I’ll never forget seeing ROTS for the first time because it was such an experience, unmatched by anything else I’ve ever seen in the theatre (even ROTK, which was a pinnacle), mostly because we went to a midnight showing (and it remains the only movie I’ve ever done that for - and by unplanned happenstance I turned around and saw it again later that day, which I’ve also definitely never done for anything else. I ended up seeing it a number of times and remember each one with an odd clarity). anyway, at that first showing, the feeling and hype in the audience was so palpable. It wasn’t simply opening night excitement, it was also hushed tension. After all, we knew what was coming, but even forewarned, we couldn’t be entirely prepared.
There was a live choreographed lightsaber fight in the theatre beforehand. People screamed and cheered when the main title started, and the cheering and gasps continued on until the scene at the opera, and then the dread crept in, and everything got more and more quiet - and would remain that way until the final credits, until the return of that triumphant score we know so well, which sent everyone into applause. I had cried so much that even my waterproof mascara wasn’t totally immune, and still the rapture of hearing that music immediately uplifted me as I clapped with everyone else, as though it were a balm to our collective spirits.
I had spoiled myself and already read the novelization, yet witnessing this descent still broke my heart. And the thing is, we know it’s inevitable because we know the original trilogy, but the narrative didn’t make it feel inevitable until that last moment - there are chances that could’ve been taken, choices that could’ve been changed, by a myriad of characters, that would’ve altered this course. The dominoes fall and it isn’t fate, it’s the tragedy of free will.
Anakin’s surrender and pledge to Palpatine in the scene cited above made me feel physically sick, I remember my hands shaking the first time I saw it, and how tightly I gripped them together. That scene plays entirely as subjugation and abuse. Palpatine has done nothing but manipulate him, lie to him, gaslight him, and because he has to hide so many of his feelings and truths, because the Jedi are so rigid that he is unable to go to them and tell them what he’s struggling with, because he can’t consult them about Padme or be honest about their relationship, he is stripped of his power, he loses every one of his support systems, and he has nowhere else to turn. He staggers and collapses to his knees in horror, and Palpatine lords over him, distorts meaning into the slaughter, convinces him that taking up the mantle of the Sith is the only way to save the woman he loves, and the Republic, and freedom in the galaxy. Crushing power as the answer, which of course is corrosive and corrupting. It’s an ugly, cruel, and very carefully crafted deceit. I’m not absolving Anakin of his decision here, he could say no, he still makes the choice to follow the Dark Side and to carry out the brutality that follows, and that is indefensible. But every vulnerability he has is exploited.
This was a little boy who was brought up in slavery. Who knew cruelty and fear and the danger of not following orders at a young age, and yet he still immediately asserts his agency when we meet him (”I’m a person and my name is Anakin”). He is bereft of his mother - a mother he later loses horrifically - and brought into an acetic order that doesn’t have the patience to work through his trauma, his anger, or his grief with him, and so it festers, turns rebellious. He’s also brave, quick-witted and talented, caring, often thoughtful. His emotions aren’t a hindrance, they’re often a strength, but the Jedi keep hammering the idea into him that feeling is somehow wrong. He dreamed of being one of them, and they tell him over and over that he’s “the Chosen One,” and yet they undermine everything that makes him who he is. His identity is constantly either undercut or obscured, and he lashes out while he’s trying to establish who he is as a person, but he also manages to gain respect, become an accomplished Jedi, a war hero and general. Initially, there is nothing in him that craves or idolizes evil. His desire to be a powerful Jedi is rooted in a want to make the galaxy more stable, to reach out to those who need help.
He rejects the philosophy forbidding love so thoroughly that he reframes it as a mission statement of sorts: “Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is essential to a Jedi’s life. So you might say that we are encouraged to love.”
He falls deeply in love with a woman who is not only intelligent and beautiful and a leader, but who shows him soft kindness that he’s never known, equality, and balance (which he desperately needs - balance is such a key theme in the prequels, and to me, it’s Padme who first embodies it), she extends her mind and her heart to him, and their bond is powerful. (I could write more about why I think their relationship works better than it’s often given credit for - at first - but that’s another ten page essay). They love and console each other, they understand one another and show one another their whole selves, and they can be sweet and passionate, but they also challenge each other, and learn from one another, and expand each other’s worlds. His capacity for love and loyalty is so immense, and his fear of loss so acute (given everything he endured so young), that it twists into something that becomes his downfall.
He believes his mentor and best friend has betrayed him, he believes the Order has turned against him, he believes that if he doesn’t do something immediately, his wife and unborn child will be dead. And in that instant when he breaks, Palpatine preys on him, and that small seed of darkness is consuming. He knows what it is to say no to a master and be punished. He is shackled again, by his mistakes, by his fear, by the Dark Side, by the hideous cunning before him. Palpatine knows this isn’t enough, and sends him to Mustafar, pushes him as far to the brink as he can, lays the trap for either his death or his damnation. The tragic events that relentlessly unfold there at Anakin’s hand are the final ruination of his soul, and the scorching ground that destroys him physically allows him to be enslaved once more. Palpatine gets more than he could have anticipated - the death of everything human and light that defined Anakin, and the rise of everything artificial and ruined that define Vader. He is a shell (”more machine now than man”), and no one ever looks at him as a human being after that. He’s a towering inferno, a nightmare in the dark, a symbol of an oppressive regime. No one would know that he himself came from abuse and oppression, and that he still exists under the constant weight of it, and deflects it with fury and cruelty. He does irredeemable things, things for which there is no real atonement, and there’s a detachment to all of it, a hollowness underscored by that rattling, metallic breath.
And then he finds out his son is alive. It may be the first time he’s felt an emotion in almost 20 years, and even if that emotion is anger or confusion or frustration, it’s something. He tries to tempt him to the Dark Side, manipulate him as he was manipulated, but Luke is bright and obstinate and good, and he refuses. Every time, he refuses. He won’t fall, he won’t fail. He puts his friends ahead of his training. He doesn’t have to suppress his ability to love. Even when his supposedly wise teachers tell him Vader is beyond all hope, Luke dares to keep hoping. Luke accepts the truth of him being his father, he calls him by his real name. He insists with calm, steady defiance that his father won’t betray him, even when Vader resists this bond. I always thought that scene in ROTJ was really interesting because of the way in which Vader responds, the first time we truly hear anything more than malice in that resonant voice - there’s suddenly a regret in it. “Obi-Wan once thought as you do. You don’t know the power of the Dark Side. I must obey my Master.” It’s resignation. It’s years of heinous orders being carried out, the drowning noise of war; it’s years under threat, of continual devastation, of violence begetting violence. Luke implores, “Let go of your hate,” and the quiet, measured response is, “It is too late for me, son.” It’s the first time Luke acknowledges that his father might truly be dead, and after Luke is taken away by the Imperial guards, Vader walks to the railing of the bridge and slightly hangs his head. He’s had no reason to feel anything for years - all the horrors and sorrows have been empty - and suddenly this one little flicker of emotion is daring to spark.
And when Luke is faced with certain death, rather than fight, rather than harm his father - a father he never truly knows, someone he very understandably should fear or even revile, and yet he still sees the man beneath that mask, he still knows someone human exists there, and no one has seen that since that final day on that burning hell of a planet - Luke throws his lightsaber aside and says, “I will not fight you, father.” The Emperor comes for him, painfully tortures him, and Luke still calls out to his father, and seeing his child hurt brings back his defiance, the sense of protection he had so long ago, and Luke sees the light in him the way Padme once did, and Vader rises up in a final transcendent act of resistance and casts his master down. In that moment, Vader dies, and Anakin, while mortally wounded, lives again. It is not redemption for what he wrought, but it is an act of salvation. Lucas himself said, “Anakin can’t be redeemed for all the pain and suffering he’s caused. He doesn’t right the wrongs, but he stops the horror. The end of the Saga is simply Anakin saying, ‘I care about this person, regardless of what it means to me. I will throw away everything that I have, everything that I have grown to love - primarily the Emperor - and throw away my life, to save this person. And I’m doing this because he has faith in me, loves me despite all the horrible things I’ve done. I broke his mother’s heart, but he still cares about me, and I can’t let that die.’ Anakin is very different in the end. The thing of it: The prophecy was right. Anakin was the Chosen One, and he does bring balance to the Force. He takes the ounce of good still left in him and destroys the Emperor out of compassion for his son.” (x)
It’s a circle of compassion, forgiveness, love. He has Luke take off his dreaded mask and looks upon him with his human eyes, the gaze of a proud father, embracing humanity in his son, remembering what it was like to truly be a person. Luke, still insistent and hopeful, is saying, “I’ve got to save you,” and Anakin’s final words are, “You already have, Luke. You were right, you were right about me. Tell your sister. You were right.” (That final acknowledgement of Leia is so much, too - Leia who he knew, on some level, who he knew was a rebel and a strong leader and a courageous, resilient young woman, Leia who he interacted with, imprisoned, terrorized, who he held back while her entire planet was destroyed, who he threatened on Bespin when he harmed and separated her from the man she loves - and he so wants her to know that her brother, who is kind and empathetic and heroic, was right, that the menace she knew was not who he was, in the end.) That the conviction of their mother, who stood before him and cried out that he was a good person, passed that belief on, and it was right. Anakin falls and Vader rises because of a mangled, fearful perversion of his love; Vader falls and Anakin rises again, to be brought back into the light of the Force, when that love is healed and remade into something pure and whole. It is the binding of a circle, the final essential moment of grace that brings the universe back into balance.
ROTS tells us this, even at the end, when onscreen we’re seeing two precious, innocent babies placed into the arms of their adoptive families, solar systems apart, but always meant to be brought back together, open skies above and rays of the sun falling upon both of their new faces. ROTJ fulfills it with the catharsis of that funeral pyre, embers flying up into the night sky, back towards the heavens, as a celebration of joy and triumph occurs around it, as the heroes embrace and laugh and stand united, fireworks blooming overhead.
In the heart of the dark there will always lie weakness - one lone candle is enough to hold it back. And love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars.
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