Vaderisnothayden said:

It's not certain the emperor would have been killed in the death star explosion. Maybe he could have escaped in the last moments like Luke eventually did.

Luke couldn't have handled the Emperor by himself. Not enough power. And if he did somehow kill the emperor he'd have probably gone dark because of doing it in anger. But I think Vader was very destined to be there. And I'm not just talking about the bloody prophecy. Destiny is mentioned in the OOT and I think it's reasonable to think that in a fairytale like Star wars the characters were destined to fulfil certain roles. Vader was destined to be there and the only question was what side he'd end up taking. Also, Luke wasn't just going to go hand himself over to any old imperials just o meet the emperor. He handed himself over because he knew Vader was there. Meeting Vader was a certainty.

Actually the prophecy Lucas probably was talking about was the son of god. One of his early scripts opened with a pseudo biblical passage " In the time of greatest despair there shall come a savior. And he shall be known as the son of the suns" As in the twin suns of tatooine.

Was the sun of the suns Luke or Anakin?

Lucas borrowed from different religions while crafting star wars. It may be blasphemy to christians that Lucas was riffing on the bible in episode 1, but he did it anyway.

His mentor Campbell studied this as well. But instead of calling it comparitive religions he called it comparitive mythology.

The archetype of the hero born to save the world, has become something of a cliche in modern culture in film, video games and comic books, novels.

That Lucas struck such a chord with star wars proved to him that man is still obsessed with Heroes. The man made himself very rich on this concept and explosions and special effects,lol.

The prequels were to be a direct reversal of the original trilogy with the negative side of heroism explored, too bad they fucked it all up. It should have been about Hubris.