In the novel From a Certain Point of View celebrating the 40th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, there are many chapters regarding many of the characters from the fifth Star Wars film. One in particular is the chapter called Disturbance by Mike Chen and narrated by Sam Witwer, himself.
This chapter blew my mind. It’s in regards to the scene where Vader kneels before Palpatine to only learn that his master has sensed a great disturbance in the force.
The book states that Palpatine, moments before, entered Vader’s dream of him and Luke killing Sidious. Although Anakin was Anakin Skywalker once again, and without a respirator as Vader requires. Luke was the perfect Sith of legend, as Palpatine says. The fight was incredible, and something I’d love to see in a film someday.
This chapter in the book was one of my favourites. It just ties everything in so well, and to show this fan-fiction in canon is mesmerizing to think of, and a Fan-Fic I’d actually like to create. Anakin Skywalker watching his son, no, encouraging his son to beat the emperor. The question is, would Luke be strong enough to kill the emperor like this? In the chapter it explains how Luke would rise above Vader to see the true potential of his bloodline, over his father’s final death. I don’t think he would be, not in the time after Empire, say, Luke did join his father, he wouldn’t be ready so soon. It would require a year or two of proper Sith training to rival the emperor so easily the way he did. Then again, it was just Vader’s dream. Another thing that stuck out to me was that Palpatine mentions Vader has the fiery heart of Anakin Skywalker, further proving that Anakin never left Vader, just as we saw closer and closer to the end of Return of the Jedi. I think this excerpt is one of the first showcases of Palpatine’s affirmation that the son of Skywalker, if turned, would truly be the Anakin Skywalker he never got. For all those years he worked on turning Anakin to the dark side, it eventually all fell to pieces when he failed against Obi-Wan Kenobi to his own arrogance.