Oh I know how these tests work, I know the answer! It is always “My parents fighting”.
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sounds great! they deserve a better than this black metal logo’s reductio ad absurdum.
Darth Vader did not have any good left in him, and did not come back to the light side of the Force at the end.
Let’s examine what happened:
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He saved the life of his own son, whom he’s already biologically predisposed to have a stronger attachment to. Had he been saving someone he hadn’t known or wasn’t related to, that might be one thing; saving your own offspring after having condemned countless others is inherently selfish.
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Even if he had been able to emotionally distance himself from the fact that he was likely going to have to kill his own son, the fact that Luke was actively cheering him on to act with goodness, proclaiming he still had it in him, was a huge boost to his ego after having lived the last 25~ years in misery and depression. He did it to maintain that image of himself.
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His “good” act was to commit an act of murder, generally considered the most evil of acts, even when performed for a good cause, such as saving the life of another. Vader had been killing people on a whim for nearly 30 years and his one good act was to kill one more person? Bet that was tough. And I might also add that he did it after his boss had tortured his son for a good minute while he stood there watching, thinking it over. Uh huh.
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The person he saved Luke from was his own boss whom he already held resentment for, had already tried to conspire twice to kill and overthrow - once with Luke’s mother, once with Luke himself - and whom had just given Luke the go-ahead to kill Vader and replace him as his right hand man. How much “goodness” would anyone need to make the decision to kill that guy?
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Assuming being in tune with the light side of the Force is necessary to be able to project oneself as a Force ghost, Vader shouldn’t have been able to at the end. After a lifetime of evil deeds, and all the above points, doing the bare minimum of killing the most evil person in the galaxy as his own last deed in life, even if it had been out of genuine goodness, that wouldn’t be enough to actually bring someone back in tune with the Force enough to become the Star Wars equivalent of a guardian angel.
Plunk anyone other than Luke or Leia down into that situation, or have Vader be on better terms with the Emperor during that period of his life, and I’ll bet you his whole “turning back to the good side” never happens.
Surprisingly, I’m hoping someone’s got an argument to convince me I’m wrong on this one.
I mean, I don’t think you’re wrong in that Vader wouldn’t have turned if someone other than his son was in danger. But isn’t that good enough to count? Nobody’s saying that Vader became a good person at the end, just that his final act was a good one (killing space hitler to save his son) even if it was “selfish” to a degree. It’s like the man had been overwhelmed from the inside out with darkness, and then at the last second a blinding ray of light shot straight through and compelled him to do what was right. That’s commendable imo, even if we have no reason to believe that he cared about the people his empire had victimized.
I’ll compare him to Walter White. His last act wasn’t just to murder the neo nazis, he decided to save Jesse once he saw what had been done to him. A final, decent act that does not redeem a man, but still adds a small net positive into the world. Sometimes, when a person has corrupted themselves so deeply, that’s all you can hope for.
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You’re correct, at least from a certain perspective. I don’t think necessarily that just killing the emperor while his son was being actively tortured could necessarily count as “good” except in the most shallow of ways, because, yeah, technically it’s good that he saved a life and stopped a bad guy, but that’s the lowest denominator of the situation. I would argue that if Luke had been the evil one and the Emperor was the good guy trying to end him as a threat, Vader would have acted in the same way, making his act an evil one. Since the saving of one’s offspring from an attacker is an act most parents would take regardless of where it lands on the morality scale, or of their own moral alignment, I’d say Vader’s act counts as good only on a technicality, with it being considered an act of good or evil being entirely dependent on the standing of Luke and the Emperor, rather than Vader himself. The way that it’s treated like a huge shift of his position of alignment after the fact, both with Luke and parts of the general fandom, is where I really begin to question it.
Considering that Vader had actually been Luke’s attacker on two other occasions, I’d say that his decision to turn the tables is at least indicative of a shift in mindset. The person that ordered the destruction of Alderaan would very likely not have made such a decision, and we can assume that if he lived past that day (and somehow escaped being tried and executed as a war criminal) his future choices would be more reflective of his final one in RotJ. Does that not make him a changed man, at least in his final moments? Maybe his son breaking his barriers would open up to a more general level of compassion, one that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.
Potentially, yes. Conclusively, not so certain. Since he died before we could see what he would do from then on, it remains a mystery. As for Vader having attacked him before, keep in mind, once he was aware Luke was his son, he was trying to get him on his side, either just to help him kill the Emperor, or to help him rule, but there was no indication that he planned on doing anything but corrupting Luke and continuing on as he always had, only “changing” once he’d already lost and realized that his son was stronger than him and wouldn’t be corrupted.
Not necessarily saying becoming fully good again wasn’t possible, but what we actually saw, and the context in which we saw it, leads me to conclude that it’s not enough to declare Vader as having come back to the good side, even a small amount. Luke said there was still good in him, but even evil people have some capacity for good in them, just as all good people have some capacity for evil. Vader acting on the small kernel of goodness he already had nestled away inside is hardly indicative that Luke was successful in “saving” him. We would have needed to see a bit more than that and have that amount of goodness actually grow, in a non-selfish context, to draw that conclusion.
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Anakin becoming a Force Ghost does not 100% confirm he became good, right? Since the force itself is neither good nor bad, becoming such an entity is not bound to if you were good or bad but if you… did some lore explained stuff.
He could just be accepted by the other Force Ghosts despite turning away from the light side.
Luke also turned away from the Jedi cult for some time without being a Sith. I think Anakin was in a comparable state when he died.
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But his force ghost has the Jedi robes again… to me this implies he goes back to be being “good.”
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The emphasis on the “light side” and “dark side” of the Force is smeared all over the Star Wars landscape. Until now, at least where the movies are concerned (don’t know if the games, comics and novels show otherwise, and they don’t matter anyway), Force ghosts only exist by those who utilize the light side of the Force. Anakin becoming one implies, by that standard, that he is back to the light side. So either there’s more to becoming a Force ghost than what has been revealed, or this was done to cap off the original trilogy with a feel-good moment that, upon deeper analysis, is not really deserved.
That seems to conflict what 5min of Google revealed to me, do you remember which statements in the movies were made about them?
Willing to sacrifice and not clinging to the living realm seems to be what it takes to become a Force Ghost according to some wikia. I guess that is something that is easier to archive for a Jedi than a Sith that try to fight death. But not per-se requires one to be a light side user. But it also sounds awfully quitting to Anakin’s end in a way that it could be “made fitting” to what they did with him.
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Double post, but I’m gonna respond to this one. Statements weren’t made about them, beyond Yoda telling Obi Wan that QuiGon had learned the secret to doing it, implying it is rare, and only Jedi are seen doing it onscreen, never a Sith, who are arguably more powerful and able to use the Force in more creative ways. As I said, going based only on what we actually see in the movies, and the seemingly neutral status of Force ghosts, it implies only light side Force users can perform it, because it acts as a function of the light side. There may be more to this, but nothing I’ve seen revealed in the movies. In any event, Vader’s “change” back to Anakin, when closely inspected, doesn’t seem to align with gaining this ability, especially since he seemed to have no knowledge of Force ghosts even existing, unless the TV media like the Obi Wan series has revealed something more.
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Vader was so powerful though. I bet that’s why he could do it so quick.
Force ghosts always existed. Either no one knew they existed or if they did the ghosts didn’t know how to communicate with the living.
As you pointed out QuiGon figures it out and teaches Obi Wan. Obi wan is able to learn. Some time later Yoda nearly instantly can do it, but he is super old and massively strong in the force. Vader was also on a totally different scale of force powers. He just could do it after he died like Rey could just do stuff.
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“Going by the movies” + “Force Ghosts act as a function of the light side” + “Anakin did not return to the light side” seems conflicting. 
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Ok, so perhaps anakin’s status as a Force ghost is tied to other factors than his moral alignment; a lot needs to be dissected on that, RotJ only implied that his moral alignment was part of the reason. That brings me back still to whether what he did at the end truly marked him becoming good. The only way I see that it actually does in the way it is commonly perceived, is if Vader had been hoping all those years for a chance to not only overthrow the Emperor and rule the galaxy himself, as was strongly implied even when he was still just Anakin, but that he hoped he could become the person he was and that Padme and Obi Wan always believed he could be. If that were true, then he just never saw any realistic way for it to become reality until he witnessed Luke’s refusal to give in.
If he held that hope in his heart all those years as Vader, then I can see it as maybe acting on actual goodness at the end. But if he was truly despaired and considered himself a lost cause all that time, like it is strongly implied and even spoken by Vader himself, then his last act was still born of that selfishness and not a change to good, as far as I see.
Precisely. With only Jedi being seen becoming Force ghosts, therefore implying without further clarification that it’s a trait of the light side, Anakin suddenly becoming one through one act of decency, and without apparently knowledge of it being possible, is conflicting in showing him just being one.
I didn’t disagree with your first argument about Vader not completely becoming good in that fateful moment of RotJ, but the force ghost reasoning is weak. Only light siders are ghosts as far as we know. At the very least he is mostly good the second he dies having saved his son. He tells Luke a few times “you were right.” This is in response to Luke repeatedly insisting there is still good in him.
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Agreed. So, does he deserve to have been included in that final shot as a ghost, when considering that his only good deed at the end was saving his own son who was directly under attack from a guy he already wants to kill anyway? I really don’t think the circumstances around Vader killing the Emperor are enough, to count it as an act good enough, to see Vader as having come back to the light side enough to warrant him being able to appear as a Force ghost as if he’s been redeemed by a single good act that has self-serving aspects all over it.
After Lucas’s edit, Vader comes back as a force ghost in the form of Anakin pre-dark side. That’s the part of him which lives on.
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But he was largely manipulated into being bad. With the puppet master gone he is free to be himself.
I take your point that one good act which is also self serving may not redeem him in a human world with human rules, but he’s gone from that world now. I’m sure “the force” knows his true intentions and what is in his ¿heart?
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