said in an interview in 1979 “The prequels are about the early life of Luke’s father when Luke was a little boy”. We’ve also got things you mentioned like Anakin being a pilot and being killed by Vader being mentioned in the fourth draft for the first time, but I think that’s likely just a result of Lucas deciding Luke shouldn’t know his father is a Jedi and Ben telling Luke about him, which was decided by a random note as shown in Rinzler’s Making of Star Wars book.

2. I found a video showing a clip where Kurtz is interviewed where he mentions that he doesn’t believe Vader was always intended as Luke’s father, and he mentions nothing about a “Anakin killed Vader” version of the twist at all. It’s shown in the youtube video “how to watch Star Wars: the George Lucas sequel trilogy” by Rick Worley at 1:40:51

Hi, Avimo! I’d be interested in your research!

1. I agree totally with you and your take regarding Marcia Lucas.

2. Whether or not Kurtz said what was in that quote I found via a google search - which btw I’m no longer able to find - I think that the idea did exist as a rumor circa 1980, 1981. I also happen to think it’s possible that the rumor was generated by a leak from LFL to the sci-fi/fantasy community. Meaning, I think there was an original version of the twist planned by Lucas during the writing of the first film*, STAR WARS(ANH). The leak may have been deliberate obfuscation or a genuine, unplanned leak. Like you, I also find it hard to believe that the twist would have been completely dropped by Lucas around the time of writing the fourth draft, after having been part of the submerged deep story underlying the third draft. I think that the “we find out who Darth Vader is at the end of the second book (sequel)” statement by Lucas back in December of 1975 during a production/story meeting, is referencing a twist of some kind involving Vader being Luke’s father or tied to him in some way, rather than part of the Vader-killed-Luke’s father version which anyway didn’t appear in script form until several months (almost three) after this December 1975 statement from Lucas.

• *Iow, the twist was NOT invented ex-nihilo during the writing for EMPIRE(ESB), despite what offical LFL ‘orthodox’ and the ‘general consensus’ among fans and moviegoers say. The original Vader-father twist was either: Option A - Vader was a clone of Luke’s father, and killed Luke’s father due to believing that he (Vader) was the ‘real deal’, and because of that genuine belief, he told Luke in EMPIRE that he’s his father. Option B - Vader had an affair with Annikin/Anakin’s wife, Annikin really did die, and thus Vader was Luke’s true biological father. Option C - Luke’s father Annikin killed the first, original Darth Vader sometime during the back-story, then took on his identity and became the Darth Vader we know in the original trilogy. This version of Vader would then try to make things right at the end of EMPIRE or beginning of JEDI, asking Luke to help him. In this version, he became Vader for more noble reasons. edit: The final, ‘canonical’ version of the twist revealed in ROTJ, was actually created/written during the development and scripting phase of JEDI, not for that of EMPIRE. Edit: I’ve noticed that in the 1983 documentary “From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga”, Lucas only said that Vader being Luke’s father and the helmet/mask coming off were part of the ‘original story’ that he had already as subtext of the first film ANH, but he doesn’t say that the redemption angle for Vader was part of that story. I find that omission a little interesting.

3. I watched the Rick Worley video. To me, Kurtz is giving the ‘agnostic’, producer and audience orientated ‘surface’ perspective of the first film, where Vader being the father is not an obvious part of the surface plot. I think that came from a Q&A session Kurtz did around 2004 or so. I agree with Worley that Kurtz’s mid/late 90’s-early 2000’s narrative about Lucas ‘tossing’ out the ‘original outline’ that was written for JEDI doesn’t make sense, as Kurtz wouldn’t have been around when Lucas wrote his story treatments and drafts for JEDI in late 1980/early 1981. So that would leave the time-frame of when EMPIRE was in development and production, an implication which would raise more questions - Lucas already having an outline for JEDI while EMPIRE was not even half-way finished(?).

IF I am right about the existence of the original twist(s) that may have been planned by Lucas - starting with SW and only being modified or completely changed with ROTJ - then it wouldn’t be out of bounds in my opinion to surmise that perhaps upon Kurtz leaving LFL, Kurtz and Lucas made a mutual agreement never to openly discuss this particular matter, except only in what can be described as contradictory accounts that are only half-truths at best.

Tosche Station said:

Avimo said:

Very cool stuff! I love studying the history of SW and the “when was Vader made Luke’s father” debate is one of my favorite topics to research. I’ve done a lot of analysis on the topic (based off of both the discoveries of other people, a few discoveries I’ve made myself, and the confirmed documented SW history like the Lucasfilm books and the public older drafts) and as of now I personally believe that Lucas is genuinely telling the complete truth that he had the Vader=Anakin twist fully conceived in its entirety by the third draft of ANH and just briefly considered scrapping it during ESB’s writing. I’ve gathered a lot of evidence to back this up, which I’d be happy to share with you guys if you’re interested.

I highly doubt Marcia’s claim is real. In that same interview that she said that, she said so many other things about SW’s history and her role in stuff that’s just blatantly not true; An example includes her saying “I never even knew there were two stories” which is obvious nonsense because the second ANH draft ends with a sequel teaser, Lucas said to Foster in December 1975 he planned two sequels and a prequel, and Mark Hamill said the actors were all signed on for a trilogy and Lucas mentioned an Episode IX to him in 1976, and I highly doubt George wouldn’t have told his own wife and editor about these plans especially since he already asked her for help with story related stuff multiple times before. Other examples include Marcia saying she suggested to Lucas to cut the Luke and Biggs scenes when Rinzler’s book says Marcia fought to keep them in, Marcia saying the idea of killing Obi-Wan was entirely hers when George said in a 1977 interview (which is years before the divorce so there’s no bias there) that he was already considering the idea of killing Obi-Wan at the time Marcia suggested it, and more. So for now I’m taking Marcia’s claim with a grain of salt because it doesn’t seem like Marcia’s recollection of SW’s history in general is very accurate or unbiased.

@Tosche Station, I’ve read through your posts on both here and the Jedi Council forums on this topic, and I just want to say I really admire your research and theories; you’ve come up with some fantastic and really well ideas and takes on this topic that I never even thought of. I would like to know though where this “google search link” where you found this alleged Kurtz quote is located; I copied and pasted the contents of your quote into Google multiple times and nothing came up. It sounds very intriguing and I’m curious to see it myself. But even if it’s real, it seems to make very little sense to me for two reasons:

1. The idea that Lucas had Vader being Anakin planned in the third draft, but then completely dropped it by the fourth draft, is pretty hard to believe because as far as I know, almost nothing about Vader and Anakin actually changed between the third and fourth draft. The only thing that changed was mention of Luke being raised by Anakin as a young kid being removed, but we know that was still Lucas’s intention even after it was removed from the script because Lucas told Brackett in the ESB conferences that Anakin was the one who brought Luke to Owen and Lucas also said in an interview in 1979 “The prequels are about the early life of Luke’s father when Luke was a little boy”. We’ve also got things you mentioned like Anakin being a pilot and being killed by Vader being mentioned in the fourth draft for the first time, but I think that’s likely just a result of Lucas deciding Luke shouldn’t know his father is a Jedi and Ben telling Luke about him, which was decided by a random note as shown in Rinzler’s Making of Star Wars book.

2. I found a video showing a clip where Kurtz is interviewed where he mentions that he doesn’t believe Vader was always intended as Luke’s father, and he mentions nothing about a “Anakin killed Vader” version of the twist at all. It’s shown in the youtube video “how to watch Star Wars: the George Lucas sequel trilogy” by Rick Worley at 1:40:51

Hi, Avimo! I’d be interested in your research!

1. I agree totally with you and your take regarding Marcia Lucas.

2. Whether or not Kurtz said what was in that quote I found via a google search - which btw I’m no longer able to find - I think that the idea did exist as a rumor circa 1980, 1981. I also happen to think it’s possible that the rumor was generated by a leak from LFL to the sci-fi/fantasy community. Meaning, I think there was an original version of the twist planned by Lucas during the writing of the first film*, STAR WARS(ANH). The leak may have been deliberate obfuscation or a genuine, unplanned leak. Like you, I also find it hard to believe that the twist would have been completely dropped by Lucas around the time of writing the fourth draft, after having been part of the submerged deep story underlying the third draft. I think that the “we find out who Darth Vader is at the end of the second book (sequel)” statement by Lucas back in December of 1975 during a production/story meeting, is referencing a twist of some kind involving Vader being Luke’s father or tied to him in some way, rather than part of the Vader-killed-Luke’s father version which anyway didn’t appear in script form until several months (almost three) after this December 1975 statement from Lucas.

• *Iow, the twist was NOT invented ex-nihilo during the writing for EMPIRE(ESB), despite what offical LFL ‘orthodox’ and the ‘general consensus’ among fans and moviegoers say. The original Vader-father twist was either: Option A - Vader was a clone of Luke’s father, and killed Luke’s father due to believing that he (Vader) was the ‘real deal’, and because of that genuine belief, he told Luke in EMPIRE that he’s his father. Option B - Vader had an affair with Annikin/Anakin’s wife, Annikin really did die, and thus Vader was Luke’s true biological father. Option C - Luke’s father Annikin killed the first, original Darth Vader sometime during the back-story, then took on his identity and became the Darth Vader we know in the original trilogy. This version of Vader would then try to make things right at the end of EMPIRE or beginning of JEDI, asking Luke to help him. In this version, he became Vader for more noble reasons. edit: The final, ‘canonical’ version of the twist revealed in ROTJ, was actually created/written during the development and scripting phase of JEDI, not for that of EMPIRE. Edit: I’ve noticed that in the 1983 documentary “From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga”, Lucas only said that Vader being Luke’s father and the helmet/mask coming off were part of the ‘original story’ that he had already as subtext of the first film ANH, but he doesn’t say that the redemption angle for Vader was part of that story. I find that omission a little interesting.

3. I watched the Rick Worley video. To me, Kurtz is giving the ‘agnostic’, producer and audience orientated ‘surface’ perspective of the first film, where Vader being the father is not an obvious part of the surface plot. I think that came from a Q&A session Kurtz did around 2004 or so. I agree with Worley that Kurtz’s mid/late 90’s-early 2000’s narrative about Lucas ‘tossing’ out the ‘original outline’ that was written for JEDI doesn’t make sense, as Kurtz wouldn’t have been around when Lucas wrote his story treatments and drafts for JEDI in late 1980/early 1981. So that would leave the time-frame of when EMPIRE was in development and production, an implication which would raise more questions - Lucas already having an outline for JEDI while EMPIRE was not even half-way finished(?).

IF I am right about the existence of the original twist(s) that may have been planned by Lucas - starting with SW and only being modified or completely changed with ROTJ - then it wouldn’t be out of bounds in my opinion to surmise that perhaps upon Kurtz leaving LFL, Kurtz and Lucas made a mutual agreement never to openly discuss this particular matter, except only in what can be described as contradictory accounts that are only half-truths at best.

Highly interesting theories regarding Annakin/Vader’s backstory! I’m particularly curious about your Options A and B, as I’ve never heard of them before. Are these pure conjecture on your part or they based on any concrete evidence/clue/hint/etc.? If the latter, I’d love to hear more!

RangerofAquilae said:

Tosche Station said:

Avimo said:

Very cool stuff! I love studying the history of SW and the “when was Vader made Luke’s father” debate is one of my favorite topics to research. I’ve done a lot of analysis on the topic (based off of both the discoveries of other people, a few discoveries I’ve made myself, and the confirmed documented SW history like the Lucasfilm books and the public older drafts) and as of now I personally believe that Lucas is genuinely telling the complete truth that he had the Vader=Anakin twist fully conceived in its entirety by the third draft of ANH and just briefly considered scrapping it during ESB’s writing. I’ve gathered a lot of evidence to back this up, which I’d be happy to share with you guys if you’re interested.

I highly doubt Marcia’s claim is real. In that same interview that she said that, she said so many other things about SW’s history and her role in stuff that’s just blatantly not true; An example includes her saying “I never even knew there were two stories” which is obvious nonsense because the second ANH draft ends with a sequel teaser, Lucas said to Foster in December 1975 he planned two sequels and a prequel, and Mark Hamill said the actors were all signed on for a trilogy and Lucas mentioned an Episode IX to him in 1976, and I highly doubt George wouldn’t have told his own wife and editor about these plans especially since he already asked her for help with story related stuff multiple times before. Other examples include Marcia saying she suggested to Lucas to cut the Luke and Biggs scenes when Rinzler’s book says Marcia fought to keep them in, Marcia saying the idea of killing Obi-Wan was entirely hers when George said in a 1977 interview (which is years before the divorce so there’s no bias there) that he was already considering the idea of killing Obi-Wan at the time Marcia suggested it, and more. So for now I’m taking Marcia’s claim with a grain of salt because it doesn’t seem like Marcia’s recollection of SW’s history in general is very accurate or unbiased.

@Tosche Station, I’ve read through your posts on both here and the Jedi Council forums on this topic, and I just want to say I really admire your research and theories; you’ve come up with some fantastic and really well ideas and takes on this topic that I never even thought of. I would like to know though where this “google search link” where you found this alleged Kurtz quote is located; I copied and pasted the contents of your quote into Google multiple times and nothing came up. It sounds very intriguing and I’m curious to see it myself. But even if it’s real, it seems to make very little sense to me for two reasons:

1. The idea that Lucas had Vader being Anakin planned in the third draft, but then completely dropped it by the fourth draft, is pretty hard to believe because as far as I know, almost nothing about Vader and Anakin actually changed between the third and fourth draft. The only thing that changed was mention of Luke being raised by Anakin as a young kid being removed, but we know that was still Lucas’s intention even after it was removed from the script because Lucas told Brackett in the ESB conferences that Anakin was the one who brought Luke to Owen and Lucas also said in an interview in 1979 “The prequels are about the early life of Luke’s father when Luke was a little boy”. We’ve also got things you mentioned like Anakin being a pilot and being killed by Vader being mentioned in the fourth draft for the first time, but I think that’s likely just a result of Lucas deciding Luke shouldn’t know his father is a Jedi and Ben telling Luke about him, which was decided by a random note as shown in Rinzler’s Making of Star Wars book.

2. I found a video showing a clip where Kurtz is interviewed where he mentions that he doesn’t believe Vader was always intended as Luke’s father, and he mentions nothing about a “Anakin killed Vader” version of the twist at all. It’s shown in the youtube video “how to watch Star Wars: the George Lucas sequel trilogy” by Rick Worley at 1:40:51

Hi, Avimo! I’d be interested in your research!

1. I agree totally with you and your take regarding Marcia Lucas.

2. Whether or not Kurtz said what was in that quote I found via a google search - which btw I’m no longer able to find - I think that the idea did exist as a rumor circa 1980, 1981. I also happen to think it’s possible that the rumor was generated by a leak from LFL to the sci-fi/fantasy community. Meaning, I think there was an original version of the twist planned by Lucas during the writing of the first film*, STAR WARS(ANH). The leak may have been deliberate obfuscation or a genuine, unplanned leak. Like you, I also find it hard to believe that the twist would have been completely dropped by Lucas around the time of writing the fourth draft, after having been part of the submerged deep story underlying the third draft. I think that the statement “we find out who Darth Vader is at the end of the second book (sequel)” by Lucas back in December of 1975 during a production/story meeting, is referencing a twist of some kind involving Vader being Luke’s father or tied to him in some way, rather than part of the Vader-killed-Luke’s father version which anyway didn’t appear in script form until several months (almost three) after this December 1975 statement from Lucas.

• *Iow, the twist was NOT invented ex-nihilo during the writing for EMPIRE(ESB), despite what offical LFL ‘orthodox’ and the ‘general consensus’ among fans and moviegoers say. The original Vader-father twist was either: Option A - Vader was a clone of Luke’s father, and killed Luke’s father due to believing that he (Vader) was the ‘real deal’, and because of that genuine belief, he told Luke in EMPIRE that he’s his father. Option B - Vader had an affair with Annikin/Anakin’s wife, Annikin really did die, and thus Vader was Luke’s true biological father. Option C - Luke’s father Annikin killed the first, original Darth Vader sometime during the back-story, then took on his identity and became the Darth Vader we know in the original trilogy. This version of Vader would then try to make things right at the end of EMPIRE or beginning of JEDI, asking Luke to help him. In this version, he became Vader for more noble reasons. edit: The final, ‘canonical’ version of the twist revealed in ROTJ, was actually created/written during the development and scripting phase of JEDI, not for that of EMPIRE. Edit: I’ve noticed that in the 1983 documentary “From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga”, Lucas only said that Vader being Luke’s father and the helmet/mask coming off were part of the ‘original story’ that he had already as subtext of the first film ANH, but he doesn’t say that the redemption angle for Vader was part of that story. I find that omission a little interesting.

3. I watched the Rick Worley video. To me, Kurtz is giving the ‘agnostic’, producer and audience orientated ‘surface’ perspective of the first film, where Vader being the father is not an obvious part of the surface plot. I think that came from a Q&A session Kurtz did around 2004 or so. I agree with Worley that Kurtz’s mid/late 90’s-early 2000’s narrative about Lucas ‘tossing’ out the ‘original outline’ that was written for JEDI doesn’t make sense, as Kurtz wouldn’t have been around when Lucas wrote his story treatments and drafts for JEDI in late 1980/early 1981. So that would leave the time-frame of when EMPIRE was in development and production, an implication which would raise more questions - Lucas already having an outline for JEDI while EMPIRE was not even half-way finished(?).

IF I am right about the existence of the original twist(s) that may have been planned by Lucas - starting with SW and only being modified or completely changed with ROTJ - then it wouldn’t be out of bounds in my opinion to surmise that perhaps upon Kurtz leaving LFL, Kurtz and Lucas made a mutual agreement never to openly discuss this particular matter, except only in what can be described as contradictory accounts that are only half-truths at best.

Highly interesting theories regarding Annakin/Vader’s backstory! I’m particularly curious about your Options A and B, as I’ve never heard of them before. Are these pure conjecture on your part or they based on any concrete evidence/clue/hint/etc.? If the latter, I’d love to hear more!

Pure conjecture on my part, especially the Option B ‘The Affair’ twist version. That was internet speculation from TF.N that I picked up from another poster as a plausible option, especially since the ‘soap opera’ feel of it seemed to match with Lucas saying in that same December 1975 quote*, “the third film/book will be about the soap opera of the Skywalker family” Option A ‘The Clone’ version is/was conjecture, but it was also actual rumored speculation after EMPIRE came out, 1980-1981-1982, until JEDI said otherwise. And in my opinion, it made sense out of Lucas’ post-release STAR WARS:ANH statements that Ben supposedly had two Jedi students, Luke’s father (‘Annikin’) and Vader. Even the film itself showed Vader to be an ace pilot, kind of weird that he had the same abilities as the Jedi that he had supposedly killed. Maybe the Jedi recruited or created clones of their own, and Annikin’s clone - Vader - became unstable. There was the matter of both characters shared history with Ben Kenobi, both wielding near-identical lightsabers, and both being excellent pilots. I thought rather than Lucas somehow not realizing how Vader could come off as sort of a ‘doppleganger’ of Luke’s father, perhaps this was sign-posting the submerged underlying truth about Vader’s secret(or not) identity. This redundancy vanishes when one realizes that it might have been intended as misdirection, or, to point towards the real underlying story - Vader was a clone of Luke’s father (alternatively, the twist Options B or C). The misdirection would imho be where Lucas implied in post-release 1977 interviews that Ben had simultaneously trained the two Jedi (Annikin and Vader).

*the quote where he said that in the second ‘book’ or film/the sequel, “we find out who Darth Vader is”

I take it though that you’d heard of Option C ‘The Identity Switch’ version, then? Where Annikin kills the original Darth Vader then takes his identity?

I’ve only ever heard of Option C in this thread, which, incidentally, is also where I learned of its rather dubious origin.

RangerofAquilae said:

I’ve only ever heard of Option C in this thread, which, incidentally, is also where I learned of its rather dubious origin.

You mean the possibility that it originated as a ‘leak’ from LFL? You may or may not have been aware prior to this thread that like the Clone version (“Option A”), this one - Option C - was also circulated as a rumor circa 1980-1981. As I mentioned before, it could go back to the third draft of SW:ANH at the earliest, or in that period between the third and fourth drafts (and wasn’t ‘dropped’ by the fourth draft or film). I wouldn’t say there’s evidence per se, but clues or hints. Luke’s father (Annikin) himself perhaps taking/hiding his child (there was only Luke at this point, before the Neilith-Leia sister) - rather than Ben - might point towards this scenario, that and the fact that Luke remembers his father in the third draft. But then Lucas changed this with the fourth draft to Luke having no memory of him. Even so, Lucas seemingly stuck to this idea for the first draft of ESB written by Brackett - according to a note uncovered by Rinzler - even though Vader isn’t supposed to be Luke’s father in this script.

The ‘clues’ that I thought made Option B (‘The Secret Affair’) plausible were:

1. The lack of Luke’s father specifically given any name whatsoever in the films (and the script drafts) until ROTJ. As though Lucas wanted Vader as the father but wasn’t committed to Anakin being his father?
2. I thought Vader saying “Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father!”. This one is admittedly weak - I had probably overreached on Vader’s thought process in ESB assuming that Ben hadn’t told Luke the truth, unless it was because Vader thought Ben didn’t know because his affair was secret.
3. Ben and Yoda not knowing (following from above point) ‘explaining’ why they don’t tell or warn Luke before he leaves Dagobah. Also the Emperor speaking to Vader as though (Anakin) Skywalker Sr. was a separate person from Vader (instead of saying “YOUR son must not become a Jedi”. Even though there was a good out-of-Universe reason for this: it would have spoiled the surprise of the twist.

The thing about Lucas and Kurtz’s ‘half-truths’ that I mentioned before is that they ironically paint a more accurate picture of what really happened in the creative/story department than LFL’s official ‘referee’-like stance, which relies on dubious coincidences and just-so conclusions, like “Lucas just came up with the fully formed ROTJ twist when writing the second draft of ESB after Leigh Brackett completed her draft” (with many in the film and fan community following suit).

Though I think Options A and B have their merits - Option A being the stronger of the two, in that there’s no contradiction between ANH and ESB - I lean towards Option C. Beside the other reasons I posted, I think it makes sense of other tendencies of Lucas, like his scenario for the second draft (1995) of TPM, where Obi-Wan the Jedi Master is actually killed by Darth Maul(not Qui-Gon), and his young Padawan Qui-Gon subsequently takes on the name and identity of ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ thereafter in honor of his master. Or things like Kasdan half-jokingly tossing out an idea for ROTJ to have Luke put on Vader’s helmet and pretend to be the ‘new Vader’ as an act of subterfuge. I don’t think Kasdan pulled that idea out of nowhere. Kurtz’ take on ESB or a ROTJ-that-never-was for Vader to be actively seeking to ‘make amends’ and make things right with Luke’s help - the only sort of redemptive angle he saw for the character - might or might not have been a left-over plot point of the earlier ‘identity switch’ Option C angle.

@Avimo posted:

• “I’ve done a lot of analysis on the topic (based off of both the discoveries of other people, a few discoveries I’ve made myself, and the confirmed documented SW history like the Lucasfilm books and the public older drafts) and as of now I personally believe that Lucas is genuinely telling the complete truth that he had the Vader=Anakin twist fully conceived in its entirety by the third draft of ANH and just briefly considered scrapping it during ESB’s writing. I’ve gathered a lot of evidence to back this up, which I’d be happy to share with you guys if you’re interested.”*

You may be right, Avimo. In that same “Star Wars to Jedi” 1983 doc*, Lucas says (paraphrasing) something to the affect of “when we got down to the second one, I said to myself, do I want to go through with this? With him being his father?”. And I think in the 1993 ‘The Art of Star Wars Galaxy’ Vol One, paraphrasing, he says something to the affect of being a little taken aback by Vader’s popularity after Star Wars came out in 1977, but that he (Lucas) decided to stick to the original story (of him being his father).

*see: (https://youtu.be/YKhGkiHSlAA?t=3292)

• courtesy of poster @Barfolomew

Tosche Station said:

Avimo said:

Very cool stuff! I love studying the history of SW and the “when was Vader made Luke’s father” debate is one of my favorite topics to research. I’ve done a lot of analysis on the topic (based off of both the discoveries of other people, a few discoveries I’ve made myself, and the confirmed documented SW history like the Lucasfilm books and the public older drafts) and as of now I personally believe that Lucas is genuinely telling the complete truth that he had the Vader=Anakin twist fully conceived in its entirety by the third draft of ANH and just briefly considered scrapping it during ESB’s writing. I’ve gathered a lot of evidence to back this up, which I’d be happy to share with you guys if you’re interested.

I highly doubt Marcia’s claim is real. In that same interview that she said that, she said so many other things about SW’s history and her role in stuff that’s just blatantly not true; An example includes her saying “I never even knew there were two stories” which is obvious nonsense because the second ANH draft ends with a sequel teaser, Lucas said to Foster in December 1975 he planned two sequels and a prequel, and Mark Hamill said the actors were all signed on for a trilogy and Lucas mentioned an Episode IX to him in 1976, and I highly doubt George wouldn’t have told his own wife and editor about these plans especially since he already asked her for help with story related stuff multiple times before. Other examples include Marcia saying she suggested to Lucas to cut the Luke and Biggs scenes when Rinzler’s book says Marcia fought to keep them in, Marcia saying the idea of killing Obi-Wan was entirely hers when George said in a 1977 interview (which is years before the divorce so there’s no bias there) that he was already considering the idea of killing Obi-Wan at the time Marcia suggested it, and more. So for now I’m taking Marcia’s claim with a grain of salt because it doesn’t seem like Marcia’s recollection of SW’s history in general is very accurate or unbiased.

@Tosche Station, I’ve read through your posts on both here and the Jedi Council forums on this topic, and I just want to say I really admire your research and theories; you’ve come up with some fantastic and really well ideas and takes on this topic that I never even thought of. I would like to know though where this “google search link” where you found this alleged Kurtz quote is located; I copied and pasted the contents of your quote into Google multiple times and nothing came up. It sounds very intriguing and I’m curious to see it myself. But even if it’s real, it seems to make very little sense to me for two reasons:

1. The idea that Lucas had Vader being Anakin planned in the third draft, but then completely dropped it by the fourth draft, is pretty hard to believe because as far as I know, almost nothing about Vader and Anakin actually changed between the third and fourth draft. The only thing that changed was mention of Luke being raised by Anakin as a young kid being removed, but we know that was still Lucas’s intention even after it was removed from the script because Lucas told Brackett in the ESB conferences that Anakin was the one who brought Luke to Owen and Lucas also said in an interview in 1979 “The prequels are about the early life of Luke’s father when Luke was a little boy”. We’ve also got things you mentioned like Anakin being a pilot and being killed by Vader being mentioned in the fourth draft for the first time, but I think that’s likely just a result of Lucas deciding Luke shouldn’t know his father is a Jedi and Ben telling Luke about him, which was decided by a random note as shown in Rinzler’s Making of Star Wars book.

2. I found a video showing a clip where Kurtz is interviewed where he mentions that he doesn’t believe Vader was always intended as Luke’s father, and he mentions nothing about a “Anakin killed Vader” version of the twist at all. It’s shown in the youtube video “how to watch Star Wars: the George Lucas sequel trilogy” by Rick Worley at 1:40:51

Hi, Avimo! I’d be interested in your research!

1. I agree totally with you and your take regarding Marcia Lucas.

2. Whether or not Kurtz said what was in that quote I found via a google search - which btw I’m no longer able to find - I think that the idea did exist as a rumor circa 1980, 1981. I also happen to think it’s possible that the rumor was generated by a leak from LFL to the sci-fi/fantasy community. Meaning, I think there was an original version of the twist planned by Lucas during the writing of the first film*, STAR WARS(ANH). The leak may have been deliberate obfuscation or a genuine, unplanned leak. Like you, I also find it hard to believe that the twist would have been completely dropped by Lucas around the time of writing the fourth draft, after having been part of the submerged deep story underlying the third draft. I think that the “we find out who Darth Vader is at the end of the second book (sequel)” statement by Lucas back in December of 1975 during a production/story meeting, is referencing a twist of some kind involving Vader being Luke’s father or tied to him in some way, rather than part of the Vader-killed-Luke’s father version which anyway didn’t appear in script form until several months (almost three) after this December 1975 statement from Lucas.

• *Iow, the twist was NOT invented ex-nihilo during the writing for EMPIRE(ESB), despite what offical LFL ‘orthodox’ and the ‘general consensus’ among fans and moviegoers say. The original Vader-father twist was either: Option A - Vader was a clone of Luke’s father, and killed Luke’s father due to believing that he (Vader) was the ‘real deal’, and because of that genuine belief, he told Luke in EMPIRE that he’s his father. Option B - Vader had an affair with Annikin/Anakin’s wife, Annikin really did die, and thus Vader was Luke’s true biological father. Option C - Luke’s father Annikin killed the first, original Darth Vader sometime during the back-story, then took on his identity and became the Darth Vader we know in the original trilogy. This version of Vader would then try to make things right at the end of EMPIRE or beginning of JEDI, asking Luke to help him. In this version, he became Vader for more noble reasons. edit: The final, ‘canonical’ version of the twist revealed in ROTJ, was actually created/written during the development and scripting phase of JEDI, not for that of EMPIRE. Edit: I’ve noticed that in the 1983 documentary “From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga”, Lucas only said that Vader being Luke’s father and the helmet/mask coming off were part of the ‘original story’ that he had already as subtext of the first film ANH, but he doesn’t say that the redemption angle for Vader was part of that story. I find that omission a little interesting.

3. I watched the Rick Worley video. To me, Kurtz is giving the ‘agnostic’, producer and audience orientated ‘surface’ perspective of the first film, where Vader being the father is not an obvious part of the surface plot. I think that came from a Q&A session Kurtz did around 2004 or so. I agree with Worley that Kurtz’s mid/late 90’s-early 2000’s narrative about Lucas ‘tossing’ out the ‘original outline’ that was written for JEDI doesn’t make sense, as Kurtz wouldn’t have been around when Lucas wrote his story treatments and drafts for JEDI in late 1980/early 1981. So that would leave the time-frame of when EMPIRE was in development and production, an implication which would raise more questions - Lucas already having an outline for JEDI while EMPIRE was not even half-way finished(?).

IF I am right about the existence of the original twist(s) that may have been planned by Lucas - starting with SW and only being modified or completely changed with ROTJ - then it wouldn’t be out of bounds in my opinion to surmise that perhaps upon Kurtz leaving LFL, Kurtz and Lucas made a mutual agreement never to openly discuss this particular matter, except only in what can be described as contradictory accounts that are only half-truths at best.

Alright, cool! I’ll share it in a separate reply later today or tomorrow.

1. (2) That’s a very interesting theory. My main problem with the “Originally Annikin killed Vader” theory is that the idea seems too unnecessarily complicated; If Lucas originally wanted to reveal that Vader-who-is-really-Annikin was a good guy spying on the Empire, he could accomplish this without having there be a “real Vader” who Annikin killed and impersonated. What exactly would the purpose of there having been a real Vader in the past be? Also, the “Vader killed Luke’s father” thing first appeared just a few days after Lucas’s meeting with Foster; it’s in the original fourth draft of ANH (https://www.starwarz.com/starkiller/star-wars-the-adventures-of-luke-starkiller-as-taken-from-the-journal-of-the-whills/).

2. Yep, I think the idea that the twist never occurred to Lucas before ESB’s second draft is by far the most unlikely possibility. These are all cool theories! I agree that Lucas changed something about Vader’s backstory in ROTJ’s writing (in fact, there’s proof he did–ROTJ’s writing is confirmed to have been when Lucas changed Vader’s turn from after Luke’s birth to before), but personally I don’t think the twist itself ever changed apart from the brief ESB period Lucas considered cutting it out completely. Option A doesn’t make too much sense to me because if this was the case, why would Obi-Wan not want to tell Luke that? Option B is possible, but pretty unlikely to me for two reasons: The first is the fact that the details in ANH that can be interpreted as foreshadowing to the twist (e.g. The similar lightsabers, Owen’s “that’s what I’m afraid of” and “Obi-Wan died at the same time as your father” lines, Obi-Wan’s hesitant look, etc) only work if Vader is Anakin. Second off, Lucas’s second draft of ESB has Vader saying to Luke before the twist that the Force is strong in the Skywalker family. If Luke was not actually a Skywalker, why would Vader say that? And yeah that omission is intriguing, but Lucas did say in later decades that the redemption was always part of the story and I’ve found evidence indicating Lucas is very likely telling the truth which I’ll share along with the rest of my evidence.

3. That’s fair. As for Kurtz’s claims about ROTJ and the sequels, for a while I also believed that Kurtz’s claims were nonsense, but then after studying some things I found some evidence that indicates that he may have partially been telling the truth all along. First off, Chris Taylor once questioned Kurtz on his claims and Kurtz responded that they were indeed from a ROTJ outline made during ESB’s development (https://mashable.com/archive/star-wars-myths-gary-kurtz). While normally I’d agree with you that this doesn’t make sense, there’s actually evidence that Lucas was indeed working on ROTJ during ESB’s writing. Howard Kazanjian and Lawrence Kasdan have claimed in interviews before that Return of the Jedi was the original title for the film, but they told Lucas it was a weak title, so he made it Revenge of the Jedi. However in Lucas’s interviews with Alan Arnold from 1979, Lucas explicitly states “The next chapter is called Revenge of the Jedi”. So if Kazanjian and Kasdan indeed told Lucas to change ROTJ’s name, that had to have happened during ESB’s writing.
   Second off, Kurtz’s descriptions of what the original ROTJ and original PT were about does seem to line up with certain things. The first episode originally being about the origins of the Jedi makes sense because Lucas said in an old interview “The first episode takes place so far back that even Darth Vader wasn’t born yet”. Leia being crowned queen at the end makes sense because Leia being crowned queen was featured in the rough and first drafts of ANH, and it was also originally planned to be included in the second draft as shown in the notes Rinzler describes (And likely was going to be in the Princess of Ondos sequel since Lucas said the idea of sequels resulted from him splitting a big script into parts, and that statement does seem to line up with Rinzler’s note). Han dying was smth Lucas had in his Episode VII he sold to Disney according to Harrison Ford, and Lucas also told the EU writers it was okay to kill Han off, so it’s plausible that Lucas may have initially been more open to killing Han off in ROTJ before deciding ROTJ would resolve everything and subsequently want to give it a “fairytale ending”. In addition, Kurtz presents an alternate version of the story in the Taylor interview-contrary to what he said in 2010 about Lucas having Han die until toy sales made him change his mind, Kurtz says that it was his own idea as well as Ford’s for Han to die and Lucas simply took it into consideration, while the toy sales thing was just an assumption/theory on Kurtz’s part. So it seems like Kurtz just exaggerated when he talked about the original ROTJ/sequels and didn’t completely lie.
   Lastly, Kurtz’s claims about the sequel trilogy were 100% correct and there is actually CONCRETE PROOF of this that’s been under our noses the entire time. Around a year ago, I found an alleged Lucas quote from a random forum that would prove Kurtz’s claims about the ST are real, which the user who posted caimed came from Star Wars Archives 1977-1983 by Paul Duncan. At the time I thought it was probably fake, but just to be sure, I bought the book, and to my surprise, the quote was right there. Duncan presents in his book an expanded version of the Lucas-Brackett ESB conferences that were shown in Rinzler’s Making of ESB book, and in it Lucas says to Brackett (and these are the exact quotes) “Don’t introduce sister for about three more films”, and “The Emperor has to go for at least three more episodes after Vader-he’s got to last a lot longer”. So that 100% proves that what Kurtz said about Episodes VIII and IX were at true at some early point. In fact, it seems like Kurtz’s claim that he was there when Lucas scrapped that plan is also true, because Lucas said in a May 19th 1980 interview that the last three episodes were about the rebuilding of the republic, which means Lucas scrapped the original ST plan at some point between 1977 and 1980. Idk why Rinzler omitted that part of the story conferences from his book, I assume he just never found it or smth.
   It’s honestly beyond me why almost no one seems to know that this 1977-1983 Archives book exists. Tons of people have read the 1999-2005 Archives book and shared all it’s interesting info, but I’ve barely ever seen anyone acknowledge all the new info the 1977-1983 book reveals. And btw the revelation about Kurtz’s ST being real isn’t the only new info this book has; There’s a ton of other interesting things Duncan discusses with Lucas in that book. One interesting thing is Lucas revealing to Duncan that had Obi-Wan been sent Leia’s message without Luke’s involvement, Obi-Wan still would’ve picked up Luke and made him come along. Another interesting thing is the expanded Lucas-Brackett story conferences Duncan shows contains the discussion about Luke’s father that Rinzler mentioned but didn’t include, and contrary to what believers of the Kaminski narrative thought at the time, it does NOT have any secret info proving Vader wasn’t always Luke’s father which Lucas covered up; It’s literally just Lucas repeating to Brackett the same story he told Rolling Stone in August 1977, where Vader and Luke’s father and Ben are all friends and Vader kills Luke’s father right before the duel with Obi-Wan, except with a little bit more detail as well as it being a nuclear reactor instead of a volcano, which Bouzerau already mentioned was a thing at one point in his Annotated Screenplays book. Lucas later mentions to Duncan (when talking about the Brackett conferences) in the Archives book that “I don’t really tell everything in the story conferences because by then I knew that people were scrounging all over garbage cans to try and find out everything, and I wanted to keep some things a surprise”, which also lines up perfectly with Lucas’s earlier statement to Bouzereau that he didn’t tell Brackett about the Vader twist because he wasn’t sure if he wanted it in ESB or ROTJ yet. In fact, the entire “George Lucas is a liar who runs a secret cover-up plot to hide SW’s true history” theory (which started out as the speculation of random forum users on a random thread), is largely debunked by that Archives book because in the book, Duncan notices how Leia wasn’t Luke’s sister in the plan he told Brackett, so Duncan deduces some things weren’t entirely planned and points that out to Lucas. And Lucas in response doesn’t deny this at all and outright says smth like (paraphrasing here because the actual quote is really long) “I don’t have the entire thing planned out like some directors do, it’s not my nature. I do nothing but rewrite, even in the editing room”.
   That doesn’t sound like something someone who wanted to cover up not having things planned would say.

4. That’s possible, but why would Lucas or Kurtz want to sign such an agreement to never talk about it? What would they get out of it?

Tosche Station said:

RangerofAquilae said:

Tosche Station said:

Avimo said:

Very cool stuff! I love studying the history of SW and the “when was Vader made Luke’s father” debate is one of my favorite topics to research. I’ve done a lot of analysis on the topic (based off of both the discoveries of other people, a few discoveries I’ve made myself, and the confirmed documented SW history like the Lucasfilm books and the public older drafts) and as of now I personally believe that Lucas is genuinely telling the complete truth that he had the Vader=Anakin twist fully conceived in its entirety by the third draft of ANH and just briefly considered scrapping it during ESB’s writing. I’ve gathered a lot of evidence to back this up, which I’d be happy to share with you guys if you’re interested.

I highly doubt Marcia’s claim is real. In that same interview that she said that, she said so many other things about SW’s history and her role in stuff that’s just blatantly not true; An example includes her saying “I never even knew there were two stories” which is obvious nonsense because the second ANH draft ends with a sequel teaser, Lucas said to Foster in December 1975 he planned two sequels and a prequel, and Mark Hamill said the actors were all signed on for a trilogy and Lucas mentioned an Episode IX to him in 1976, and I highly doubt George wouldn’t have told his own wife and editor about these plans especially since he already asked her for help with story related stuff multiple times before. Other examples include Marcia saying she suggested to Lucas to cut the Luke and Biggs scenes when Rinzler’s book says Marcia fought to keep them in, Marcia saying the idea of killing Obi-Wan was entirely hers when George said in a 1977 interview (which is years before the divorce so there’s no bias there) that he was already considering the idea of killing Obi-Wan at the time Marcia suggested it, and more. So for now I’m taking Marcia’s claim with a grain of salt because it doesn’t seem like Marcia’s recollection of SW’s history in general is very accurate or unbiased.

@Tosche Station, I’ve read through your posts on both here and the Jedi Council forums on this topic, and I just want to say I really admire your research and theories; you’ve come up with some fantastic and really well ideas and takes on this topic that I never even thought of. I would like to know though where this “google search link” where you found this alleged Kurtz quote is located; I copied and pasted the contents of your quote into Google multiple times and nothing came up. It sounds very intriguing and I’m curious to see it myself. But even if it’s real, it seems to make very little sense to me for two reasons:

1. The idea that Lucas had Vader being Anakin planned in the third draft, but then completely dropped it by the fourth draft, is pretty hard to believe because as far as I know, almost nothing about Vader and Anakin actually changed between the third and fourth draft. The only thing that changed was mention of Luke being raised by Anakin as a young kid being removed, but we know that was still Lucas’s intention even after it was removed from the script because Lucas told Brackett in the ESB conferences that Anakin was the one who brought Luke to Owen and Lucas also said in an interview in 1979 “The prequels are about the early life of Luke’s father when Luke was a little boy”. We’ve also got things you mentioned like Anakin being a pilot and being killed by Vader being mentioned in the fourth draft for the first time, but I think that’s likely just a result of Lucas deciding Luke shouldn’t know his father is a Jedi and Ben telling Luke about him, which was decided by a random note as shown in Rinzler’s Making of Star Wars book.

2. I found a video showing a clip where Kurtz is interviewed where he mentions that he doesn’t believe Vader was always intended as Luke’s father, and he mentions nothing about a “Anakin killed Vader” version of the twist at all. It’s shown in the youtube video “how to watch Star Wars: the George Lucas sequel trilogy” by Rick Worley at 1:40:51

Hi, Avimo! I’d be interested in your research!

1. I agree totally with you and your take regarding Marcia Lucas.

2. Whether or not Kurtz said what was in that quote I found via a google search - which btw I’m no longer able to find - I think that the idea did exist as a rumor circa 1980, 1981. I also happen to think it’s possible that the rumor was generated by a leak from LFL to the sci-fi/fantasy community. Meaning, I think there was an original version of the twist planned by Lucas during the writing of the first film*, STAR WARS(ANH). The leak may have been deliberate obfuscation or a genuine, unplanned leak. Like you, I also find it hard to believe that the twist would have been completely dropped by Lucas around the time of writing the fourth draft, after having been part of the submerged deep story underlying the third draft. I think that the statement “we find out who Darth Vader is at the end of the second book (sequel)” by Lucas back in December of 1975 during a production/story meeting, is referencing a twist of some kind involving Vader being Luke’s father or tied to him in some way, rather than part of the Vader-killed-Luke’s father version which anyway didn’t appear in script form until several months (almost three) after this December 1975 statement from Lucas.

• *Iow, the twist was NOT invented ex-nihilo during the writing for EMPIRE(ESB), despite what offical LFL ‘orthodox’ and the ‘general consensus’ among fans and moviegoers say. The original Vader-father twist was either: Option A - Vader was a clone of Luke’s father, and killed Luke’s father due to believing that he (Vader) was the ‘real deal’, and because of that genuine belief, he told Luke in EMPIRE that he’s his father. Option B - Vader had an affair with Annikin/Anakin’s wife, Annikin really did die, and thus Vader was Luke’s true biological father. Option C - Luke’s father Annikin killed the first, original Darth Vader sometime during the back-story, then took on his identity and became the Darth Vader we know in the original trilogy. This version of Vader would then try to make things right at the end of EMPIRE or beginning of JEDI, asking Luke to help him. In this version, he became Vader for more noble reasons. edit: The final, ‘canonical’ version of the twist revealed in ROTJ, was actually created/written during the development and scripting phase of JEDI, not for that of EMPIRE. Edit: I’ve noticed that in the 1983 documentary “From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga”, Lucas only said that Vader being Luke’s father and the helmet/mask coming off were part of the ‘original story’ that he had already as subtext of the first film ANH, but he doesn’t say that the redemption angle for Vader was part of that story. I find that omission a little interesting.

3. I watched the Rick Worley video. To me, Kurtz is giving the ‘agnostic’, producer and audience orientated ‘surface’ perspective of the first film, where Vader being the father is not an obvious part of the surface plot. I think that came from a Q&A session Kurtz did around 2004 or so. I agree with Worley that Kurtz’s mid/late 90’s-early 2000’s narrative about Lucas ‘tossing’ out the ‘original outline’ that was written for JEDI doesn’t make sense, as Kurtz wouldn’t have been around when Lucas wrote his story treatments and drafts for JEDI in late 1980/early 1981. So that would leave the time-frame of when EMPIRE was in development and production, an implication which would raise more questions - Lucas already having an outline for JEDI while EMPIRE was not even half-way finished(?).

IF I am right about the existence of the original twist(s) that may have been planned by Lucas - starting with SW and only being modified or completely changed with ROTJ - then it wouldn’t be out of bounds in my opinion to surmise that perhaps upon Kurtz leaving LFL, Kurtz and Lucas made a mutual agreement never to openly discuss this particular matter, except only in what can be described as contradictory accounts that are only half-truths at best.

Highly interesting theories regarding Annakin/Vader’s backstory! I’m particularly curious about your Options A and B, as I’ve never heard of them before. Are these pure conjecture on your part or they based on any concrete evidence/clue/hint/etc.? If the latter, I’d love to hear more!

Pure conjecture on my part, especially the Option B ‘The Affair’ twist version. That was internet speculation from TF.N that I picked up from another poster as a plausible option, especially since the ‘soap opera’ feel of it seemed to match with Lucas saying in that same December 1975 quote*, “the third film/book will be about the soap opera of the Skywalker family” Option A ‘The Clone’ version is/was conjecture, but it was also actual rumored speculation after EMPIRE came out, 1980-1981-1982, until JEDI said otherwise. And in my opinion, it made sense out of Lucas’ post-release STAR WARS:ANH statements that Ben supposedly had two Jedi students, Luke’s father (‘Annikin’) and Vader. Even the film itself showed Vader to be an ace pilot, kind of weird that he had the same abilities as the Jedi that he had supposedly killed. Maybe the Jedi recruited or created clones of their own, and Annikin’s clone - Vader - became unstable. There was the matter of both characters shared history with Ben Kenobi, both wielding near-identical lightsabers, and both being excellent pilots. I thought rather than Lucas somehow not realizing how Vader could come off as sort of a ‘doppleganger’ of Luke’s father, perhaps this was sign-posting the submerged underlying truth about Vader’s secret(or not) identity. This redundancy vanishes when one realizes that it might have been intended as misdirection, or, to point towards the real underlying story - Vader was a clone of Luke’s father (alternatively, the twist Options B or C). The misdirection would imho be where Lucas implied in post-release 1977 interviews that Ben had simultaneously trained the two Jedi (Annikin and Vader).

*the quote where he said that in the second ‘book’ or film/the sequel, “we find out who Darth Vader is”

I take it though that you’d heard of Option C ‘The Identity Switch’ version, then? Where Annikin kills the original Darth Vader then takes his identity?

Someone once pointed out to me that the “soap opera of the Skywalker family” should’ve been Starkiller family, since Starkiller was Luke’s last name until filming. So I looked into it, and found some intriguing info. First off, we know for a fact that quote is real and wasn’t altered like the midi-chlorian quote because Rinzler explicitly states here it was real (https://www.starwars.com/news/the-long-winding-and-shapeshifting-trail-to-episodes-vii-viii-ix). But second off, and this is the really weird part: Alan Dean Foster (the same person Lucas said that quote to) was once interviewed on when the Starkiller-Skywalker change happened (https://starwarz.com/tbone/interview-with-alan-dean-foster-original-posting-july-03-2002/), and he responded “I had already begun writing, yes. I’m afraid I can’t tell this story yet. For various reasons, I may never tell it.” So it seems like there was more to the Starkiller-Skywalker change than meets the eye and there was a period in late 1975 where Lucas was briefly already toying with the idea, before changing it back just 4 days after the meeting with Foster, and for some reason, Foster is not allowed to talk about this.
IMO this is very strange. Why would Foster not be able to reveal when a character’s last name was changed, and why did Mark Hamill not know about any of this when he was hired before Lucas had that meeting with Foster? Any of you have any theories on this?

Tosche Station said:

RangerofAquilae said:

I’ve only ever heard of Option C in this thread, which, incidentally, is also where I learned of its rather dubious origin.

You mean the possibility that it originated as a ‘leak’ from LFL? You may or may not have been aware prior to this thread that like the Clone version (“Option A”), this one - Option C - was also circulated as a rumor circa 1980-1981. As I mentioned before, it could go back to the third draft of SW:ANH at the earliest, or in that period between the third and fourth drafts (and wasn’t ‘dropped’ by the fourth draft or film). I wouldn’t say there’s evidence per se, but clues or hints. Luke’s father (Annikin) himself perhaps taking/hiding his child (there was only Luke at this point, before the Neilith-Leia sister) - rather than Ben - might point towards this scenario, that and the fact that Luke remembers his father in the third draft. But then Lucas changed this with the fourth draft to Luke having no memory of him. Even so, Lucas seemingly stuck to this idea for the first draft of ESB written by Brackett - according to a note uncovered by Rinzler - even though Vader isn’t supposed to be Luke’s father in this script.

The ‘clues’ that I thought made Option B (‘The Secret Affair’) plausible were:

1. The lack of Luke’s father specifically given any name whatsoever in the films (and the script drafts) until ROTJ. As though Lucas wanted Vader as the father but wasn’t committed to Anakin being his father?
2. I thought Vader saying “Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father!”. This one is admittedly weak - I had probably overreached on Vader’s thought process in ESB assuming that Ben hadn’t told Luke the truth, unless it was because Vader thought Ben didn’t know because his affair was secret.
3. Ben and Yoda not knowing (following from above point) ‘explaining’ why they don’t tell or warn Luke before he leaves Dagobah. Also the Emperor speaking to Vader as though (Anakin) Skywalker Sr. was a separate person from Vader (instead of saying “YOUR son must not become a Jedi”. Even though there was a good out-of-Universe reason for this: it would have spoiled the surprise of the twist.

The thing about Lucas and Kurtz’s ‘half-truths’ that I mentioned before is that they ironically paint a more accurate picture of what really happened in the creative/story department than LFL’s official ‘referee’-like stance, which relies on dubious coincidences and just-so conclusions, like “Lucas just came up with the fully formed ROTJ twist when writing the second draft of ESB after Leigh Brackett completed her draft” (with many in the film and fan community following suit).

Though I think Options A and B have their merits - Option A being the stronger of the two, in that there’s no contradiction between ANH and ESB - I lean towards Option C. Beside the other reasons I posted, I think it makes sense of other tendencies of Lucas, like his scenario for the second draft (1995) of TPM, where Obi-Wan the Jedi Master is actually killed by Darth Maul(not Qui-Gon), and his young Padawan Qui-Gon subsequently takes on the name and identity of ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ thereafter in honor of his master. Or things like Kasdan half-jokingly tossing out an idea for ROTJ to have Luke put on Vader’s helmet and pretend to be the ‘new Vader’ as an act of subterfuge. I don’t think Kasdan pulled that idea out of nowhere. Kurtz’ take on ESB or a ROTJ-that-never-was for Vader to be actively seeking to ‘make amends’ and make things right with Luke’s help - the only sort of redemptive angle he saw for the character - might or might not have been a left-over plot point of the earlier ‘identity switch’ Option C angle.

@Avimo posted:

• “I’ve done a lot of analysis on the topic (based off of both the discoveries of other people, a few discoveries I’ve made myself, and the confirmed documented SW history like the Lucasfilm books and the public older drafts) and as of now I personally believe that Lucas is genuinely telling the complete truth that he had the Vader=Anakin twist fully conceived in its entirety by the third draft of ANH and just briefly considered scrapping it during ESB’s writing. I’ve gathered a lot of evidence to back this up, which I’d be happy to share with you guys if you’re interested.”*

You may be right, Avimo. In that same “Star Wars to Jedi” 1983 doc*, Lucas says (paraphrasing) something to the affect of “when we got down to the second one, I said to myself, do I want to go through with this? With him being his father?”. And I think in the 1993 ‘The Art of Star Wars Galaxy’ Vol One, paraphrasing, he says something to the affect of being a little taken aback by Vader’s popularity after Star Wars came out in 1977, but that he (Lucas) decided to stick to the original story (of him being his father).

*see: (https://youtu.be/YKhGkiHSlAA?t=3292)

• courtesy of poster @Barfolomew

1. It’s important to note that the change in the fourth draft was solely Luke not remembering him, not that Luke never met him. The note Lucas wrote in-between drafts said “Luke doesn’t know father Jedi” and the fourth draft has Luke saying he doesn’t “really” remember him. It wasn’t till ROTJ where Lucas first mentioned that Luke never met his father. In fact, Lucas said as late as 1980 that Luke’s father knew him as a little boy.
2. I think the Nellith name was Brackett’s idea, not Lucas’s. Lucas never tells her to name the sister Nellith in any of the story conferences.
3. Kasdan got the idea of Luke putting on Vader’s helmet because Lucas made a joke about it in their story conferences
4. Honestly I don’t think we know for sure if Vader wasn’t Luke’s father during the Brackett draft era. Lucas came up with reasonable excuses for not telling Brackett about the twist, and the treatment he gave Brackett explicitly said “There is more to Vader’s attempts to win Luke over than meets the eye. For some reason, Vader is reluctant to kill Luke and would rather turn him to the dark side of the Force.” So I think it’s possible that the “I had to decide if I really wanted to do this” era Lucas mentioned in From Star Wars to Jedi was from ESB’s even earlier writing, during the 4 months Lucas was writing the treatment for Brackett.

Either way, we do have a single note hinting at what Lucas’s backup plan was- Rinzler’s Making of ESB book has an undated note saying “The Emperor is the evil one- he kills Luke’s father. Vader begs Luke to kill him–he does.” This note is pretty weird–it seems pretty pointless to reveal that it was simply a different bad guy who killed Luke’s father, when that seemingly wouldn’t impact Luke or the story at all. So I came up with two theories on what Lucas might have meant by that note. This is all speculation below, but it’s based on me trying to interpret the vague info we have about this stuff:

Theory 1:
My first theory is that the purpose of revealing Palpatine killed Luke’s father would be to allow Vader to still be redeemed in ROTJ. This is supported by the note about Palpatine killing Luke’s father and the note about Vader begging Luke to kill him are right next to each other, implying those two events are connected somehow. So my first theory is this: If Lucas is telling the complete truth that he had Vader’s story and redemption mapped out in 1975, that would mean that when Lucas began writing his backup plan story in 1977 that didn’t have Vader as Luke’s father, that would mean Lucas would now have to think of a new reason Vader would get redeemed. However, I imagine Lucas struggled to figure out how a Vader-who-isn’t-Luke’s-father could plausibly be redeemed, because without Vader being Luke’s father, Luke would have no reason to want to redeem Vader, and the audience also might find Vader’s redemption hard to believe when he killed both Obi-Wan and Luke’s father and there was also no foreshadowing toward it. So he came up with the following story:
Anakin and Vader both trained under Obi-Wan and Vader turned to the dark side. Obi-Wan and Anakin then went to confront Vader on the lava planet, and together they wounded Vader and made him need a life support system. However during the battle, Anakin was wounded too, and Obi-Wan was unable to take him with him when escaping the planet since he was in a rush to get away from the arriving Palpatine. So when Palpatine rescued Vader from the volcano and brought him to the city planet to be repaired, he also captured the injured Anakin so he and Vader could interrogate him. Once Palpatine and Vader finished interrogating Anakin, Palpatine ordered Vader to kill Anakin. However, similarly to the rough draft of ROTJ where he hesitated to kill Luke, Vader hesitated to kill Anakin and/or made up an excuse not to, due to him still caring about his former friend. In response, Palpatine murdered Anakin himself. However at some point Obi-Wan found a recording of Palpatine telling Vader to kill Anakin, so he assumed Vader killed Anakin.
Then when Vader bests Luke in ESB and pleads with him to join him, Luke says “I’ll never join you, you killed my father!” and Vader responds “But I didn’t kill your father” and reveals the true story to Luke, and the fact that Vader refused to kill Anakin would be used as foreshadowing to set up his redemption in the next film. Maybe in this version it’d be Anakin’s dying wish for Vader to be redeemed and that’s why Luke set out to redeem him.

Theory 2:
The second theory I have is that Lucas planned for Anakin to survive his duel with Vader and be alive during the OT, and only be killed by Palpatine much later on. When explaining Luke’s sister to Brackett, Lucas tells her “Luke’s father had two children who were twins. He took one to an uncle on one side of the universe, and another to the other side of the universe. The sister is also becoming a Jedi.” But what Lucas doesn’t explain is who exactly Anakin left the sister with to raise her and train her as a Jedi. So what if it was supposed to be Anakin himself? Lucas toying with the idea of Anakin being alive, but not as Darth Vader and still as a good guy would be in line with things Lucas had done in the past; In the second draft of ANH, Luke mentioned that he once believed his father was killed but Deak told him he was alive and still a Jedi. And in the final ANH, Owen tells Luke Obi-Wan is dead, and we later find out Obi-Wan is alive in hiding and just changed his name. So my second theory is that the backup plan story went like this:
When Vader fought and killed Anakin, Anakin narrowly survived, unbeknownst to Vader. After he and Obi-Wan escaped the lava planet, they agreed that each of them would both fake their deaths and change their names and go into hiding, and one of them would look after Luke while the other would look after the sister. So Anakin brought Luke to Owen and decided that Owen would raise him while Obi-Wan would look after him and train him, and the sister he took to the other side of the universe where he raised her and trained her himself. As part of the “One won’t know the other is there if they got killed” plan Obi-Wan devised with Anakin, Obi-Wan lied to Luke and told him Vader killed his father in order to maintain the secret because if the Empire found out Anakin was alive, they might realize the sister was alive too.
Then in Episode VIII where Luke learns the secret location of his twin sister and reunites with her, he also learns of his father’s survival and reunites with him too. And then in Episode IX when Luke and his sister are having that big final battle with Palpatine Kurtz mentioned, Anakin also participates in the battle, but then Palpatine kills him for real.