#i love the horrifying and beautifully tragic father/son relationship between Luke and Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader

[gch1995]

Hi! Been thinking about Luke and Vader. How do you think Luke went from wanting to die to believing there was good in Vader? What caused that change/acceptance?

I have a lot of sympathy for Anakin/Darth Vader, and I don’t think it’s fair to place blame on just him for becoming such a deeply dysfunctional and horrifying human disaster as an adult, considering how deeply compromised his agency was his entire life under a series of abusive, hypocritical, and oppressive authority figures within a dystopian galaxy’s fucked up institutions. However, that doesn’t mean Luke wouldn’t have still had absolutely every right to hate his father for hurting him, his friends, and the many other people throughout the galaxy either.

Yet, ultimately Luke didn’t hate his father, even after Darth Vader reached out to him through the force by torturing his son’s friends, stalking him, abducting him, terrorizing him, threatening him, and cutting off his hand to try to coerce him to join the dark side in Empire Strikes Back.

Why?

I think the most obvious reason is that, with a little space and time to recover from the trauma that his father put him through in his efforts to find him and recruit him to the dark side, Luke ultimately sensed the good within Anakin beneath the darkness after he revealed that he was doing all this because Luke was his son, his family, who wanted freedom from Sidious and someone better to bond with than that sadistic asshole his current master was.

Also, in spite of how awful and dangerous it was for Anakin to terrorize Luke, cut off his hand, and threaten him like that on Bespin to try to recruit him to the dark side, he intentionally goes out of his way to avoid outright killing his son by going easy on him battle, giving him chances to escape, and trying to recruit him to the dark side to bond with his son and gain freedom, rather than bringing him to the Emperor.

Yes, he’s being awful, cowardly, and selfish in his methods, but Anakin is also trying to more easily avoid the possibility of one of them getting killed by Palpatine or one another by going after his son to try to recruit him to the dark side to overthrow the Emperor because he knows his master will do worse to Luke and/or himself if he finds out the truth about his son still being alive and a Jedi.

In Empire Strikes Back, Anakin also tells Luke “Don’t make me destroy you” when his son skitters away from him in terror. Though he went about looking for Luke pretty obsessively to try to recruit him for the dark side, once his son actually refuses to be swayed to the dark side by his father on Bespin after being abducted, terrorized, and amputated by him, Anakin notably doesn’t keep hunting down Luke to try to recruit him to the dark side or personally kill him for refusing after he runs away in terror in the movie. He’s upset about it, sure, but he really never wanted for Luke to be killed or hurt long term either.

Then, you also have to examine the fact that Luke didn’t really ever view Owen and Beru Lars as his parents. Though they loved Luke, and he loved them, Owen and Beru still never encouraged Luke to view them as his parents either. They were Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen to Luke, but never mom and dad to him. Luke really wanted someone to be able to identify as his parents. Anakin, flawed as he was, was the first person in Luke’s life to identify themselves as one his parents he had been missing his whole life, which is also why he was particularly desperate to bond with his father and inspire him to turn back to the light side.

If you guys want to chime in, you can!

@abla-soso

@fanfic-lover-girl

@fanfictasia

@komikbookgeek

@yoghurtconsumer