Saga Keeping the name Skywalker - Why?

When I see ROTS and they decided to send Luke away to Tatooine to stay with his Aunt and Uncle, thus setting up for ANH, I can't help but wonder why they let him keep the name Skywalker?

Now im not sure how much a common name Skywalker is in the SW Universe, but it stands out and does seem rather dangrous to let Luke use that name.

I mean, when someone called Anakin Skywalker, the only human podracer who won a race at Mos Espa, surley no one would forget that over all those years. I know Jabba was asleep as it happened, but you can't tell me didn't know about it afterwards. In ROTJ when he sees Luke, you would have thought the name Skywalker would of jogged his memory.

And it does seem Luke wasn't allowed to mingle with many people bar those at Toshi Station? Maybe places like Mos Eisley/Espa were off limits to him which is why Obi Wan is explaining it to him as they look at it (although this could just be a way of informing us, the audience, of that this place is like).

I don't know how sheltered he was on Tatooine, but you would have thought he would have took the name Lars until he first met Obi Wan, and he could say something like 'Your real name is Luke Skywalker, your name was changed to protect you from the man who murdered your father, Darth Vader".

So anyone know why they chose to stick with Skywalker? I know Vader knew he had no children so it may not give away anything, but surley with a name like Skywalker, word would spread a bit here and there...

Obviously, he needs the last name Skywalker, but at least growing up, Obi Wan could have told them to let him use the last name of Lars.

 

I think the official story is that Skywalker is a more common name than we originally may have thought.

 

Tatooine is in the Outer Rim. Vader has no reason to return there or check in on its denizens. He thinks his baby died with Padme. Skywalker is just another last name, even if it isn't as commonplace as say Smith or Jones in America or the UK. What are you suggesting might take place instead of the events we see on-screen?

 

Wasn't Luke's last name basically what allowed Vader to identify him as his son in the first place? I think the OP's point may be more valid than people think.

 

I'll be honest, with the films on their own terms and no stuff from the EU or other outside sources it does not make much sense as with a couple of other things in the saga. I mean Vader has 19 years to scour the Galaxy looking for Jedi who he would probably figuring are hiding in the more "out of the way" backwoods areas that are more reclusive and logical to try and hide in. And I think we also figure he's got a lot of soldiers and spies under his command in doing so. It's possible that they missed out on learning of a Skywalker living with a Lars family, but with the amount of time and manpower I do question it.

The behind-the-scenes answer for this would probably have to be the fact that from what I understand many people have said that A NEW HOPE was working on a different back story than the others, holding more true to Ben's speech to Luke concerning Vader killing his father. (The prequels weren't the first films that decided to retcon the truthfulness of his story) Thus he wouldn't know of the family background of the Skywalker and Lars families. Probably also wouldn't care quite as much to check it out. As I said, there's a chance that they would be missed, but with all of his forces out there and the fact that the Lars' weren't exactly trying to hide themselves or Luke's name I think there's as much or maybe more of a chance that they would have somehow been found out. You also have to question why Owen and Beru wouldn't have just changed his name as a precaution anyway regardless of them being found or not.

If you take the Skywalker is a generic name thing than maybe it could work, but it is about as good as the whole Obi-Wan/Yoda Youngling mentor explanation concerning Ben's words on who trained him in EMPIRE. Pretty valid but definitely something made up to cover a hole in the plot. And for laughs (or probably just me laughing to myself) here were my first thoughts when I heard the Skywalker=Smith thing.

"He must be the son of Skywalker."

"Bill Skywalker?"

"No."

"Herbert Skywalker?"

"No."

"Melvin Skyw..."

"No, you're son you idiot!"

 

And wow I can't spell. Used you're in the place of your.

 

The official explanation isn't particularly convincing. If the films were made 1 to 6 I'm sure they wouldn't share a surname.

 

Wow. I've never thought of this. It was kind of a sloppy move when you think about it. If Luke is supposed to be in some galactic quasi-witness protection program then you'd think the first thing they'd do is change his last name. Leia's was changed, after all. But then again her adoptive parents were much higher profile, weren't they? I suppose maybe the main focus here shouldn't be how commonplace the last name "Skywalker" is but how little the universe cares about anyone on Tatooine.

 

Just another one of those details that doesn't quite ring true when the films were made in the order that they were and with a different story and characters at the start than at the end.

 

Which is a point I brought up earlier. A Jedi on the run wouldn't hide somewhere highly populated and deep within the Empire like Coruscant. They'd hide in the more far off and secluded places (Case in point Obi-Wan hiding on Tatooine and Yoda on Dagobah). I think that Vader or at least somebody in the Empire would be able to figure that.

 

Bingo! It's the biggest plot hole in the entire series. And the fault lies not with the PT, but with the shoddy construction of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

Think about it: Yoda and Obi-Wan are training Luke to whack Vader, not redeem him.

As far as I see it, there are two ways to go about this:

(1) Give Luke a false identity, and mold him into their little emotionally detached hitman. This way, Vader's just another Sith who needs killing.
(2) Retain Luke's identity, tell him the truth about his heritage, and spend years molding him into an enlightened warrior who sees the moral necessity of murdering his evil father.



But what do these two morons do, instead?

--They give the kid the Skywalker handle. (Thus attracting Vader's immediate attention the moment Luke starts causing trouble in the galaxy.)

--They lie to the kid, telling him Vader killed his Pappy. (Thus inflaming Luke's rage at Vader and later engendering distrust with his Jedi instructors when the truth is revealed.)

--They neglect to come clean when the kid declares his intentions to fly to Cloud City. (Thus setting Luke up for a colossal mind-screw and potential demise/Dark Side conversion in his fight with Vader.)


This is unfathomably stupid, even for a couple of schmucks who went into war with the clones of Count Dooku's personal bodyguard.

 

Nah, it goes all the way back to the original (especially if you consider the deleted scenes which would have made clear that Luke's father was a famous war hero): Darth Vader betrays and murders Father Skywalker, and hunts down the Jedi. Luke's Jedi potential is revealed in relation to his lineage, so even at the beginning of the story we have a situation where Vader finding Luke "Skywalker" is horribly dangerous.

 

lol, I maintain the theory that the less you think about Star Wars the more you enjoy it.

 

I think that makes more sense than anything. We never even hear him call himself "Luke Skywalker" until he finds Leia in the prison cell.

 

I disagree. ANH is faultless for three reasons:

(1) The implication that Poppa Skywalker was only one of many Jedi Knights whom Darth Vader murdered; accordingly, I highly doubt any manhunt for Skywalker Junior would be as relentless and all-encompassing as that conducted against Vader's own son.

(2) Obi-Wan wasn't planning on getting killed the day after he met Luke; the prolonged tutelage would have afforded him ample time to mold the boy into a fearless, Sith-whacking knight.

(3) The danger to Luke was limited to death, not to Dark Side-conversion. Unlike TESB and ROTJ, the original film never suggests that merely killing out of anger or honor automatically transforms one into a Sith Lord. Luke was rendered as pure as the driven snow.

 

Agree with drg4, I do.

 

But didn't Biggs call him Luke Skywalker in the Yavin 4 hangar scene before the Death Star battle, meaning that Luke was using the name Skywalker before Obi-Wan told him about his family history.

 

Im on the fence about where the fault lies. I can see that its a problem with ANH, maybe not. Its at least a problem with TESB and ROTJ. Its not the fault of the prequels. If anything at all. The Prequels are there to help fix this problem. Because one thing I feel pretty certain about after watching ROTS. If there is one place in the Galaxy that Vader is not going to step foot on, its Tatooine. You see in ANH that he doesn't go down to the planet to find the droids with the stolen plans. He sends Stormies and then hot foots it back to the Death Star. He's not going down there.

 

Well, if the Prequels were meant to 'fix' this 'problem', I think that they actually ended up making the problem worse . In the PT, Anakin (who is also Vader) is from Tatooine, so they 'hide' Luke from the Sith on the very planet that one of the Sith is from . As for Vader "never going back to Tatooine", that's an after-the-fact rationalization to cover the absurdity of Luke 'hiding' from his father on his father's home-planet and with his father's family.

Here's the break-down for the saga:

ANH: Annikin (who is separate from Vader) is from Tatooine; Ben is NOT (he is exiled there). There's no stated 'mandate' for Vader to find any children of his former comrades (the JEdi).

ESB: by itself, without ROTJ at best says that Vader is Luke's father, not that he's necessarily Annikn/Anakin or 'use to be' Anakin/Annikin. So him - Vader, Luke's 'father' - being from Tatooine is not established yet.

ROTJ: Luke's father - now 'Anakin' - became Darth Vader. He was NOT from Tatooine, nor related to the Lars, but BEN/OBI-WAN IS...hence why Luke is 'hidden from his father' on Tatooine.

PT: same as ROTJ, except now ANAKIN is from Tatooine but Ben/Obi-Wan is not (both like in ANH), except that Anakin is also Vader.

So how does the PT 'fix' ROTJ or the OT, here? By giving a rationalization that wasn't necessary in the first place (and hadn't been for years)?

 

First, I didnt really mean that the prequels were meant to fix it. Just that they do, help an otherwise not too big a deal problem. Its not an after-the-fact rationalization. Its an after-the-fact REALIZATION. With no regard to anything but the movies and what we see on screen, there isn't any part of me that thinks Vader would do anything other than avoid that place like the plague.

Its a minor problem in the original film that he doesn't go down to the planet personally to find the plans. He personally attacked Leia's ship. Personally crushed that guys throat. And as soon as he realized that she hid the plans in the pod, he sends some troops down and bails like its no big deal. Then on the Death Star he's getting guff from some dudes about you haven't been able to find the stolen plans. He should have been down there finding them.

But now..post ROTS, I know why. (i understand it wasn't planned in 77 of course) The droids and the pod landed not but maybe 5-10 miles from the very spot his mom is buried. You think he's going down there? No way. Think she'd still say how handsome he looks and how proud of him she is. I bet gets the heebie jeebies just being near it.

So the question of hiding Luke in the VERY PLACE THE SITH IS FROM reads a little more to me like hiding him in THE ONE PLACE VADER WOULDN'T LOOK. And that seemed very obvious to me when watching the final scene of ROTS.

When Luke says I'm never coming back to this planet again, he means it. And he doesn't have have the reason to that DV has.

 

Total nonsense. Luke's father = Anakin.

None of these things were established by the film. ROTJ did not erase the ANH material about Anakin being from Tatooine.

That "absurdity" was created by the OT ( specifically TESB/ROTJ ), not the PT. Anakin was from Tatooine in the OT.

 

What's interesting to me is that in the deleted section of the reunion with Biggs, Red Leader calls him Skywalker and proceeds to tell him that he flew with Luke's father. So in ANH at least, Anakin Skywalker must have been fairly well known. Given how Obi-Wan talks about Anakin, it isn't surprising. But here's that thing - that carries over into the prequels. Anakin is the Chosen One. He is well acquainted with the Republic soldiers but more than that he has relationships with the Senators, namely Bail Organa and Jar Jar Binks. Anakin is a war hero.

Lucas doesn't even attempt to hide Anakin's identity in the prequels. Instead, the galaxy is meant to believe he is dead. It's probable that the Emperor created a story that said Anakin was killed in the Jedi Temple or during Order 66. So the first thing that needs to be made clear is that as far as the galaxy is concerned, Vader is dead.

Now, on to Luke...first it should be noted that Obi-Wan only changes his first name. He retains the name Kenobi, a name that may draw even more attention than Skywalker. Kenobi is probably viewed as one of the chief orchestrators in the supposed Jedi plot given that he is on the Council in ROTS. Given that Obi-Wan goes straight to the Lars homestead in Sith, it's also likely that Anakin told him of his mother at some point after AOTC. Remember, Obi-Wan never met Watto so it's unlikely he would have gone to the junk dealer for information the way Anakin did.

So Obi-Wan keeps his surname and knows of the Lars family.

But what about Luke? Well Vader has no knowledge of Luke. As far as he knows, Padme died without giving birth. Thus he has no reason to even look for Luke. Is it as simple as Skywalker being a common name? As contrived as it may seem, I think this is perfectly valid. The name Skywalker is never mentioned as being special. In fact it is the name of a slave. Shmi Skywalker is a slave. There is no apparent significance to her life, no lineage of any worth. There's nothing special about her at all. This indicates that Skywalker, as strange as it is to us, in the GFFA it's probably pretty common.

There is a perfect real world example that we can point to of a "chosen" person in our history who had a profound effect on people - Yeshua. Yeshua is the Aramaic name of Jesus and it was a pretty common name in ancient Judea and Galilee.

But even so, the Lars raising a child called Skywalker might be a little suspicious. I don't think Vader would have gone back to Tatooine. The Lars are killed in ANH and there's no reaction. This of course is a consequence of ANH being written before Vader and Anakin were merged but taken in the context of the entire saga, it's likely that Vader didn't even know.

As I pointed out already, even though Kenobi knows about Tatooine, it holds no significance for him. The only time he went there he stayed on the ship with Panaka, sipping cocktails...at least that's what I choose to believe. There is no reason for Vader to look for Kenobi there, just as there is no reason for him to look for Yoda on Dagobah.

But for arguments sake, let's say that Vader wanted to make sure the name Skywalker couldn't be traced back to him. Let's say he went to Tatooine or sent a representative to check on the Lars family. They have a child. There are three years between AOTC and ROTS. It's entirely possible that Owen and Beru could have had a child of his own so if anyone does show up, it's Luke Lars. But why would Vader go to Tatooine? There is nothing for him there. His mother is dead and he has no real connection with the Lars family. He was with them for a day, maybe two. Then he moved on. Vader would be in no rush to go back there and be reminded of his old self.

If anything, Leia's existence is more suspicious than Luke's given that she's adopted by the Organa's pretty much straight after the death of Padme. If Vader did believe that he had a child out there, then a well known politician, someone who was at the very least a colleague of Padme's suddenly showing up with a child would be far more likely to get Vader

 

Taking things for face value in the films (which is how most PT criticism goes, which means no use of novelizations and EU) however they never say that Anikan/Vader is not related to the Lars family at any point in time. I think if Owen was meant to be Obi-Wan's brother in the final draft then they would've included it in the actual picture. If I remember correctly the novelizations had a few elements from earlier scripts that were not in the final products (Heck, wasn't Yoda blue in the TESB novelization as was originally planned for the film). Wasn't even a deleted scenes? (I haven't gotten the Blu-Ray set yet, but I don't think it was) With the films how they are and taking what they tell us in the OT then the conclusion would have to be that Vader is from Tatooine.

Thought this has got me wondering. The step-sibling concept helped explain why Owen and Beru had different last names from Skywalker. If Owen was to be Obi-Wan's brother than it wouldn't make sense to have different last names (Kenobi and Lars) unless they changed their names to go into hiding, the main issue with that being that Luke was openly using the last name Skywalker (which if they were deep in hiding would've been detrimental) and Obi-Wan probably would have changed his last name as well for good measure.

And including the PT as the other poster said, they do try and establish a reason for why Vader wouldn't go there.

I think what another poster said was right. The less you think about STAR WARS the more you enjoy it. 'Cause if you go poking around too hard in the films you can find a lot of things like this in both trilogies. Take it in broad strokes.

 

With ESB by itself and before ROTJ , the above 'equation' is NOT "established"...at best, it showed the possibility that Vader = Luke's 'real' father (but someone other than the guy that Obi-Wan talked about at his home in the first film).

The Obi-Wan/Lars connection was not established by the film , but it was in the shooting script, and was thus the intent at the time the movie was shot (possibly all the way up to the editing stage - at which it was cut for pacing reasons). In this scenario, it was Obi-Wan who was from Tatooine, and not Anakin.

Anakin being from Tatooine, otoh, is not 'confirmed' by Obi-Wan during the Dagobah convo - a conversion that already ret-cons several notions from the first 'history lesson' he gave in the first film (Anakin being a full Jedi Knight, having fought in the Wars as a Jedi and not 'just as a pilot', etc.).

On the contrary, it did not confirm several points from the ANH/SW back-story exposition at Ben's house. The high likely hood is that it 'erased' the from-Tatooine notion just as surely as it 'erased' several other notions present in the scene at Ben's hut.

"Anakin (or Annikin) was from Tatooine" only definitively speaking with ANH/SW. The 'Anakin' who resulted from the merger of 'Annikin' with Vader was most likely not from Tatooine or related to the Lars family (not even as a 'step' relation). Thus the absurdity couldn't have been "created by the OT". It was the PT that 'stuck' with or 'went back to' ANH/SW era 'continuity' regarding Anakin* while simultaneously maintaining the contradictory notion of Luke being "hidden from the Sith/his Father" circa ROTJ** (except now Vader/Anakin is from Tatooine ) and thus oblivious to the unwieldy nature of the newer amalgamated sub-plot.

*PT Anakin - like 'Annikin' - was a full Knight, fought in the Clone Wars as a full Knight, was from Tatooine, etc.

**and remember, there was no talk of Luke being "hidden" on Tatooine in ANH/SW nor ESB.