CT What was Palpatine's plan in the throne room in RotJ?

In the big final fight at the end of RotJ, Palpatine seems to believe that if he can goad Luke into giving in to hatred and anger, Luke will become his apprentice or otherwise join him. At the very least, he clearly sees "piss Luke off so much he really wants to kill me" as very much a good thing to be doing.

Why would he think this? I mean, I get that if Luke gives into hatred and anger he could fall to the dark side, but wouldn't that just means Luke then uses the dark side to try to kill Palpatine? Usually when someone falls to the dark side out of hatred of someone, they don't then do an immediate about face and become that person's servant for life. Like when Anakin fell, he didn't hate Palpatine, he saw him as a friend--it was the Jedi, especially Obi-Wan, that he hated. So when he fell, he tried to kill Jedi and ended up working for Palpatine. The dark side just took his already-developing allegiances and magnified them.

With Luke, that dynamic didn't exist at all. Palpatine was his straight up enemy, and doing everything possibly to stoke Luke's hatred for him, while also trying to manipulate Luke into killing his own father. The logical conclusion would be that if Luke really did snap and go full dark side, it wouldn't be to join Palpatine, it would be to try to kill him.

I mean was that the point, was this all some elaborate Sith suicide? Palpatine seems a little too selfish and narcissistic for that imo. But assuming he didn't actually intend that scene to end with his death, what was his actual plan. Was he actually just working off a gameplan of:

Step 1.) Make Luke incredibly pissed off at me
Step 2.) ?????
Step 3.) Profit

Or was there something more to that? Does falling to the Dark Side override your normal personality so you have to become a sith servant regardless of your intentions? Is Palpatine like some kind of Sith Sauron, able to bend other dark siders to his will? How was his evil plan supposed to work?

 

The Emperor was in no danger of Luke killing him. As we say, he could easily take Luke down if he wanted to. The Emperor wanted Luke to release his anger and tap into the Dark Side to kill Vader. Then manipulate him into becoming his new apprentice, possibly with the promise he would spare Han and Leia.

 

The throne room was only the beginning of Palp's plan, an opportunity to rid himself of Vader, who had been with him too long and was toying with treason. After turning Luke to the dark side and wiping out the Rebellion, he'd have years to bring Luke around to his own side. Remember that Palps always plays the long game.

 

I always figured that The Emperor thought that if Luke got angry enough, he'd use the Dark Side and by getting a taste of the Pow-er of the Dark Side, Luke would get addicted to it (presumably just as Anakin did) and that he'd be willing to serve him in order to keep learning how to use the power.

Post PT, that sounds somewhat simplistic, but I think it's generally still an effective explanation.

 

Palpatine's plan is what we see. Force the two of them to fight and whoever won, would be his Apprentice.

 

No no no, that's spelled (and pronounced) "POW-AH!" Get it right, noob!

 

Luke can go ahead and try to kill Palpatine, but Palpatine would just beat him into submission. Palpatine would just break Luke with force, threats of force, emotional manipulation, etc. Part of his plan seems to be to get Luke to accept that the dark side is his destiny, that it is inevitable, like his father before him. He wants Luke to be like Vader was at the end of ROTS, resigned to his fate. Killing off all his friends, and having Luke kill his own father, would leave Luke all alone, similar to the way Vader was alone after betraying his friends and killing Padme.

 

his plan?

 

I don't see Anakin as seeing Palpatine as a friend. He hated him after learning he was a Sith. This was the person who turned the galaxy against itself in a civil war that killed billions, including many Jedi. He only gave into the dark side for the sake of saving his wife in an irrational fear of her death. He killed the Jedi out of desperation and fear rather than hatred. Obi-Wan was only hated after he was confused that he tried to turn Padme against him to kill him on Mustufar. Anakin also later blames Obi-Wan for why Padme died, which he thought he did himself. This is probably later on why he hated the Jedi so much. It wasn't initially his feeling of them.

For the scene on the second Death Star, Palpatine intended Luke to try and kill while fully embracing the dark side. He would've killed Vader first and made himself as a replacement apprentice. He expected Luke to try and kill him too, but Palpatine anticipated injuring Luke to the point he has to become a dependent cyborg like his father did and depends on the Emperor for his every waking move to survive. Think of the alternate ending to the Force Unleashed II where Starkiller becomes his apprentice after killing Vader.

 

"At this point, Vader’s plan really, now that he knows he’s his son, is to convince him to come with him. Join the dark side and together they’re going to overthrow the Emperor, which is the thematic devices used through the whole movies in terms of the Sith, which is Sith Lords are usually no more than two because if there are three, then two of them will gang up on one to try to become the dominate Sith. Anakin would have been able to do it if he hadn’t been debilitated and now he’s half machine and half man, so he’s lost a lot of the power of the Force, and he’s lost a lot of his ability to be more powerful then the Emperor. But Luke hasn’t. Luke is Vader’s hope. His motives at this point are purely evil. He simply wants to continue on what he was doing before which is get rid of the Emperor and make himself Emperor. He only sees his son as a mechanism for the ambition. His mad lust of power."

--George Lucas, TESB DVD Commentary.

"And when he finds out Luke is his son, his first impulse is to figure out a way of getting him to join him to kill the Emperor. That's what Siths do! He tries it with anybody he thinks might be more powerful, which is what the Emperor was looking for in the first place: somebody who would be more powerful than he was and could help him rule the universe. But Obi-Wan screwed that up by cutting off his arms and legs and burning him up. From then on, he wasn't as strong as the Emperor -- he was like Darth Maul or Count Dooku. He wasn't what he was supposed to become. But the son could become that."

--George Lucas, Rolling Stones Interview, 2005.

"The Emperor wants Luke to kill Vader so that he will have a new young Jedi. Let's face it Vader is half mechanical and he is not half as good as he could be. He is not nearly as good as he was hoping Anakin would become because Anakin ends up in the suit. He is hoping he gets a new better apprentice in Luke. If he kills his father then he would take his place as an apprentice; which actually there is something that in the next film is how Anakin becomes his apprentice. There are a lot of things repeated in these movies. Fathers vs Sons."

--George Lucas, ROTJ DVD Commentary.

 

Yeah, it's a hate triangle. Palpatine wanted to live, Vader wanted to live, Luke wanted to live; but each was prepared to sacrifice. Luke more so than Palpatine or Vader was willing to die, he literally went there to potentially give his life so the Rebels could win.

Palpatine would take either Vader or Luke but perhaps wanted both. Vader simply wanted Luke but would settle for Palpatine. They all knew each other's motivations.

 

Palpatine probably wanted both of them short-term, but only one of them long-term. I think this was what Vader was counting on. He'd let Palpatine turn Luke, then all three of them would chill together for a little while as one big happy dark side family, kind of like Palpatine, Dooku, and Ventress did. Then it would only be a matter of Vader convincing Luke to join with him against Palpatine. Of course, the whole time Palpatine would also be trying to get Luke to kill Vader. They all know exactly what the deal is. It's just a matter of who plays the game best.

Sith power dynamics are messed up.

 

One thing too, at least in my opinion - at the end there, Luke hated VADER more than Palpatine. He's already given up the fight, and is hiding. But when Vader brings up his newly discovered sister, and threatens to turn her to the Darrk Side instead, it unleashes a rage in Luke never seen before, and allows him to not only defeat Vader, but have the very real potential, hate, and motivation to kill Vader instead of Palpatine. As far as becoming Palpatine's apprentice, he already has the hook - there is someone else out there to make the next Sith Lord if Luke refuses, and it's no less that the person Luke loves more than anyone else in the Universe. So it would come full circle, with both Skywalkers falling to the influence of Sidious, to save the person they love most. And both would backfire and cause the very death of the person they were trying to protect / save - eventually it would come to a confrontation of Luke and the Empire against the remaining Rebels. And if he was fully immersed in the Dark Side, he would likely see Leia as his enemy, and hurt or kill her, much like Anakin, in a Sith rage, hurt and tried to kill his wife, the very person he turned to the Dark Side to try and save.

 

Exactly. Sidious was tired of Vader. He was dying to replace him. As we saw, he was filled with rage when Luke refused to join him. He didn't want Vader to remain. Of course, Vader was very conflicted, as he was a psychological mess, but we've discussed that in other threads. Sidious was very single-minded in the throne room, and Luke's decision genuinely shocked and infuriated him.

 

Palpatine is a sociopath, he doesn't know much about internal conflict.

Palpatine was arrogant, he thought he could control Luke, just like he thought he could control Vader. His overconfidence was his downfall.

We know from Lords of the Sith as well as Tarkin that Vader admires the Emperor after ROTS and until ANH. To Vader, the Emperor is the greatest thing since sliced bread and an important father figure. Only after ANH his lies are revealed and certain other events take place that make Vader start despise the Emperor (Kieron Gillen's Darth Vader). So that's the take of the storygroup.

And I am ready to roll with that because it makes no sense to me that Vader would serve a master he hates for two decades.

 

I have always had a problem with this argument. Always. We're supposed to believe that Anakin's connection to the Force weakened after losing his limbs and nearly being incinerated on Mustafar. Yet, his connection became stronger after he lost a part of his arm on Geonosis, three years earlier.

This was poor writing on Lucas' part.

As for Palpatine's plan . . . I don't know. The man had a talented for playing things by ear. I've always wondered what would have happened if Anakin had killed Luke. Or if he had never stopped Palpatine from killing Luke. Would the Emperor have begun a search for another apprentice?

 

Losing his forearm wasn't that detrimental to Anakin. What was, however, was suffering an even more serious form of injury that not only took his other limbs, but also damaged his organs as well. We don't see all of what was done to Anakin while he was being operated on, but what was done was enough so that his power in the Force was diminished. We know that he is strong enough to hold up an Imperial Walker as shown in "The Siege Of Lothal", but he couldn't do the things that he once was capable of doing. Note that even Darth Maul is diminished as well. He could hold his own against Obi-wan as before, but he was no match for Palpatine and had struggled against Pre Vizsla.

 

The way I saw it was that he was being very duplicitous and smart about his plan, and attempting to keep everyone a leash until the right moment. There are three stages of this: what he pretends he's doing, what he deliberately leads Vader to suspect he is doing, and what he is actually doing.

What he's pretending: That he wants Luke to join himself and Vader on the dark side. He is wise enough though to know that neither Vader or Luke will ever believe this, and surmises that they will think that what is happening is...

What he leads them to think he's doing: Playing both Luke and Vader off against each other in an effort to narrow them down to one victorious Sith, who gets to stay as his apprentice. Vader willingly engages Luke in battle as he knows (or thinks he knows) that either he or Luke has to die in that room. But Vader, as far as I can see, doesn't realise that...

What he's actually doing: Getting Luke to kill Vader and take his place.

At the moment when Vader is pretty much defeated and Luke is in position to kill him, Palpatine reveals his true intention and orders Luke to kill Vader without a moment's hesitation or any emotion. He has clearly planned this from the start and has totally swindled Vader. Up to this point, everything has gone perfectly for Palpatine.

Then something monumental happens that Palpatine has not accounted for - Luke does not turn, and point blank refuses to kill Vader, join him as an apprentice or even turn to the dark side at all. It had not even crossed Palpatine's mind that this might happen and so his instinct is to fall back on his pure rage and destroy Luke. But as this is such an unexpected turn of events, he has not thought this through fully and has forgotten that Vader is still alive and that Palpatine has just severed any remaining loyalty or trust that Vader had in him. He forgets that Vader and Luke now share a common enemy and have forged a genuine bond, and now Palpatine is murdering Luke right in front of Vader. And so the inevitable happens, and Vader lunges for him, which Palpatine hadn't had the time or foresight to consider due to Luke's totally unexpected turning of the tables.

And before he knows it he's dead. So basically, he had everything planned on several levels, but it all depended on Luke murdering his father as his baptism into the dark side. When that didn't happen, things turned bad for Palpatine very quickly and he was done for.

 

I think it was sort of like a "may the best man win" contest. Whoever won would be Palpatine's new slave...oh, sorry, I meant apprentice.

But obviously he wanted it to be Luke because he wasn't in a mechanical suit that hindered his abilities.

 

Pretty much. It's okay to say that. Matthew Stover drew from Anakin's experiences as a slave a bit while writing the ROTS novelization.

Like Darth Pevra said, Sidious is a sociopath. He knows nothing of internal conflict. His overconfidence was indeed his weakness, as Luke perceived. Of course, given all of Palpatine's success in the prequel films and in the EU, it's hardly surprising that he would be overconfident. He just couldn't foresee Vader's change of heart and redemption. and that cost him.

 

This is the approach that Dark Empire took.

 

That is not canon anymore and I think the real reasons will be revealed to be more complicated than that. After ANH, Palpatine and Vader are both unhappy. Vader is even demoted. But in Empire, Vader is more powerful than ever and commands all the imperial forces. How is that? My suspicions? Vader amasses so many resources that the Emperor simply can't do without him, because otherwise he loses the war against the Rebels for certain. But when he finally wins the war against the Rebellion, which in his arrogance he is certain he will, he won't need Vader anymore.

Your post is contradictory. You state that his plan was smart and he "had everything planned on several levels", yet you also say that Palpatine was surprised and monumental things happened that Palpatine didn't account for and "he has not thought this through fully" just a paragraph before you say he has planned for every eventuality.

 

Vader as he is in the suit isn't what Palpatine was hoping for, but he still made good use out of him because he was already experienced and easily kept in line.

"The interesting thing about these movies is that they refer back to lots of cinematic influences," McDiarmid explains. "When my face changes in the film, my mind went back to the early silent movie of The Phantom of the Opera with Lon Chaney. In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin makes a Faustian pact with the devil, and I do everything I can to use him as raw material in every sense to become the best apprentice yet. So even when he's horribly savaged from the fight and it's not clear if he'll live, he's reborn as this Frankenstein monster. Sidious then realizes Vader will be an even greater asset because his humanity has been mechanized, which is exactly what happens to people when they are seduced by Fascism."

--Ian McDiramid, Homing Beacon interview, 2005.

So in that sense, Palpatine is content with Vader. Then Luke comes along and Vader talks about turning him rather than just killing him outright. That's when Palpatine sees the potential in Anakin 2.0 with Luke.

 

Anakin wanted to kill Palpatine, too. Palpatine knows this, but he always has something to hold over Vader's head. He would have done the same with Luke. It's right there in the story.

 

I've never really bought this argument that losing a limb and having it replaced by something metal or plastic makes a person less than human. Actually, I don't believe that giving in to evil makes a person less than human or sentient either.

But Anakin could do so much with just his mind. He doesn't really need his limbs. Actually, I believe the same could be said for any Force user.