As early as A New Hope, however, Lucas planted the seeds for the complication of melodramatic effects, allowing the stormtroopers to have some comic moments that had the effect of, at least temporarily, humanizing them.  

 

The Empire Strikes Back raised the stakes of the saga by shifting the focus away from black-and-white melodramatic representation to the investigation of shades of grey, through the dream-like sequence on the planet Dagobah in which Luke imagines his own face behind Darth Vader’s mask and then through the revelation that Vader is in fact Luke’s father. In Return of the Jedi, Obi-Wan laments that "Vader is more machine now than man, twisted and evil,” but Luke insists that there is still good inside Vader, a belief that ultimate leads to Vader’s redemption at the end of the film. 

 

The logic of the six Skywalker films that Lucas either directed or produced—the original and the prequel trilogies—is the movement from revenge and tragedy to return and redemption, a version of the classic exile-and-return motif that I discussed in the last newsletter and that is a part of so much world literature and central to Joseph Campbell’s idea of the monomyth. And what paves the way for redemption is almost always a sacrifice made in the name of love and protection: in A New Hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi sacrifices himself so that Luke and his friends can escape; in Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader sacrifices himself to save his son and thereby regains his identity as Anakin Skywalker; Qui-Gon Jinn dies fighting Maul in The Phantom Menace; Luke Skywalker sacrifices himself to save Rey and the Rebellion from destruction in The Last Jedi; Kanan Jarrus sacrifices himself to save his beloved, Hera Syndulla, and the crew of their ship, the Ghost, in Rebels; Han Solo and Leia Organa sacrifice themselves in the sequel trilogy to try to turn their son, Ben Solo, back to the light; Ben, in turn, sacrifices himself at the end of Rise of Skywalker to save the life of his “Force twin,” Rey.