(Extended Edition)
Episode III: Red Victory
The time is out of joint; O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
--William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5
Three years had now passed since the events of The Star Wars.
In the film’s opening, Han Solo had only just been lured back to the Rebellion. He was the only one who could contact the reclusive head of the powerful Guild of Trade—his foster father, Marcus Whitsun.
After a perilous journey across the galaxy, Han arrived at Marcus’s secret headquarters, a fortified underwater base on the ocean-covered world of Acquis.
Here Han was reunited with his foster family: Marcus and his son, Wilhuff Whitsun. Wilhuff had been just a child when Han left, but now he was grown to manhood, and he looked upon his foster brother with great affection.
Han pleaded with Marcus Whitsun, lord of the Guild of Trade, to provide aid to the Rebellion, now in grave danger of extermination after several years of fighting. Marcus refused, revealing in confidence to Han that the Empire was even now building not one, but two new Death Stars.
These Death Stars were being constructed in orbit over Had Abbadon, the Green Moon of the Imperial capital, Ton-Muund. There, on that world of enormous green trees and bronze-hued skies, the Empire had constructed a bunker complex and a shield generator, to protect the still-incomplete armored space stations in orbit overhead.
The shield could be deactivated only from this high-security bunker on the Green Moon—and, what’s more, this required a code whose only copy was stored in the central computer of the Imperial prison planet of Alderaan.
Marcus told Han this in confidence, and begged him not to get involved with the Rebellion again. But Han, full of remorse for abandoning his friends, secretly radioed this information to Rebel headquarters.
Marcus, detecting this transmission, told Han that he was no longer a member of his family, and bade him leave Acquis. Han did so gloomily, thinking the cause of the Rebellion was now lost.
In secret, however, Wilhuff Whitsun took a starfighter from his father’s fleet, and set out to join the Rebel fleet, hoping to aid his foster brother’s cause however he might.
On Ttaz, Ben Kenobi was dying.
Luke had never entirely trusted Ben since learning that Vader was secretly his father—Vader himself being Annikin Starkiller’s son, who had cuckolded his own father.
Yet Luke was still prepared to grant Ben Kenobi’s dying wish: a burial on Utapau (i.e., Tatooine), where he had lived so long as a hermit.
Before he died, Ben willed to Luke his Kiber Crystal, and his own lightsaber to replace the one lost on Ton-Muund.
He also told Luke that he had a twin sister, Nellith Starkiller. She had been separated from her brother Luke at birth, and, being another potential Jedi, had been hidden many years ago in a remote part of the galaxy, beyond the Empire’s reach.
Ben warned him, however, that he had heard nothing for many years now from the Jedi set to watch over Nellith, even as he himself had watched over Luke. He advised Luke that, if ever it should become necessary to seek out his sister, he must use the utmost caution in dealing with her—if she still lived.
Bearing Ben Kenobi’s body, Luke returned to the Lars family farm on Utapau. There, he was unprepared for the devastation he found waiting for him.
In the 1975 version of The Star Wars, Luke ran away from his cruel Uncle Owen as a young man, to join Ben Kenobi on what seemed to be an exciting galactic adventure. Now, however, Luke found that in his absence, Imperial troops had burnt the Lars homestead to the ground. The stormtroopers had killed Owen and Beru, leaving their charred corpses for the birds to devour.
Luke buried Owen and Beru in plots next to Ben Kenobi’s own freshly dug grave. Then at last Luke Starkiller returned to the Rebel Alliance.
Leia let Luke know the bad news which Han had radioed in. They decided that together, they would brave the dungeons of Alderaan once more, and extract the shield codes for the two Death Stars being built even now.
Both Luke and Leia disguised themselves as Imperial officers. Luke wore black gloves, to hide his mechanical hand. Leia wore an eyepatch to hide her blind eye, and an officer’s cap to hide her trademark shorn hair (kept as a reminder to the Rebels of what the Emperor’s troops had done to her on Ton-Muund).
With the help of R2-D2, Luke and Leia managed to retrieve the shield codes successfully from Alderaan. Afterward, though, things went wrong. A suspicious Imperial officer noted the distinctive lightsaber (Ben Kenobi’s blade) on Luke’s belt, and removed Leia’s cap and eyepatch, revealing her identity.
A tremendous firefight ensued. However, the heroes managed to get away safely, and returned to the Rebel headquarters, where Han Solo had also just arrived.
Together, the three volunteered to lead a commando team (accompanied by Chewbacca and the droids) in secret to the Green Moon of Ton-Muund, in order to breach the Imperial control bunker and disable the Death Stars’ shields.
Meanwhile, a Rebel fleet would make a surprise drop out of hyperspace. Once the shields fell, the fleet would destroy the two Death Stars, and hopefully capture the Imperial capital into the bargain.
It was a risky plan. If it succeeded, the Rebellion would triumph; if it failed, they would be utterly destroyed.
Before they set out, Han and Leia pledged their love, which was blossoming once more with their reunion.
One unexpected arrival bolstered their fortunes slightly: Wilhuff Whitsun, flying a starfighter stolen from his father’s fleet, came to swell the ranks of the Rebel pilots.
Before his departure, Han Solo gave the Millennium Falcon to Wilhuff, to pilot in this desperate mission, and afterwards if he did not survive it. Lando Katarn, now a general, would be commanding from one of the Rebel capital ships.
Leading their commando force, Luke, Leia, and Han set off for Ton-Muund, thinking death more likely than success.
On Had Abbadon, the Rebel forces walked into an ambush, orchestrated by several Sith Lords. Knowing that his father had set a trap for him, Luke fought off the Sith Lords as long as possible, allowing the others to escape.
Overhead, the Rebel fleet dropped out of hyperspace above Had Abbadon, to find the Death Stars’ shields still intact. Not only that—although this was meant to be a surprise assault, the Rebel forces found the massed Imperial fleet ready and waiting for their attack.
Luke was overpowered by the Sith Lords and taken to the lava world of Condawn, where Darth Vader had built his castle on the site of his great victory over the Jedi years ago.
Here, in the throne room, Luke was led past his own Kiber Crystal, now housed in a force-field cage in the center of the room, to the dais in front of a great glass window, where Darth Vader stood before his throne. To his surprise, another man sat on the throne, a wizened old sorcerer in a hooded black robe.
Darth Vader addressed his son, and introduced the hooded old man as Vader’s true master: the Lord of the Bogan Force, whose very existence was unknown to all save the highest in the Sith Order, and not even to the Emperor himself.
The ancient Lord spoke, and told Luke that he had been brought here to be tested. If he proved worthy, he could go free. If not, he would die.
All Luke had to do, the Lord said, was to strike him down as he sat calmly upon his chair.
The Lord tempted Luke with his own lightsaber, once Ben Kenobi’s, which had been taken from him on his capture. He did likewise with Luke’s Kiber Crystal. But Luke refused to give in to his anger.
Above Had Abbadon, the Rebel fleet was in disarray, and on the point of losing, when the giant Guild of Trade battleships of Marcus Whitsun emerged without warning from hyperspace.
When he learned that Wilhuff had set out on his own to aid the Rebellion, Marcus had come to save his only son, throwing his lot in against the Empire. Unfortunately for Marcus, his flagship was destroyed by the first shot of a Death Star superlaser—for one of the two Death Stars was already fully operational.
Angered by Luke Starkiller’s self-control, the Bogan Lord told Vader to activate the holo-screen on one wall of the throne room. The scene of the Rebel fleet being destroyed by the Imperial ships, while the Death Stars’ shields remained stubbornly active, flashed before his eyes.
Luke was angered and bewildered, and his self-control dropped away. Tapping into the Force, Luke retrieved his mentor’s lightsaber, and lashed out at the ancient sorcerer.
Vader blocked the blow with his own lightsaber.
The battle was on.
In that awful throne room, lit by the reddish light of the lava outside the enormous glass windows, their fight was terrible to behold, recalling the last stand of the Jedi upon this very site over twenty years ago.
In a pitched battle, Luke ultimately succeeded in cutting off Darth Vader’s right hand, which was thus revealed to be made not of flesh, but of steel and wires.
At this point, however, Luke recoiled. He saw the stump of Vader’s hand, and realized that if he continued as he was, he too would be one day as his father was now.
So he turned to the terrible Lord, and, proclaiming his defiance, flung his lightsaber away in a gesture of contempt for his murderous ways.
But the evil Lord was too far down the path of the Dark Side to understand mercy.
And, enraged at the magnanimity of this victorious warrior, the Bogan Lord struck out at Luke with Force lightning.
On the Green Moon, with the aid of the native Yuzzem, Han and Leia successfully stormed the Imperial control bunker. But during the assault, Chewbacca fell, mortally wounded.
Worse, once inside, they realized with horror that their attack had been anticipated.
The Emperor had ordered the installation of a dead man’s switch. Any deactivation of the shield would set off a bomb, killing everyone inside the bunker.
There was no way to disarm it. Whoever disabled the shield would die.
On Condawn, Vader watched as the ancient Lord poured out Force Lightning upon his son.
And suddenly, taking up Luke’s lightsaber where it had fallen, Darth Vader struck out at the Bogan Lord and slew him.
Vader’s life-support suit was irreversibly damaged by the Lord’s Force lightning; he would soon surely die. But Luke had been saved.
Yet even as the Bogan Lord passed away, he spoke the words of a terrible curse:
“Thrice now I curse, and from the first,
Your faithful friends shall feel the worse.
Soon shall ye see, they'll surely be
In the most dire jeopardy.
Though wax they slow, these seeds I sow,
That many a man shall be your foe.
On you and yours, the Starkiller line,
This final doom I now define:
What I will shall come full measure,
So shall ye lose all that ye treasure.”
The Lord’s body vanished even as he finished speaking.
Luke unmasked his dying father, and Darth Vader looked his last upon his son with his own eyes.
On Had Abbadon, Leia ordered everyone else out of the bunker, clearly intending to sacrifice herself.
But one remained by her side: Han Solo, who realized at last that he truly loved this Princess of a vanished world.
Together, they pushed down the lever which deactivated the Death Stars’ shields… and as the bunker was obliterated in a fiery mushroom cloud, in space overhead the shields of the Empire’s weapons went inert.
Wilhuff Whitsun, piloting the Millennium Falcon, flew into the bowels of one Death Star to destroy it from within. A squadron of Rebel pilots in X-wing fighters flew into the other Death Star to do likewise.
Soon, above the Green Moon, two Death Stars exploded.
One was destroyed by the Rebel pilot Jerec Ors, who survived to escape the blast.
The other was destroyed by Wilhuff Whitsun, in the Millennium Falcon, who did not. Han Solo’s ship, and its pilot, perished so that a galaxy might live, and the Republic be restored.
Along with the destruction of the two Death Stars, the Emperor himself was killed, for he had been aboard one of them, exulting in the apparent triumph of his battle stations. With the Emperor’s death, the garrison on Ton-Muund surrendered to the Rebel fleet.
Luke Starkiller, Lando Katarn, Jerec Ors, and R2-D2 and C-3PO were feted as heroes, and Han Solo, Chewbacca, Leia Organa, and Wilhuff Whitsun were given funerals worthy of their great deeds.
But before the award ceremony held in the newly liberated Imperial Palace, Luke gave his dead father a Viking funeral, sending Darth Vader’s body forth on a flaming barge into the lava seas of Condawn.
Despite all the blood spilled in the Battle of the Green Moon, peace reigned in the galaxy… for the time being.
Nonetheless, Luke Starkiller could not rest easy when he pondered the matter of where this mysterious Bogan Lord had come from… and what his dying curse might mean for the future of the Republic.