Episode VI
Part III
Leia had drunk of the Red Sleep (or Red Draught) of the Sith, the drink that brings madness and ecstasy in equal dose, and she was now a willing participant in the deeds of Vader and his ilk.
She told Luke that Han was a better lover than he would ever be; for Han had slept with her as well, during their desperate flight from Yavin, and again after Luke’s capture on Alderaan. And Leia further said that she was now Vader’s willing mate—and, she already knew, she was pregnant.
But Leia would be gracious in victory. She asked him now to join them. She offered him one-third of the Empire for his own, and the gift of Annikin Starkiller’s third Ring, which as yet slumbered deep in the vaults of the palace.
Luke refused. But some part of him, deep down, wanted to accept.
Leia and Vader taunted Luke by dangling his lightsaber in front of him. He did not take it via the Force, for he did not think he could master his own anger. But he was tempted to try.
Next, they held before him his grandfather’s lightsaber, lost years ago on Kashyyyk. They offered it to him freely, if he would only join them. His urge to seize his rightful heirlooms by the Force grew much stronger. But again he feared to fall to the Dark Side.
Then they linked into the secret Imperial military HoloNet, to show him how the battle was unfolding over Ton-Muund.
The Emperor and Vader had withheld a secret: the Death Stars were fully armed and operational!
And now Luke’s fury could no longer be borne.
--
Tapping into the Force, Luke summoned his blue-bladed lightsaber, and his grandfather’s white blade, and attacked Leia with them.
Vader countered the blow, using his own white lightsaber.
Leia too drew Ben Kenobi’s green lightsaber, given to her by Luke.
Luke used the Force to take control of the two guards at the entrance to the hall, the ones who had escorted him in: elite Stormtroopers.
Vader had begun training this cadre of well-disciplined troops at the Emperor’s request. Even Lord Pestage had begun to fear that the Sith might turn against him one day, and that Vader might, in the fullness of his power, seek to supplant him. But Vader knew this.
Now the two well-armored stormtroopers, doing Luke’s bidding, advanced and drew their own purple lightsabers.
In response, Vader fetched down Ben Kenobi’s red blade from where it rested on a wall of the throne room, long dormant, as a rare trophy in a place of honor.
Then Leia activated her own new-built lightsaber. Its blade was white.
Battle was joined.
--
In the depths of Ton-Muund, Han Solo and his team of commandos sought to get into the Imperial Palace via its sewer system.
But they were captured, because the Emperor had been forewarned of their coming. The team of commandos was slaughtered, and C-3PO and R2-D2 were pressed into the Emperor’s service. Han was taken to the prison cells beneath the palace, where he was once again tortured.
This time the torturer was Mina Whitsun.
She had traveled to Ton-Muund ahead of the Rebels, and tried herself to break into the Imperial computers. But she was caught, and willingly submitted to the judgment of the Sith, in order to position herself as a mole in their mighty machine.
Yet Mina had had to drink the Red Draught of the Sith as a result, and the proper brand of the willing Sith was applied to her forehead. And now she did not care if she hurt Han, so long as she got him to join her in ecstatic frenzy.
Even as she tortured him, Mina grinned madly at him with golden teeth—her chosen wound to mark her initiation.
Han was saved by a young slave boy, black of skin and smart as a whip: Mace Windom. (Let’s call him an alter ego of Short Round in Temple of Doom.)
Ten-year-old Mace knew from experience that the best way to counteract the Red Sleep of the Sith was through the application of fire. He threw boiling oil into Mina’s face, leaving her severely scarred on one side. But she was cured of her madness. (This is based on what happens to the gangster’s moll, Debby, in Fritz Lang’s 1953 film noir The Big Heat, as well as the way Claude Rains is scarred in the 1943 Phantom of the Opera.)
Han and Mace and Mina—with an improvised bandage on her face—began to liberate the slaves of the Sith Sleep. They freed the underclasses of Ton-Muund, and urged them to go up into the surface, to overthrow their Imperial masters.
(Mace’s story is essentially a repeated version of Han Solo’s own character journey. After all, GL did seriously think about casting Han Solo as black, in the vein of Leigh Brackett’s pulp hero Eric John Stark. And it’s no accident that Mace is black. The subtext is that the Empire is seriously racist, against both aliens and humans.
In fact, it’s quite possible that we’d have seen Mace’s father—perhaps named Victor, as a nod to Victor Fleming, director of The Wizard of Oz—in a minor role, but one of greater social standing, in the prequels.)
Before going up themselves into the Palace, Han, Mace, and Mina broke the water pipes that ran beneath Ton-Muund, so that any reluctant slaves would be forced into joining the uprising against the city above. The great city-planet began to flood from beneath. (Remember your Metropolis, kids.)
--
Meanwhile, overhead, Akira Valorum piloted the Millennium Falcon in the space battle.
The Rebels were losing. Their ships were pinned between the defenses of Ton-Muund and the Imperial fleet, which had made a sudden, but not entirely unanticipated, appearance.
--
The Imperial ships were commanded by a newly minted Admiral, but one who was already a shrewd strategist and a skilled leader of men: a woman, in fact.
Let’s call her Admiral Heda Horus.
(This first name is a combination of Hedda Hopper, the famous gossip columnist of Old Hollywood, and Leda, mother of Helen of Troy in Greek mythology. Heda’s surname comes from Mara Horus, the Tarkin-style Imperial bureaucrat character in the 1974 first draft.)
Heda Horus was, in fact, the officer who had recognized Luke and Leia on Alderaan earlier, and who had blown their cover. This was what had earned her a promotion to Admiral.
For Heda herself was a clone of Leia, made from DNA Vader had taken years ago on Alderaan. And she had grown up at the greatly accelerated rate natural to clones raised in laboratories.
Now Heda was grown to womanhood, at least in body, and by virtue of her great intelligence, she commanded the Imperial battle fleet. She hated the Rebels, and her green eyes burned with fury when she saw them; for her idol was her mentor, Darth Vader.
And, childlike, she had eagerly absorbed his invective against the “seditious foe.”
Children do not know when their parents are lying.
Even to themselves.
--
And then, unexpectedly, Bail Whitsun’s fleet appeared too, and began fighting alongside the Rebel ships. He and his son Marcus (piloting his own silver starfighter) had come to rescue Mina.
But Bail’s capital ship was destroyed by the lasers of one Death Star, and the Rebel flagship, commanded by General Dodana, was blown up by the other. This was the first revelation of the ultimate surprise Vader and the Emperor had planned. And the shields had not yet been downed.
--
On Condawn, Luke and his two mind-controlled elite Stormtroopers now did battle against both Leia and Vader.
Luke managed to hold them both off, quite adeptly, for Ben had trained him well in lightsaber combat.
However, his elite Stormtroopers, though well trained by Vader himself, ultimately proved of little account when subjected to conflicting mental commands from three warriors at once.
During the duel, Luke knocked Ben Kenobi’s red lightsaber from Vader’s hand, and it plunged into one of the ventilation shafts that cooled the throne room. But he shrank from pressing his advantage.
Leia tossed Vader her own white lightsaber, and she instead took up one of the fallen Stormtroopers’ purple swords. (This idea comes from the finale of Hamlet.)
--
If a spectator had been present, and had bothered to look into the magic mirror at this moment (as the combatants did not), he or she would have noticed something odd.
In the mirror, only Luke wielded two lightsabers; the stormtroopers had retired after bringing in Luke, and were not present at the duel.
The mirror version of Luke had blond hair in long plaits, though Leia’s hair was red. Vader’s lone lightsaber was blue, and Leia’s was red; but Luke’s two lightsabers were white in color.
And instead of the two empty thrones on the dais, there was a strange, enormous pulsing sphere of translucent light, hovering two feet off the floor, with something just visible inside it…
But in the other mirror, the gong of summoning, Luke and Leia had switched places, and it was she who dueled two foes at once.
Seen in the gong, Luke had short golden hair and a red beard, and Leia’s hair too was golden. Luke’s blade was blue, and Vader’s was red; but Leia wielded two blades, both green.
The pulsing sphere of light at the center of the room, moreover, had been replaced by a pulsing void of darkness…
But in the third mirror, the polished floor, everything was as it appeared in the second mirror… even down to the placement of the duellists.
Except that now, Leia’s hair was dark, and Luke’s hair and beard matched in color.
And Leia’s two lightsaber blades were both golden.
--
Luke could, perhaps, have defeated both his foes.
He slashed at Leia’s leg, bringing her down and leaving her with a permanent limp. And he cut off Vader’s hands, revealing their true nature: the one a droid prosthesis, and the other organic.
But at this last revelation, Luke shrank from killing them. For at last he realized the peril of the path he now walked: that he might someday himself end up like his father.
He flung down his lightsabers, and turned to Leia, who now urged Luke to finish off his father, and join the Sith in earnest.
“Never,” he said.
“You’ve failed, Leia! I am a Jedi, like my father before me, and like his father before him.”
(That line actually comes nearly verbatim from Lawrence Kasdan’s first revision of the ROTJ script.)
And Lando Kadar, perceiving mercy for the first time in his life, stood up in silence, and considered.
But Leia was enraged.
And she dropped the lightsaber in her own left hand, in a feigned show of acceptance. But then she struck at Luke, whom she now despised as a weakling, with Force lightning...