In my view, the coolest thing about Star Wars has always been the redemption of Darth Vader ne Anakin Skywalker. In most triumph-over-evil stories, the bad guy gets what's coming to him because he is utterly irredeemable.

After all, who would really want James Bond sitting around with the monologuing-villain-of-the-week, asking him if he didn't want to reconsider the wickedness of his ways? Even Harry Potter tends to hex first and ask questions later. (Though, to his credit, he is a teenager and therefore not expected to be completely perfect. Dumbledore is more Starwarsian because he is faced with Draco Malfoy's intention to kill him and still fights for his student's redemption.)

Star Wars is an utterly unique saga and that is why I have gotten obsessed with it for the last 12 years. I grew up having a very hopeful view of repentance and still believe in it, so I always want there to be a Vaderian ending to any story. I'm still rooting for Snape to throw Voldemort down the proverbial reactor core in Book 7.

In the six Star Wars movie, we see the very common pride cycle. As a fallible person myself, I can almost relate to Anakin Skywalker who looks at his 'parent's' constant disapproval and his mentor's constant buttering-up and chooses to take the ego boost where he can get it.

I share the view of Anakin in Episode I that a friend expressed pre-Attack of the Clones: Who believes in Hitler in short pants? I think that is the point, that we see the positive results of a nurturing environment and strong moral values.

Qui-Gon is set up to fill the same function that Palpatine will abuse in the later episodes. This is probably the reason why there are so many questions about what Anakin's fate would have been if he'd been trained by Master Qui-Gon. This also fuels the thought of if this is why Anakin is initially attracted to Palpatine's support.

Between episodes I and II, obviously, the Jedi instate strong moral values. This is part of why Anakin's "grown up" even if "Master Obi-Wan manages not to see it." He has learned a certain form of discipline, but balks at the restrictions of that discipline. On Tatooine, he was free to follow his heart and his personal convictions. At the Temple, he is asked to do the same, but all according to what is externally determined to be the "will of the Force."

On the other hand, Palpatine begins to instill the doctrine of what will later become the idea of not limiting Anakin to the "narrow, dogmatic" views of the Jedi Order. He both encourages Anakin's feelings and his questioning nature.

Now, while we're laying out the connective tissue of Anakin Skywalker's destruction, we have to look at the role of Padme. She is a balance between the opposing forces, encouraging his role as a Jedi as well as nurturing his emotional needs. Originally, we can see that she is as pragmatic as Obi-Wan, though she gives Anakin the whole "DON'T HAVE FEELINGS FOR ME" speech in a glorified corset in front of a roaring fire. (Smooth move, Lucasfilm! We were one bearskin rug away from a trashy romance novel! In fact, the difference between AOTC and the trashy romance novel was the fact that romance writers have occasionally actually been in a successful romance and therefore have heard of the phrase 'pick-up lines' as something other than an obscenity.) The difference is that she is, at last, willing to acknowledge her own human side and give into the natural course of love.

Therefore, in ROTS, we see the scene opening with Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight and with an ego boost from someone other than Ian McDiarmid. Within a few cheesy lines of the opening of the movie, he is on the Jedi Council and he can no longer blame his lack of a promotion on Obi-Wan. He and Obi-Wan have gone from the father-son dynamic to being like brothers and it seems to be a lot more natural.

So, naturally, the Force smacks him upside the head with another reality dose--he's still not omnipotent, dangit and it hits closer to home this time. You have to wonder sometimes what exactly the Force is thinking (or if it thinks at all. After all, the Force is not God. But it does seem to have a will). Perhaps the Force, in its quest for the fabled balance, knows what must happen and what would turn the Chosen One's allegiance to the darkness.

Now, here's my theory on the whole thing of the Chosen One. Why could it not have been Obi-Wan or somesuch? Simple answer: The Chosen One is someone who has stared into the darkness both in the Galaxy and in himself and chooses the light in the end. It is a trait that (in 1999) made me think that episode 3 would reveal Luke Skywalker to be the Chosen One. Father and son both make that choice before the end.

Anakin has seen the darkness both in his experiences as a Jedi and in that Tusken camp 10 years after he left Tatooine for the first time. The darkness that attracts him, however, preys on the very conflicts that have tormented him since his first days in the Temple. Anakin has felt held-back and impotent and Palpatine offers him complete 'freedom.' He is promised power over death and power in life by Palpatine, who seems to have both as a politician and a Sith Lord.

No wonder it is so attractive.

So, what then, is attractive enough to make him turn back? Again, my explanation has a bit to do with Luke. Luke, on the gantry at Bespin, is given the same choice as his father. Vader promises him power to end the conflict that Luke has seen claim the lives of friends and family alike and the "unlimited power" of the Dark Side.

I seriously think that Luke might have looked at that option hard and had to decide whether or not it was attractive enough. He, on the other hand, faced it with a full knowledge of what the results had been. Vader accepted the darkness expecting everything and getting an empty life in return. Luke chooses to fall, possibly to his death, to avoid that.

I believe that is the real source of the "conflict." Luke probably could have noticed a conflict in Vader at Bespin--after all, he sensed a lot about that cave on Dagobah--but Vader was single-minded and almost selfish at the time of Bespin. Between then and their next meeting at the bunker on Endor, he has probably thought long and hard about what made Luke refuse him.

By Endor, he has recognized some of those same morals in himself because they are something that he possessed in a small degree through every single one of the prequel movies. The conflict that Luke recognizes in ROTJ is the same one that made Anakin Skywalker hesitate in Palpatine's office in ROTS.

And ultimately, that conflict is the one that mattered.