Episode VI: Revenge of the Jedi
Part I
Four years later…
In deep space, the Millennium Falcon arrived at a rendezvous point. There Han Solo berthed the Falcon within a second, much larger ship: a cargo vessel of Bail Whitsun, Lord President of the Transport Guild. (It would’ve been similar to a Dune-style Heighliner, a colossal Spacing Guild cargo ship that transports private ships—because in the Dune universe, private hyperspace travel is illegal, and the Guild has a monopoly.)
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Han had come back to the Rebels one year ago. Even as the Rebels lost more and more ground, he became ever more regretful of his foolishness in doubting the wisdom of the cause. (Think of Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind—GL has often compared Han to Rhett Butler.)
Upon his return, Han did not woo Leia, for she and Luke had, by common consent, not yet told him about the truth of the Skywalker dynasty. And Han thought that she preferred Luke in her heart.
And, deep down, she did—even with her current knowledge.
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Through a series of encrypted back-and-forth messages, the Rebels had gotten Bail Whitsun to grant permission for Han Solo to meet with him in his secret base. But only Han would be allowed to go—no other Rebel would be permitted to accompany him. With a heavy heart, Han set out, wondering if Bail too was setting a trap for him.
Now, the Guild cargo ship, carrying the Falcon, went through a long and deliberately arcane series of hyperspace jumps, finally arriving at the well-hidden planet of Acquis—located in another galaxy, largely unexplored, a neighbor of that known to the Empire.
Here, Han was conveyed beneath the watery surface of this world, to the underwater city where Bail Whitsun now ruled his great Guild from afar. (Think of Otoh Gunga crossed with Kamino, and Captain Nemo’s Nautilus from the Disney film of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.)
Han met with Bail, and his two children, among whom he himself had been fostered as a teenager. He asked for Bail’s help for the Rebel cause, by adding his massive fleet to their dwindling armada of warships. (Imagine Bail basically as Henry Fonda—dark hair, blue eyes.)
But Bail advised him sternly to forsake his friends, for in his view the Rebels were doomed.
Bail warned Han in confidence that the Empire was even then building not one, but two new Death Stars in orbit over Ton-Muund, the city-planet capital of the regime (later renamed Coruscant).
The Death Stars were protected by two shield generators on Ton-Muund, which could only be deactivated by separate codes. These codes could only be learned by hacking into the two highest levels of Imperial security—the computers on Ton-Muund, and those on the prison world of Alderaan—and they could only be executed from within the walls of the Imperial palace itself.
(“Reliant’s prefix code is 16309.”)
Han relayed this information in secret via hyper-radio (e.g., an ansible) to the Rebels. But Bail detected his transmission, and was angered by this breach of trust. He told Han to depart from his sight forever. (This idea comes from an incident in Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon comic, where Princess Aura betrays the position of Flash Gordon’s armies via a radio call to her father, Ming the Merciless.)
Bail’s son Marcus, who was about Han’s own age, reluctantly endorsed the judgment of his father, and turned his back on his foster brother. So Han left, and went back to the Rebels, to prepare for what seemed to him a suicide mission: to go to Ton-Muund, and try to crack the shields of the Death Stars beneath the Emperor’s very nose.
But one of the Whitsun family did not agree with Bail’s judgment—Mina Whitsun, Marcus’s younger sister, who had always carried a torch for Han in her heart. (Mina would have looked basically like a young, female version of her father. This cements the Dracula reference; Mina Murray is usually depicted as a brunette, but Lucy Westenra, like Ralph McQuarrie’s Leia, is almost invariably a blonde.)
When Han had departed, Mina stole a sleek silver spaceship, heading for Ton-Muund. She vowed that she would save Han from death, even if it cost her own life.
(Mina’s hairdo was likely going to reuse the one apparently worn by Leia Aquilae in the 1974 rough draft: long hair in the back, and twin braids in front, one over each ear. This was the hairstyle worn by the heroine Kriemhild, AKA Gudrun, in Fritz Lang’s film Die Nibelungen.)
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As Han embarked on his journey to Acquis, events went on in the lenticular Galaxy Far Far Away we know so well.
On the Rebel base on the grass planet (let’s call it Ibbana, since that’s the name used for it in The Making of ESB), Ben Kenobi was dying.
Before he died, he told Luke that the Kiber Crystal was in truth no longer needed; it had already served Luke as well as it could, and his continued reliance on such a crutch would now be a hindrance rather than a help.
After this, he entrusted Luke with the last secret of the Jedi, one wrested at great cost from the Dwarves: how to build his own lightsaber.
Luke did this, and was pleased with the result. For at Ben’s bidding, he had put in a new color of lightsaber crystal—blue—so as to signify that he was his own man, and not the slave of his grandfather’s memory.
Afterward, Ben gave to Luke his own second lightsaber, so he in turn could instruct Leia in the ways of the Force. In this Luke inserted a green crystal, as a sign to Leia that she, too, could find her own path as a Jedi.
As a last request, Ben asked Luke to take his body to Utapau (Tatooine) and bury him there, for his home on Organa Major (what we now call Alderaan) had been destroyed by the first Death Star.
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Luke traveled to Utapau with Ben’s body, and was shocked by what he found there.
In the 1975 third draft, remember, Luke simply ran away from home. But now, in the third film, Luke would see that in his absence, the Lars homestead had been destroyed by the Empire. Owen and Beru had been slain, and their bodies left for the carrion birds. (This disturbing scene was later bumped up to the first film, likely because GL feared he would never get to make any sequels.)
For the first time in his life, Luke felt sorrow at having left Utapau behind.
He buried his aunt and uncle, and Ben Kenobi, in plots next to his mother’s grave. He vowed to come back one day, when he had time, to rebuild the family farm better than ever.
Then he returned to the Rebel base on Ibbana, and heard the message relayed from Han.
Luke and Leia knew what they had to do...