Fridge / Revenge of the Sith

Fridge Brilliance:

• The big cover-up surrounding Padmé's death seems implausible at first glance since the ones calling for it (so as to hide the survival of her children) are fugitives. However, it is actually setup to all focus on C-3PO. When Padmé leaves Coruscant, she responds to her bodyguard's objections by stating that she has Threepio with her. While Anakin and Obi-Wan were fighting, Threepio put the unconscious Padmé back aboard her ship. It is then made very clear that Threepio, not Obi-Wan, pilots the ship when they leave Mustafar. Since people in the galaxy tend to have a low opinion of droid creativity, it would be easy to fabricate the story that Threepio, unsure of what to do about his injured mistress, who was supposedly otherwise alone, sought out another familiar human authority figure, Bail Organa, for direction. Bail can claim that Padmé was DOA by the time he rendezvoused with Threepio. He then has the protocol droid's memory erased to cover up any record of what really occurred. All that anybody knew was that Padmé had died and Prince Bail had recovered her body from her droid-piloted ship. He could then announce her death to the public without drawing any suspicion to himself, while still concealing Obi-Wan, Yoda and the children.
• When Palpatine starts flinging pieces of the Senate at Yoda, he is also symbolically throwing away unneeded members and opinions of the Galactic Empire. Hell, the simple fact that Yoda and Palpatine are fighting for the fate of the galaxy, right at the very heart of it.
  • More than that. Palpatine is throwing the Senator's speaking pods at Yoda as weapons. Symbolically, he is destroying the last vestiges of the Republic's democracy in his fight with Yoda, and Yoda can't do a thing to stop it. All he can do is redirect the missiles back at Palpatine. . . still symbolically destroying the Republic around them. Powerfully illustrates that Palpatine effortlessly maneuvered the Jedi into a no win situation.
• Why didn't Palpatine stop his own lightning when it was disfiguring his face? Aside from the Wounded Gazelle Gambit he was pulling to gain Anakin's assistance, he was also very clearly Drunk on the Dark Side. This is shown again and again to be his biggest weakness: he's so busy torturing Luke in RotJ that he can't stop Vader from throwing him down a reactor shaft; he's on such a high from frying the entire Resistance with his Chain Lightning that he continues pumping lightning even when Rey advances on him, eventually destroying him with his own lightning; so it makes sense that he wouldn't stop himself even when Mace was reflecting his own lightning back onto him. He'd pretty well lost his self-control by that point - the Sith use their emotions and passion to fuel their powers, and his Force Lightning is undoubtedly his strongest physical power in his arsenal, so it would make sense he'd get overly emotional and lose control...
• As the Vader mask is lowered onto Anakin's head, we see that the mask's HUD is colored red and black, the two primary colors of Mustafar, the planet where his life changed forever. It lends a greater poignancy to the line "Let me look on you with my own eyes..." in Return of the Jedi, because as Darth Vader, he was constantly reminded of the pain and suffering he'd endured and inflicted there.
• In Attack of the Clones, when Anakin briefly lost his lightsaber, Obi-Wan said to him "This weapon is your life" as he gave it back. In this film, when Obi-Wan grabs Anakin's lightsaber before leaving him, he's accepting that Anakin is gone.
• "Only a Sith deals in absolutes." Well, a Sith was corrupting all of them until they found out too late.
• At the end of Revenge of the Sith, we all know that Obi-Wan misses possibly his best opportunity to finish off Vader once and for all. There's a few explanations attempted (he sensed Palpatine coming, etc.), but he still could've taken the, what, second and a half it would've taken to finish off Anakin, right? Then I read this sentence in If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: "On the other hand, if a Jedi is completely calm, unswayed by anger or fear, they can kill without risk of falling to the Dark Side." At that moment, Obi-Wan is overcome by fear and anger, because of the betrayal of his apprentice and friend. He couldn't have killed Anakin in that moment without risking falling to the Dark Side himself.
  • According to the novelization, Obi-Wan knew that to kill him would be to show mercy. "He was not feeling particularly merciful." He wanted Anakin to burn.
    • He also left it to the Force.
  • Obi-Wan didn't expect Vader to survive. Vader lost all three of his remaining real limbs and he was on fire. In a book set shortly after Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan is clearly surprised to hear Vader is still alive and kicking. Anakin was also the closest thing Obi-Wan would ever have to a son. He couldn't bring himself to strike a killing blow on a man who was essentially his child.
    • Except that by this point Obi-Wan is in his mid-30's and sitting around Tatooine doing nothing but watch over their new Chosen One (why, exactly, Leia, with equal potential and an adoptive father that wanted her to fight the Empire was not a better candidate is a case of gender-based Unfortunate Implications). Obi-Wan could have tried going out and doing his own dirty work instead of waiting for Luke to grow old enough to potentially commit patricide.
    • Except it's not a case of Unfortunate Implications, but of unfortunate locations. Luke isn't the best candidate because he's male, but because he's outside the Empire's sphere of influence. If I remember correctly, the Organas wanted to adopt a little girl, which meant they'd choose Leia instead of Luke. Now, call me crazy, but it'd probably be a little too noticeable if they started training the daughter of a Senator to use the Force against the Empire, and would've just led to her being trained or killed by Palpatine. If the Organas had wanted to adopt a son, Leia Skywalker would've been the hero while Prince Luke was the face of the Alliance.
    • Actually, Leia basically is a Jedi Consular with everything but the Force training. Obi-Wan and Yoda may actually have planned for her to get training as well, but it didn't work out.
• Obi-Wan told Yoda before leaving for Mustafar that he refused to kill Anakin and he couldn't do it because Anakin was like his brother. Yoda sent him to Mustafar anyway because there was nobody else who could go (Yoda himself had to deal with Darth Sidious) and Obi-Wan did exactly what he said he would do if Yoda sent him there.
• As Yoda tells Luke in The Empire Strikes Back: "Do or Do Not. There is no Try." Obi-Wan and Anakin's exchange before their fight lays out exactly how the audience already knows this will go.
  Obi-Wan: I will do what I must.
  Anakin: You will try.
• After a few ties watching the Yoda vs Palpatine fight scene I saw something, at the very end, just as Yoda manages to deflect the final force attack, you see him reeling back from it, and just before he rebounds and deflects it you can see his expression change, he is PISSED, and it's this surge of anger that gives him the ability to save himself at the last second, and also why he ran immediately after, it wasn't that he didn't have the power to challenge him, but that he realized he couldn't do so without falling to unleashing the anger at what Palpatine had managed to do, and why no Jedi alive at the time stood a chance, it was just too personal. They needed to wait for a strong Force user for whom Palpatine's deeds wouldn't be so immediately personal.
  • This idea is actually reinforced earlier in the same movie, since there WAS a Jedi who managed to overpower Palpatine in combat: Mace Windu, a Jedi that invented his own form of lightsaber combat that feeds off of raw emotion and strays dangerously close to the Dark Side.
    • Mace Windu's fighting style is based on him letting himself enjoy the fight, and using the same principles as the Dark Side...does that mean he strikes down his enemies with great vengeance and furious anger? - Mr Death
  • Brilliantly, the only individual with the ability to murder Palpatine was his Sith Apprentice, Darth Vader. He has no further to fall in the Dark Side by doing so, and actually redeems himself with his love for his son. Neither Sith nor Jedi could tolerate love as an active emotion for one of their practitioners, yet the Skywalkers proved them wrong totally.
• When Palpatine sends Anakin to get rid of the Separatist Council, he initially seems bothered, maybe even outright horrified at the thought of slaughtering a group of unarmed people. But what later makes him kill them with ease to the point of enjoyment? The presence of Viceroy Nute Gunray. And what did Gunray do in the Prequel Trilogy’s first two films and The Clone Wars to warrant such hate from Anakin? He tried to kill Padmé. It becomes a mix of Fridge Horror and Tear Jerker when you realize that, by the end of the film, Anakin just basically finished the job for him.
  • He also no doubt relished killing Poggle the Lesser as revenge for trying to have him and Padmé executed.
  • A possible interpretation of this is that Anakin was ultimately getting rid of Gunray and his goons for good, not just because his new master ordered him to, but also to prevent them from trying to have another go at Padmé in the future.
    • Especially that, as he had explained to Padmé beforehand, Anakin strongly believed the death of Separatist leaders would be a significant step towards ending the war, bringing peace, freedom, justice, and security to his new empire...
• Anakin and Padmé's lovey-dovey dialogue in Revenge of the Sith is annoyingly sappy, yes. Not a good way to communicate to an audience that your leading couple is in love? Sure. BUT THAT'S THE POINT! Three years of sneaking around and hiding are starting to wear on them. They're beginning to question if their marriage (now further complicated by pregnancy) is worth it. But they're afraid to admit that, so they hide behind cheesy love-talk. This becomes most apparent when the political situation finds its way into their home to drive them even further apart. Just when Anakin starts to get heated, what does Padmé do? She changes the discussion and asks him to "hold [her] just like [he] did so long ago on Naboo, when there was no politics, no plotting, no war," ignoring completely that the only reason they were there in the first place was because of politics, plotting, and war! Indeed, viewing their relationship through this lens, we can also realize that the lack of trust is what pushes him over the edge into villainy. Thus, it is not unreasonable to call them a Deconstruction of forbidden romances.
  • This is retroactively supported by The Clone Wars, where you see the trust between them is already pretty much gone towards the end of the war, and where Padmé tries to end things between them. But it eventually turns out that they're too codependent to actually break things off. So that means their relationship by the time of Revenge of the Sith was almost certainly not intended to be a healthy one...and it shows.
  • It's this lack of trust (as shown by Padmé's question to Anakin after his nightmare "How long is it going to take for us to be honest with each other?") that partially explains why Anakin turns to Palpatine. He doesn't trust the Council (and probably hasn't for a long time), Obi-Wan and his wife. And all three were the main things keeping him from slipping.
• I thought Anakin's Force-choking Padmé was done perfectly. Everybody knows since Anakin turns to the Dark Side, he'll Force-choke someone for the first time. But who? Obi-Wan? Jar Jar? Nope, it was Padmé. Anakin's love, and his moral anchor. The only one who was stopping Anakin from completely slipping into darkness. It definitely plays into the perspective that Darth Vader is a damned Anakin Skywalker, and every time we see him choke someone in the Original Trilogy, he's reliving that tragic moment where he lost his love.
  • And illustrating that point of reliving that moment is this scene in A New Hope:
    Motti: Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure the stolen datatapes. Or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebels' hidden fortre-
    (Vader raises his hand and starts Force-choking Motti)
    Vader: I find your lack of faith disturbing.
  • After watching Revenge of the Sith, you'll see that Motti was right. Turning to the Dark Side didn't do the one thing Anakin was hoping it would do.
    • Maybe that's why it made Vader get so chokey.
  • Interestingly, Vader's earlier statement was also right: "The ability to destroy planets is insignificant next to the power of the Force". The Death Star, for all its power, was essentially taken out by a single Force-sensitive fighter pilot.
  • On a Reality Subtext note, it's also significant that he strangles Padmé. Though this doesn't kill her outright, it's a sign of how dangerous their relationship has gotten. Anakin's problems with his anger and need for control and power have been getting worse in subtle, frightening ways for a long time. He has become Sith - he's begun killing the innocent, and it makes sense he would become abusive in his relationship as well. In real life, one of the most significant indicators that an abusive partner will escalate to murder is if they have strangled their partner. Even if Padmé had survived that particular assault, he might well have killed her at some other point down the road.
• Many people find Vader's Big "NO!" in Revenge of the Sith to be pure Narm, but it's entirely in character. Despite his horrific actions towards the movie's end, Anakin is not quite Vader yet. Not as long as he's attached to Padmé. I personally think there never was a Darth Plagueis, let alone one who manipulated the Force to extend or create life. I think Palpatine/Sidious was simply stringing Anakin along. He saw Anakin's strong attachment/devotion to her, and expanded his trilogy-long Evil Plan to take her out. Padmé was Anakin's moral hypotenuse, if you will. It's only when Anakin loses his dearest supporter that he embraces the Dark Side and becomes Darth Vader, and declares Anakin Skywalker dead. That is, till he sees Luke in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
  • Word of God says you're wrong about Plagueis as well as the creation of life thing (Lucas has explicitly stated Anakin was created by Plagueis). But Palpatine was stringing Anakin along, since as he admits after Anakin turns to the Dark Side that he didn't know the mechanics of Plagueis' powers, just that Plagueis had these capabilities.
  • Another reason. Any description of how Vader's Armour works will mention his artificial breathing (real cause of Vader Breath), but a more in-depth look will also mention how his voice in the suit is an electronic recreation, as due to his lungs he can barely more than whisper. Add the fact that Palpatine deliberately made the suit clunky and inferior, and you realize it's less Narm, and more the best the suit could do to process his raw grief and anguish. YOU try to create software that can handle that rush of utter excruciating despair more eloquently.
• I always thought the Buzz Droid missiles in Revenge of the Sith were stupid and pointlessly inefficient, since a missile would do the job better. Then I realized, they're anti-capital ship weapons. They're probably designed to break through the hull of large ships and wander through the crawlspaces ripping apart vital electronics and subsystems, causing more damage to a ship than a single explosive torpedo could ever do. This still doesn't explain why the fighter fired them at starfighters instead of their intended target, but at least they have a logical purpose.
  • I'd think that right after the capital ship, Jedi Starfighters are also VERY high-priority targets. They had a good shot at Obi-Wan's fighter, and didn't have one at the capital. Remember, there were only two Jedi at the battle, both absolutely critical to rescue Palpatine. Also important is that they aimed for Obi-Wan. He is Anakin's moral compass just as much as Padmé. He is also the one person Anakin explicitly trusts without question. Without him, Anakin has zero ties to the Jedi Order, and his expulsion would be only a matter of time. The only one who would teach him after that? Palpatine.
    • The above seems to imply that the one launching the buzz droids had explicit knowledge of Anakin's dark side vulnerability. Only Palpatine and members of the Jedi Council could have been aware of that at that time — outside, he was a model, prominent Jedi Knight. Anyone else would try to take out the more dangerous of the two: Skywalker. Another possibility, however, would present Obi-Wan as the more appropriate target for such an attack, as rumours of his apprentice's flying skills might have spread already amongst the separatists.
  • The point wasn't that it was stupid to waste the buzz droids on starfighters, but that other than against capital ships they would be utterly pointless. They are laughable in comparison to guided missiles for example, who instantly destroy a ship instead of having to latch on and saw through it for 5 minutes to hopefully do some damage. The point is if they didn't use such a moronic weapon they probably WOULD have taken out both Anakin and Obi-Wan or at least had a chance to.
    • Point of order- they fired at both Anakin and Obi-Wan- Anakin was able to evade the missiles, (well, spiral them into each other). (And several sources put other Jedi in the battle- we just didn't see them in the movie) But I do agree, Jedi fighters of any configuration would likely be at the top of any of the droids target lists, given their high value.
    • I agree that they are supposed to be anti-capital weapons. However, when you consider the context of that situation, using them against our heroes' ships seems not only logical but, dare I say, brilliant. Think about it, Anakin was an Ace pilot, who had already dodged homing missiles, so using more of those would be a waste. So fire the Buzz droids, only one of which has to land on his ship for serious damage. What stopped them from tearing both ships apart were two unpredictable elements; namely, R2-D2's badassery, and Anakin being so reckless as to scrape them off Obi-Wan's ship with his own.
    • The only problem being that they highlighted yet another case of Forgot About His Powers involving the Jedi. Both Obi-Wan and Anakin were telekinetic. Had they stopped to think about it, they could have just grabbed the Buzz Droids with the Force and flung them off into space.
    • Why do people keep acting like the Force can do everything, regardless of the fact that using the Force requires concentration? Theoretically this would be possible, but the two Jedi we're talking about here are more than a bit busy piloting their ships through a massive orbital battle. Keeping the fighters systems adjusted takes concentration, as does not being caught by surprise by the many turbolaser and point-defense batteries that are actively trying to shoot them down.
    • Several reasons. First and foremost, if Obi-Wan did not get the buzz droids off of his fighter ASAP, then the issue of getting hit by a turbolaser blast would be kind of irrelevant since he would be dead inside of a depressurized fighter anyway. Second, as usual, he had plenty of concentration to spare on bickering with Anakin, as the two of them are wont to do in the middle of pitched battles. Third, Anakin's maneuver to "scrape" the buzz droids off, while flying at high velocity, through a blizzard of turbolaser fire, cannot possibly have required less concentration than telekinetically grabbing the droids. It was a move that no real-world pilot would even fantasize about really trying and almost certainly required the use of the Force to sense precisely where his wingtip was anyway.
    • I'm not convinced that Obi-Wan and Anakin's bickering actually takes any concentration, given that they've been doing it constantly for almost their entire careers together...
    • On the topic of Anakin and Obi-Wan's antics dealing with the Buzz Droids: Anakin's first instinct is to use his ship's laser cannons to blast the droids off of his master's starfighter. Mostly he succeeds only in blowing a large chunk of Obi-Wan's wing off, and is quickly called off because he's only making things worse. This is basically Anakin's defining character trait: Someone who is eager to help, but whose poor judgment causes further harm.
    • Another thing I'm surprised no one has brought up yet in relation to the "why didn't they just Force push them off?" thing. Not only does using the Force require serious concentration, but Jedi starfighters like the Eta-2 (the ships that Anakin and Obi-wan were piloting at the time) were specifically designed to be piloted by Force-sensitive users. They were basically stripped down of sensors and flight equipment that could be supplemented by using the Force, to make the craft smaller, lighter, and more maneuverable. Basically, when a Jedi is flying in a Jedi starfighter, they are always actively using the Force to do things like sense threats and target enemy ships. They probably have to concentrate quite a bit to just accomplish what normal fighters can accomplish, so I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't able to spare the concentration to Force push the Buzz Droids off.
    • There's also the fact that the Buzz Droids must be equipped with something to keep them stuck to the hull during high-G maneuvers, which may be strong enough that a Jedi trying to break that hold through the Force would require more effort and concentration than they could spare amidst everything else. And while they're focusing on yanking one Buzz Droid off their hull, the other five are still scurrying about doing their damage.
  • Tangentially related: The Buzz Droids are obviously based on the Pit Droids (similar sound effects, aim for the nose, etc.) Palpatine's machinations have gotten to the point that even the Pit Droids have been perverted into something the opposite of what they should be.
  • There is one advantage to using Buzz Droids against fighters instead of a regular missile - it may tie up other Republic forces in a rescue attempt (which in this instance it does). So using buzz droids may be an attempt to exploit the fact that Republic forces care about their individual pilots, while the Separatist droid army obviously does not. It's like a sniper shooting a soldier to wound him, and then killing anyone who breaks cover to come out to help the wounded soldier.
• In Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan says to Yoda something along the lines of "Anakin is like a brother to me" when told to deal with Anakin. In Return of the Jedi, when Luke says he can't kill his own father, Obi-Wan says "then the Emperor has already won." At first, this might seem like hypocrisy on Obi-Wan's part, and it's not like Obi-Wan is above it. However, thinking about it even further, you realize that it implies Obi-Wan simply "learned his lesson" from earlier dealings with Anakin; namely, not to let emotional connections get in the way of doing what had to be done. Obi-Wan himself "almost" hesitated because of these emotional connections and would understandably want to discourage his later students from making the same mistake. It turns out not to be really necessary, but that just adds to the Fridge Brilliance; Obi-Wan got the wrong impression about what had to be done, because he learned the wrong lessons from past experiences... - neoYTPism
  • You can do better than that. Later in Return of the Jedi, Vader outright tells Luke that "Obi-Wan once thought as you do."
  • Except that Luke had well-known unresolved emotional issues about his lost father. Obi-Wan in fact exploits them in trying to convince Luke to come with him to Alderaan and pursue Jedi training. His and Yoda's entire plan hinged on Vader not spilling the beans, something Yoda considered "unfortunate" when it actually happened. It was a galactic stakes gamble that Luke would be able to kill his father, and in the end he did not. Vader did the unexpected and turned against Palpatine to save his son, an act of good that neither Obi-Wan nor Yoda believed him capable of.
• After the Vader vs. Obi-Wan duel in Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan says "You were The Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!" However, before Anakin got involved there were two Sith (Maul and Sidious) and hundreds of Jedi. (Not explicitly stated in the films IIRC, but at least apparent from the arena battle in Attack of the Clones.) When Obi-Wan made the aforementioned statement, though, there were two Sith (Vader and Sidious) and two Jedi (Yoda and Obi-Wan) so in a way, Anakin really did balance out the force. - neoYTPism
  • No. Balance means to remove the Dark Side. Further, when Obi-Wan uttered that plea, there were still several Jedi alive throughout the galaxy.
  • I will argue that reducing the Jedi to the same number as the Sith is not balance when the Sith have much more power over the Galaxy than the Jedi. For there to be Balance in that sense, both groups should have the same level of influence. - MakiP
  • Also, Anakin actually does bring balance to the Force and destroy the Sith, by killing Palpatine and becoming fatally wounded in the process. So he did fulfill the prophecy, it just took another twenty years and the destruction of the existing Jedi Order. Which, arguably, was part of the point: the Jedi of the Old Republic had become so stultified and dogmatic that they no longer wholly served the balance of the Force, either.
  • Word of God states that the Sith are basically the equivalent of a cancer to the equilibrium of the Force - therefore the only way to bring balance is to destroy the Sith.
  • It's a common misconception that 'balance' means balance between light and dark, but (in the Lucas movies, at least) it doesn't. The Dark Side and the Sith are an aberration, an unnatural corruption of the force - as Palpatine himself highlights when telling Anakin the dark side is a path to unnatural abilities. The light side IS balance, with the Jedi striving to balance themselves with the force itself: remaining open to it rather than influencing it with their own will. This is why they are typically slow and ponderous to act - it's NOT their role to be intergalactic peacekeepers or cops, but to allow the force to move through them and do its' bidding. This is also why they fall for Palpatine's manipulations during Attack of the Clones, as at that point they are 'blinded' to the force and cannot discern its' intent, so they are directionless - and when a clone army suddenly appears from nowhere and it's suggested the Jedi lead it, blinded as they are, that seems almost like the will of the force to them.
    
    The Sith, on the other hand, are a selfish corruption. They impose their will on the force rather than the other way around - they are unbalanced, they selfishly use the force for their own ends with no regard for the consequences.
    
    When characters talk about bringing balance to the Force, at least during the Lucas era movies, they are explicitly talking about bringing an end to the Sith for good - something Anakin does indeed accomplish, as by killing Palpatine and then passing away himself, he ensures all currently living Sith are eliminated without passing on their knowledge.
• Also, in Revenge of the Sith, Anakin clearly falls for Palpatine's flattery of him, but in Return of the Jedi, Vader is bluntly dismissive of Jerjerrod's flattery of him. At first this might seem a bit inconsistent, but when you think about it, perhaps it tells us that that the negative consequences of listening to Palpatine's flattery gave him some level of distrust for flattery, as if he learned some of the right lessons from what happened. - neoYTPism
  • That gave me another insight: Moff Jerjerrod is functionally Vader's subordinate. Flattery from someone not your superior is basically ass-kissing. Anakin grew up as a slave. Ass-kissing is a survival skill for a slave; make your owner happy, he won't punish you much. That's enough to make anyone resent ass-kissing, and look down on people who rely on it...
  • Vader was also shown to be pragmatic around his subordinates. While it seemed like nobody was safe from Palpatine and him killing you just for the heck of it, Vader tolerated someone telling him the truth as long as they were competent. The very first Imperial officer we meet in A New Hope was practically lecturing him on Leia's political clout and the stolen plans and Jerjerrod wasn't afraid to lay it straight to Vader that he needed more resources to stay on schedule.
• There was something I didn't notice before until I saw Revenge of the Sith again. In a scene in The Phantom Menace, Anakin is whittling a small charm "for luck" and gives it to Padmé so that she can remember him by it. I always regarded it to be a throwaway scene, or just to emphasize Anakin's crush on Padmé, but it gained new meaning at the end of Revenge of the Sith. During one of the last scenes, the dead body of Padmé is seen at a funeral procession and if you look closely at her body, you can see that the same charm worn as a necklace. I then realized that this was purposely done: Padmé's last words to Obi-Wan were "There's still good in him". Padmé still sees Anakin as the person she once knew, not the one he has become, and she keeps that belief with her to her death. The charm is meant to remember him by. —KH
• When I was younger, I always thought the way Palpatine throws the Senate floats at Yoda in the penultimate battle was just him being a Combat Pragmatist. Now in more recent years, I realized it was just a symbolic demonstration of what Palpatine had just done: tear the Senate apart, use it, and throw it away. Damn, Palps. Damn. —Raxis
  • Not to mention Yoda struggling to hold onto the Chancellor/Emperor's podium before falling represents the Jedi Order hopelessly trying to hold on to the Republic.
• An exhausted Obi-Wan is ultimately able to defeat Anakin because the latter tried to do the same move Obi-Wan did to Darth Maul, flip over him and cut him down from behind. That worked because Maul was surprised, but because Obi-Wan knew that trick and he was prepared for it. He already tried to warn Anakin - "Don't try it." - but Anakin was done in by his own arrogance.
  • This is expanded on in the Expanded Universe comics where it's shown Anakin had a fascination with that duel, and Obi-Wan knew it, as Anakin had basically pestered him about it. If there was one move Anakin would use in that situation, it was likely how Obi-Wan killed Maul, so Obi-Wan reacted accordingly.
  • And Return of the Jedi shows that Vader learned his lesson — when Luke gains the high ground during their final duel, Vader doesn't try jumping over him (though it's questionable if he even could) but instead throws his lightsaber at Luke.
  • Also, Anakin only loses once he tries to take the high ground. It could be that Obi-Wan was lying about the high ground being an advantage, since in real swordfighting, it isn't. Think about it: If you're on a slope and your opponent's under you, their legs are inaccessible and yours are close to their blade. Plus, they only have to protect their torso and head since their legs are unreachable.
• I used to criticize the Yoda/Palpatine duel for a couple of reasons. 1) Because it seemed to serve no purpose, and 2) because Yoda uses the Force to attack, which explicitly contradicts his statement in ESB. However, I then paid more attention to his facial expressions towards the end of the fight and the exact dynamics of the fight itself. Yoda isn't running away because he's been defeated. He still stood a fighting chance! He may have even won. Rather, he's exiling himself because he failed to fight Palpatine as a Jedi. As far as I see it, a huge part of the theme of Star Wars is emotions and human nature and what to do with them, especially in a religious context. The Old Jedi Order prided itself on shutting their emotions away and keeping their head in the game. The Sith, implicitly in reaction to this, encouraged people to follow their emotions wherever they led, even if that meant killing your master. Yoda could only fight on equal terms with Palpatine when he started using his emotions (namely, anger at Order 66). When he realized this, he was appalled and went into exile as penance. He could've stayed and fought to the death, as would've been in keeping with his character up to this point. He wouldn't have gone into hiding out of fear. Rather, it was out of guilt.
  • A fundamental problem with the movies (and frankly the Expanded Universe) is that ultimately it is repeatedly shown that the Sith really are stronger than the Jedi. Often by a fairly wide margin. It is notable that Yoda seems to make the most headway in his fight against Palpatine when, based on his facial expressions, he starts to get angry. In Return of the Jedi, Luke is unable to defeat Vader until the latter provokes him into an outburst of rage, at which point Luke overpowers him. Circumstances often decide Jedi/Sith battles. Obi-Wan defeats Anakin because he eventually managed to reach an advantageous position. Luke almost killed Vader by giving in to his anger. But when he chose to let it go, he was nearly fried to death by Palpatine. Ironically, it was an expression of positive emotion (love) on Vader's part that saved Luke's life and defeated Palpatine. The path of no emotion seems like a dead end compared to using one's emotions (for good or evil).
    • I fail to see how that's a problem. If anything, it's a strength of the franchise. The point being that the Living Force was never meant to be restrained in a prison system, which was basically what the Old Jedi Order had done. The Sith were stronger because they were living it; the Jedi were killing it. That's why Anakin was needed to restore balance. I know this has been commented elsewhere on this page, but it's relevant; because he was raised outside the Order, he didn't follow its rules. He could've reformed it from within due to his status as Chosen One. However, the path he did follow involved basically obliterating the Order and, years and years down the line, redeeming it in his own person. As the Order's greatest failure, his redemption was an integral part of bigger things.
    • Lucas crushed that; he officially said that there is a definitive "Good" and going the middle path is in itself a path to darkness. The Jedi exist to hold power and not use it, the Sith are stronger but the use of the power corrupts them. Or the emotional use of the power corrupts the force used by the Sith. Qui-Gon questions the teachings of the Jedi Order in response to love and lack of attachments, he thinks they got the wrong end of the stick, but he does not advocate using emotion in a fight.
    • This is one of those areas where a lot of fans choose to invoke Death of the Author since, as noted above, the whole set up of the Old Jedi Order vs. the Sith makes very little sense if you try to see it as Good Versus Evil as opposed to Order Versus Chaos, which makes "the middle path is as evil as the Dark Side" one of the stupidest statements about the setting to come out of Lucas' mouth.
    • It Zig-zags. An individual Sith often has more raw power than an individual Jedi, but Sith are Drunk on the Dark Side most of the time, and throwing all that raw power around without thought to strategy or defense, making them prone to incredibly stupid mistakes. The biggest cause behind the collapse of various incarnations of The Empire isn't their constant battles with the Republic, but the Chronic Backstabbing Disorder because they are ruled by Ax-Crazy nutcases. Essentially, the Republic and Jedi go into defense, wait for the Sith to implode or otherwise shoot themselves in the foot, and then sweep up the mess. The reason the Sith prevailed this time was because Bane cut out the Chronic Backstabbing Disorder by going Rule of Two, and planned for the long game while the Jedi and Republic failed to adapt their tactics.
    • Another thing to remember is that while the Light Side focuses on healing, growth, preservation, defense, etc, the Dark Side is about domination, aggression, destruction, and so on. While a Sith and a Jedi may be equally powerful, the Jedi's power will be less flashy and less useful in a straight-up duel.
    • The Last Jedi will eventually use Take the Third Option as it's major theme, be it Light Side, Dark Side, or the middle path (ie. the true balance) are just few of so many options in the Force.
    • Not precisely. The Central Theme of The Last Jedi is failure: every character fails to some degree, and Yoda finally drops the final lesson Luke: failure is how we learn and grow. Make a mistake, live with the consquences, but learn not to repeat the mistake. It isn't that "Light and Dark are both equally bad, the middle is right," it's that there's more to The Force ("the Light Side" as it is misnamed) than just what Yoda's order of Jedi believed. Emotions can be twisted to evil ends, that doesn't make emotions themselves evil as the Jedi believed. Life and death, peace and violence are all part of the Force, but Yoda's Jedi Order came to believe that the light was only peace and life, and Luke in trying to recover the teachings of the Jedi fell into the same dogmatic traps, despite his and Anakin's love being what defeated Palpatine. The point isn't that "Between Light and Dark, Take a Third Option is the correct path," it's that Yoda's Jedi had artificially narrowed their definition of "Light" to the point of uselessness.
  • This makes Yoda saying "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny" more significant. It's not a statement of the impossibility of redemption (though he still seems to think that of Vader), but a description of his own status: he made one slip toward the dark side and has been making himself pay for it ever since. Yoda really is a stickler for the rules!
  • Yoda's statement "Wars not make one great." didn't necessarily mean Yoda wasn't a fighter at all, but dismissed the thought that war could be regarded as great or glorious. After what he went through, it isn't hard to see why.
• I always thought that Grievous' "lightsaber collection" line in Episode 3 was stupid, and also, ironically, not much of a collection, with 1 lightsaber acquired in a deleted scene. However, upon watching Star Wars: Clone Wars again, I realized that this may be justified. Remember when Mace Windu effortlessly defeats Grievous with a Force crush of some sort? If you look closely, Grievous drops his lightsabers as he clutches his broken chest. Where they went after that may never be explained, but it's the only logical way to Hand Wave (like Mace did to Grievous' chest) his puny 1 lightsaber "collection". He misplaced his lightsabers due to Jedi scum actually hurting him.
  • Even without that, I never assumed that was his whole collection, though it probably would have been a good idea for the CGI guys to have put more than one lightsaber in there since not everyone is going to assume that his collection is bigger than that. According to the Revenge of the Sith novelization, Grievous carries only his favorites with him.
  • If you look into the other side of his cloak (visible when Obi Wan uses the Force to yank back his lightsaber), he's carrying exactly four lightsabers- there are six pouches for lightsabers, with all three pouches on the left side being full but only one on the right side (he fills the empty two with Obi Wan and Anakin's). It's apparent in the film that he's only carrying around the four he actually uses, with the rest of his collection presumably being elsewhere.
• Palpatine, in his fight with Yoda, is obviously scared of his adversary. So why does Yoda flee? Even if he defeats Palpatine himself (which would be an obvious strain), he is still Hated by All and must face the stormtroopers, the Senate, bounty hunters that would go after him, and Sidious would be a martyr. He literally cannot win.
  • Also, the entire fight is arguably symbolic of the Sith/Jedi war up to that point. The two sides fight openly, using almost entirely lightsabers. Then, the Sith get out of direct contact area, and throw other hurdles at the Jedi, weakening their opponents. Then the Jedi fire back at the Sith and connect, then attempt to attack in the same way they had before. But instead of openly fighting, the Sith play the trump card, destroying the device the Jedi used in the last confrontation (numbers). Then the Sith have a better position then the Jedi. The Jedi get a Heroic Second Wind, but even that only inconveniences the Sith, who quickly reassert dominance over both the fight and galaxy.
  • Keep in mind the last moments of that duel. Yoda and Palpatine locked in a contest of wills with Sith Lightning flashing between them. Finally, the dam breaks, and both are thrown back. But Palpatine is thrown almost over the edge of the pod, Yoda is thrown completely off, all the way to the bottom of the Senate, and even loses his robe. We, the audience, can see Palpatine struggling and gasping for dear life, but to Yoda, who can't see him, it sounds like he's cackling triumphantly. Yoda took his best shot, and got drop-kicked. It's time to go.
  • The novelization also expands on this. During the fight, Yoda has the epiphany that his Jedi Order just doesn't have what it takes. Over the last thousand years, the Sith have changed and evolved, while the Jedi have stagnated. The Sith have learned to fight a new war, while the Jedi have only been retraining to refight the last war. No Jedi of the old Order could stand against Palpatine, a new kind of Jedi is required to defeat this new kind of Sith. This is always why he refuses to let Obi-Wan train Luke as Anakin should have been trained, because the only result would be another dogmatic Old Jedi who Palpatine would wipe the floor with.
• The incredible final duel on Mustafar is easily the longest and most evenly matched lightsaber fight in the entire series, so much so that it's on a different level from even the Prequel fights, not to mention the original trilogy's sluggish swordplay. Then you read the novelization and they explain how Anakin and Obi-Wan spent a lot of time honing their skills for the fight with Dooku; they've gotten so in sync with each other that they not only know each others' moves, they share the same rhythm and tempo, just focused on different areas (Anakin's the unstoppable offensive powerhouse, Obi-Wan is the smart and defensive fighter), and as a result, neither can gain a decisive edge over the other until Obi-Wan starts using the terrain. No other fight features two opponents with such intimate knowledge of the their respective fighting styles; thus no other fight can match it.
  • Indeed, they have worked and trained together for so long that, when fighting the droids on Grievous' ship, at some points they use identical moves.
• A somewhat ironic example during the Mace death scene. In trying to stop Mace from killing Palpatine, Anakin was actually being far more Jedi-like in mindset than Mace was, considering the Jedi do not like to kill opponents if they are defeated. And yes, it backfired. Very, very much so.
• In the novelisation, why is Anakin cracking wise while butchering the Separatist leadership? Because that's how he and Obi-Wan usually react to inferior adversaries - they'll be shredding battle droids like a bag of moths in a blender, while snarking at each other. However, because he's definitively fallen to the Dark Side at this point, Anakin isn't being flippant about people who are actively trying to kill him, like he would be during most of the war - he's mocking people who aren't even trying to hurt him but are in fact begging for their lives. He's still Anakin Skywalker, even if he's now evil Anakin Skywalker.
• The film casts the Vader Breath in a new light. Not only does the need for a breathing apparatus cause an inconvenience for Vader, it probably reminds him with every breath of his choking of Padmé. It is likely that Palpatine designed the machinery to be deliberately incomplete as a means of psychological torture.
• A lot of fans have criticised Yoda's handling of Anakin when he tries to seek comfort, but, really, that helps slam home a point that's been subtly building up over the entire Prequel Trilogy. The Jedi Order has become so insular, so inbred, that they're effectively incapable of interacting to a meaningful level with anyone who isn't part of their cult. Even Yoda has become so indoctrinated by centuries of living in the veritable echo-chamber of Jedi "culture" that he can't understand how to comfort Anakin, who has an entirely different set of core values to a "true" Jedi. As noted above, Anakin's balancing of the Force ultimately requires he change the Order, completely shattering the stagnant asceticism it has embraced over the centuries — it's just a horrible irony that he does so by destroying the Order entirely.
  • Ironically, Yoda is actually giving Anakin some very sound advice. Death is natural, and fearing it only gives it power over you. It is Anakin's very fear of Padmé's death that Palpatine preys on to turn him, if Anakin had been able to let it go, she would have lived. It's not just good advice for Anakin, it's good advice for real life. Life is great, but death is inevitable, learn to accept it and remember those you loved fondly, instead of lamenting their absence.
  • This helps justify Mace Windu's comment on Anakin being "too old" to be trained as a Jedi as well. Most Jedi are raised more or less from infancy to know and understand the Jedi ideals, so the importance of being able to let go when someone dies would be something they already understand and accept. Anakin, meanwhile, had already reached an age where it's difficult for him to easily come to terms with this way of thinking, and by the time he actually goes to Yoda for guidance he's a young adult. This may very well be the first time Yoda's encountered a situation like this, so the fact that Anakin needs somebody to talk him through this in detail likely wouldn't have crossed his mind because everybody else he's taught already understood. A better way Yoda could have put it was that forming attachments is okay, but that since death is inevitable he needs to be able to let go when the time comes and that his duty as a Jedi must be given priority over his attachments.
  • The scene does a really excellent job of highlighting one of the inherent tragedies of the prequels, which is the inability of Anakin and the Jedi Council to empathize with each other's views. What Yoda is saying is fundamentally true, especially given what limited information Anakin's given him to work with - death IS inevitable, loss is a part of life. This is something that we can't avoid, and the idea that Anakin should take comfort in the fundamental belief of the immortal interconnectivity of the universe through a greater power is quite touching (and a cornerstone of many human religions, at that). But Anakin wasn't raised on those precepts, and his view of loss and its relationship to power (or powerlessness, which is the real issue) has been dramatically shaped by a childhood spent in slavery. In a way in which many members of the Jedi Order have not, he's witnessed an ugliness to the universe that makes an abstract ideal of universal oneness fail in assuaging fear of the loss of the concrete. What he really needed was therapy - significant amounts of it - but the Order is so insulated, both by the protection of their own order and by the overreaching political safety of living in a Republic core world, that this is something they cannot fundamentally understand because they literally have no frame of reference beyond their traditional model. Yoda was right that Anakin should never have been trained as a Jedi - not just because of his own instability but because the Jedi Order quite simply didn't have the tools necessary to help him.
  • A bit of Fridge Brilliance after watching the TV show "Avatar: The Last Airbender" and Aang's struggle to "let go" of Katara. If Anakin had known how to take Yoda's advice calmly and rationally, he probably would have let Padmé go... to Naboo, where she wanted to have the baby, when she offered to leave early and make the baby's room ready, she could have been well away from the political mess that followed, and had the babies at a proper, modern medical center in a world far enough away from Coruscant that Tatooine was an acceptable side-trip in "Phantom Menace".
• Thanks to this film, Vader's voice changer (and really, all of his armor) now has two purposes: Not only does it make him sound more intimidating, it helps distance himself from his former self, Anakin Skywalker.
  • It also helps explain why almost no one made the connection: Once Anakin had suffered those wounds and needed that suit, Sidious and Vader had zero reason to reveal Anakin's identity and every reason to conceal it. Palpatine's initial plan was probably to spin Anakin as the one Jedi who wasn't corrupt and evil, which would be difficult (if there was one good Jedi, why not more, and why is that one the one Palpatine says he is?) Once Darth Vader was locked in that suit, Palpatine could go with the rather easier claim that all the Jedi were corrupt and evil power-mongers, clinging desperately to an inflexible ethos that put them at odds with the rest of the galaxy (the last part of which is entirely true); while claiming the Sith are actually the good guys, the Jedi lied about them being evil servants of darkness because the Jedi feared the Sith rising to power and putting an end to them (the last part of which is also entirely true).
• Padmé losing her will to live sounds silly, but everything good in her life is taken away. Not only is Anakin taken to the Dark Side of the Force, but he was led there by Palpatine, a man that she respected from a young age, who has since undone the principles that the Republic stood for. Principles that she and hundreds of others have sacrificed...and that she's served for most of her life.
  • Not only that but it all happened relatively quickly. It's not clear how much time has passed during the course of the story. But once Anakin accepts Palpatine, it more or less snowballs. Most likely Order 66, Palpatine's declaring the Empire's existence and Obi-Wan's revelation took place in the span of a few days. On top of that, Padmé has been dealing with the stress of hiding her marriage and pregnancy from everyone, dealing with a crumbling Senate and her husband's slow seduction to the Dark Side...culminating with him choking her (and laying around on a planet with lots of smoke and ash in the air for about ten minutes straight). That is a lot of pressure for anybody to deal with, even a mother who has two children depending on her. And then you remember that she almost certainly gave birth prematurely, as noted below. Heck, it would be more surprising if she'd survived all of that!
    • On top of both of these, it's entirely possible that, through the power of Force bonding, either Palpatine is consciously drawing on or Anakin is unconsciously drawing on her life energy to keep him alive - the distance between Mustafar and Polis Massa and Mustafar and Coruscant is significantly different, Polis Massa is in the Outer Rim like Mustafar, while Coruscant is in the Core Worlds. SOMETHING kept Anakin alive long enough for Palpatine to get him back there and into the suit. And if the Force is involved in sapping her 'will to live,' it makes sense that the medical droids couldn't explain it, since droids can't measure the Force.
    • An argument can be made that the editing of the sequence even supports this interpretation, as Vader takes his first iconic hissing breath as Padmé dies.
    • It could also be that Padmé can sense Anakin's agony as he's being operated on and that's whats killing her on top of the stress of childbirth. Earlier she was sitting alone in her apartment when suddenly she has the urge to look out the window to the far off Jedi Temple where at the exact moment Anakin is in turmoil deciding what to do about Palpatine: turn him in or betray the Jedi and help him in order save Padmé? Padmé can feel Anakin's pain as he's grappling with this question and it makes her sad. How can Padmé have this strong psychic connection when she's not Force-sensitive? Because she's carrying two Force sensitives in her womb.
    • A Sith version of a mind trick from an incredibly powerful Sith Lord:
      Darth Sidious: You've lost the will to live.
      Padmé: I've lost the will to live.
  • In case you're wondering; Padme isn't showing in the first moment she tells Anakin she's pregnant. Now, normally (whether it occurs that way in whatever time Star Wars occurs in is up for debate!) women start showing when they're three months pregnant, at the end of their first trimester. We can safely infer she didn't know about it prior to the Outer Rim Sieges, which lasted five months, and it's impossible to detect before four weeks gestation. Given that Rot S is heavily implied to take place across merely a matter of days, that means that she likely gave birth a month or so early.
  • I always thought Padmé died from a mixture of the heat and the choking.
  • It's also entirely possible she feels responsible for her own role in the downfall of the Republic and her own marriage. She is the only one who understood the lengths to which Anakin would go to protect the things he loves. She has seen him at his most dangerously unstable and borne witness to the kind of horror of which he's capable in fits of rage. How much of her grief is based in guilt at enabling Anakin and overlooking the warning signs instead of intervening before it was too late?
  • Even the most staunchly rational, atheistic, science-is-the-only-truth doctor will admit that a patient's mental state has a lot more bearing on their recovery than the actual treatment applied. People have survived some truly horrendous amounts of damage by being just too cussed stubborn to die, people have died from relatively innocuous conditions because they just didn't have it in them keep fighting. "Lost the will to live" is a prosaic but accurate way to describe it, and as enumerated, Padme has plenty of reasons to just not have the strength left to recover from everything that's happened, no matter how much she might want to (and might not even want to).
    • So, just to sum up: Her body was greatly weakened by pregnancy, grief, guilt, and stress. She was then choked, slammed to the ground, inhaled a lot of smoke and ash for the better part of a quarter-hour, and then gave birth to twins prematurely. And Palpatine may or may not have drained her life force. Quite honestly, it would be more remarkable if she'd survived all that!
• Looking at Obi-Wan's duel with Grievous, one wonders why the cyborg does not just use two of his arms to catch Obi-Wan's saber in a blade lock, then use his other two weapons to sever his hands. But then, Grievous used to be a quadrupedal creature - he is used to commanding only two hands. Sure, he can set the motors on two of his wrists to perform a monotonous motion like spinning while commanding the other two, but to use all his four arms at once independently - that is something his brain is not used to dealing with.
• Just after Anakin kills Dooku, Anakin refuses to leave Obi-Wan behind on the Invisible Hand (the Separatist Command Ship) and says to Palpatine "His fate will be the same as ours." When I look on the Original Trilogy, I thought of something, he was right and this was very subtle foreshadowing because ALL 3 of them will die on a Death Star : Obi-Wan on the first, Palpatine and Anakin on the second. And also, Darth Vader is responsible of the 3 deaths : in A New Hope, he kills Obi-Wan, in the Return of the Jedi, he kills Palpatine and by doing so, he kills himself. So yes, Obi-Wan's fate is the same as Anakin's and Palpatine's, in my opinion.
  • Obi-Wan wasn't necessarily killed by Darth Vader — you can clearly see the former faded away before the latter delivered what turned out to be his final blow, which ultimately ended up hitting just Kenobi's frock.
• It might seem odd that Mace Windu took so long between announcing his decision to execute Palpatine and him actually trying it. There were a good 5 seconds or so before he even raised his lightsaber, during which Palpatine was begging for mercy and Anakin was struggling to decide who to side with. While it might seem like this was just a poor excuse to give Anakin time to think, there's a better reason: his fighting style. Rather than completely detaching himself from his emotion like any other Jedi would, Mace Windu's method of utilizing the Force in battle actually centers on him cutting loose and channeling his emotion, while keeping himself on a tight leash to avoid going any further than absolutely necessary. Mace is well aware of the risks of this fighting style, to the extent that he refuses to teach it to anybody else due to how easily it can lead to the Dark Side. With this in mind, it's more apparent that Mace isn't standing around like a derp for all that time. He's actually reining himself in and getting into the right state of mind, as in order to avoid falling to the Dark Side he needs to clear his mind of his hatred of the Sith and his personal satisfaction of removing a Sith Lord from the galaxy. To avoid falling, he can't afford to consider anything beyond the fact that removing this corruption and evil from the galaxy is a necessary duty of the Jedi Order.
• When Anakin is given a seat on the Council, but not promoted to Master, he is rather pissed, and gives a short "it's not fair" speech. If you only watch the theatrical films, he just sounds petulant, but The Clone Wars retroactively reveals that he's completely justified to take offense. When Ahsoka is cleared of the Jedi Temple bombing, the Council offered to reinstate her as a Knight. Had she accepted, Anakin would have gained the rank of Master, having trained an apprentice to Knighthood. But when she refused and walked away from the Order, Anakin was not promoted. Essentially, he had met the requirements to become a Master, but was effectively cheated out of a promotion on a technicality by the Council's own doing. No wonder when Palpatine speaks to him in the opera house, Anakin tells him that his faith in the Jedi had been shaken.
  • Not to mention that the Council were very willing to toss Ahsoka under the bus and kill her based on a half-assed investigation. And unlike her master, Ahsoka followed the Order's rules. Anakin was already painted into a corner being secretly married (and about to be a father), already had his concerns blown off multiple times (which cost him the life of his mom, and was about to cost him his wife and kids), and was already bristling at the Order's dictates (because it was probably dawning on him at this point that he had just traded one form of slavery for another). Furthermore, without an actual promotion, he wouldn't be allowed into the Masters' section of the archives to try and find a way to save Padmé and the kids. He was also there because someone he considered a friend and father figure was also someone the Order distrusted - for good reason, it turns out, but no one knew it at the time. His alleged "promotion" was a sham and everyone knew it. He probably knew it was just a matter of time before they knifed him in the back.
  • Ultimately, it seems a culmination of many different things all coming together. First and foremost in his mind, though, has to be how the Jedi have been screwing with him the last few years, with the treatment of Ahsoka forefront in his mind, but then using him as a way to fake Obi-Wan's death so he could go undercover as Rako Hardeen definitely doesn't help his confidence in the council. So the Council denying him rank of Master just seems like another example of the Council acting inexplicably and playing with him. Second, his constant visions of his wife's death whenever he sleeps is probably not doing much for his emotional control. Finally, we have seen his powers and abilities time and again throughout the Clone Wars, from subduing both the Son and the Daughter at the same time to fighting dark siders on multiple occasions. It's not unreasonable to see why Anakin finally broke down- he's proven himself over and over again to be incredibly powerful, more so than even some of the Masters on the Council.
  • Has he met the requirements to become a Master, though? It seems that there's more to it than just training one Padawan to Knighthood. For example, Ki-Adi gained the rank of Master before he'd even started training A'Sharad Hett, and Qui-Gon became a Master after guiding someone whose training was already mostly finished to Knighthood. However, when Anakin is told that he's not going to become a Master, his response is essentially to throw a petulant temper tantrum, which basically proves Mace and Yoda's point. No matter how powerful you are, that's no substitute for self-discipline and self-mastery. If you can't even master your own temper, how the heck do you expect to become a Jedi Master?
  • There's also the idea that Anakin is frustrated because after being on the fast track his whole life, he's been told to wait and actually take a spot properly in line. He's always been a prodigy. Compare how long it takes him to reach other levels. He never even trains as a youngling and becomes a Padawan at 9, whereas most Jedi in Legends were about 11-13 and Ahsoka herself only 14, with Anakin riling her up by commenting he doesn't even think she's old enough to be a Padawan. He becomes a Jedi Knight at about 19 or 20 whereas Obi-Wan was 25 and only gained the rank because he defeated a Sith Lord in combat, something that hadn't happened in a thousand years, indicating it usually takes even longer to become a Knight.^note  There's no prescribed timeline of events, and Obi-Wan was implied to be just about ready for the Trials anyway, but it's usually 10-12 years. He's eager to become a Jedi Master at 22 whereas Obi-Wan and others seem to reach the rank at absolute soonest in their thirties if not even older. He wouldn't have even been ready for the rank at all if Ahsoka, herself a prodigy who had been through a series of Trials, hadn't been offered a Knighthood at the extremely young age of 17. He seems to think he can just circumvent the rules again, but this time, everyone is telling him he's not ready, and judging by his emotional maturity, he really isn't.
    • Building off of this: In Jedi Quest, Anakin's rival and classmate Ferus Olin is considered for fast-tracking to Knighthood at the age of 20 by the Council. What's Anakin's response there? Almost exactly the same as here—to throw a temper tantrum.
• When Obi-Wan and Anakin are fighting Dooku together, Dooku grabs Obi-Wan in a Force choke and then throws him into a railing. Anakin is behind Dooku and has the chance to take a swing at him, but instead seems to stumble and almost fall backward for no reason, followed by Dooku kicking him aside. It never made sense to me why Anakin seemingly lets Dooku kick him over until I watched the scene slowed down. The reason Anakin loses his balance is because it looks like Dooku Force-shoves him with his left hand (it's kind of hard to see), Anakin tries to catch his balance, and Dooku then kicks him while he's recovering. Suddenly the choreography of this part makes perfect sense because of that small detail.
• What did Palpatine and Windu both tell Anakin regarding the execution of an enemy warlord? "He's too dangerous to be kept alive." It shows the Jedi and the Sith are not so different by this point. In the novelization, Anakin thinks this exactly.
• Although most of the homages in the prequels are to the original trilogy, there is a scene in this episode which works perfectly as a subtle reference to The Phantom Menace: Obi-Wan duels someone, loses his lightsaber, is hanging on for dear life over an abyss, and he extricates himself from this predicament by grabbing someone else's weapon to finish off his opponent.
• The line "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!" may initially seem like Narm due to the statement that leads into the quote (as opposed to a more direct statement like "The Jedi are evil!"), it actually does have a degree of significance to Return of the Jedi. Where do you think that Obi-Wan got his "...From a certain point of view." excuse from?
  • Additionally, it spits in the face of Obi Wan's previous hypocritical statement "Only a Sith deals in absolutes" - for Anakin to rebut his statement entirely with an admittedly silly-sounding phrase had to have opened his eyes up somewhat.
  • It also spits in the face of the previous line, "Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine is evil!" by responding to an absolute with an opinion.
  • It's still a terribly clunky line and flies in the face of logic — Anakin is in this position because he's made himself believe he has no choice. Saying, "From my point of view" necessarily acknowledges that there are other points of view and that your own might be wrong — if Anakin is capable of that kind of introspection, he wouldn't be in that situation.
    • Except this isn't true at all. Anakin is in this position because he is willing to go through extremes to save his wife. The Jedi continuously failed to sympathize with his way of thinking or help him emotionally deal with his attachments and desires, and instead condemned them. He even sought Yoda, the Grand Master of the entire Jedi Order, and basically received a cold, unsympathetic response. Yes, everyone does die, and it is important to accept death and let go of the fear of death, but saying it in the way Yoda did provided no emotional comfort to a clearly distressed and desperate Anakin. Instead of comforting him, Yoda threw the same "no attachment" teaching Anakin fundamentally and repeatedly rejected. Anakin's conflicted actions when faced with the realization that Palpatine was a Sith Lord would not have happened if Anakin wasn't introspective enough to realize that there were two different paths he could take. He could either kill Palpatine, rid the universe of a dangerous Sith Lord, which would, with the deaths of Count Dooku and General Grievous, effectively end the Clone Wars. However, at the same time, he'd be killing the one person who showed any interest in helping him save Padmé. It was a classic conflict of "uphold his duty as a Jedi" vs "save someone he cared about". It was the very kind of conflict the Jedi's "no-attachment" policy was trying to avoid, but ironically it was that very policy that left Anakin feeling abandoned. Ultimately, it was the very core foundation of the Jedi Order, interpreted by an emotional, afraid, emotionally unstable individual that lead Anakin down the path he chose. Notice how he doesn't deny that Palpatine is evil. He simply says that "From [his] point of view, the Jedi are evil." And from his point of view, he was right: he saw the Jedi Order as being so corrupt and complacent that they were nothing but cold, hypocritical zealots stuck in their old ways.
• In Rogue One, we see that Anakin/Vader has since gotten his own castle on Mustafar, where he spends much of his time. Why would he be there, rather than, say, Coruscant? Perhaps this could be punishment by Palpatine or even himself to constantly be reminded about his failures, specifically losing both Padmé and his duel with Obi-Wan. Plus, his castle is located on a lava fall, possibly the same fall from his duel. Now, who has the high ground?
  • Not quite; you can actually see the place where Anakin loses the fight as the ship comes in to land; Anakin is overlooking his greatest failures.
• Luke has more of Qui-Gon Jinn's traits than either Obi-Wan or Yoda, the ones who trained him. That does, indeed, make perfect sense following Revenge of the Sith. At the end it's implied in the movie and outright stated in the novelization that Yoda has communed with the late Qui-Gon Jinn through the Force. From there, he gave them both new ways to train (as Yoda tells Obi-Wan, "from your old master, and my new one"). With this in mind it's no wonder Luke took on Qui-Gon's traits. Luke's at the end of a Master-Apprentice Chain that features Qui-Gon at the start.
• When Yoda and Obi-Wan are accessing the security recordings, Yoda tells him "Only pain will it bring you." Think about it: He already knows that someone wielding a lightsaber led the clones. Whoever did so is probably in the highest echelons of skill, to lead and win an assault on the Jedi on their home court and beat all the Masters and Knights still there (sure, we know from Geonosis that Jedi can be overwhelmed by superior numbers, but this is their home court and there's probably still a fair few Knights and Masters left). That means it's either Palpatine or a fallen Jedi (and let's face it, a Jedi marching up the Temple steps with a clone legion is a lot less suspicious than Palpatine doing that, plus they don't necessarily know at this point that Palpatine is a Sith). Now, it's obviously not him or Obi-Wan. He knows (Mace tells him in the novelization, and most likely offscreen in the movie) that Mace, Saesee Tinn, Agen Kolar, and Kit Fisto all went to arrest Palpatine, and are therefore presumably all dead. All the other expert swordsmen like Plo Koon and Ki-Adi-Mundi were off-planet. Therefore, the only Jedi on Coruscant capable of leading such an attack are Shaak Ti, Cin Drallig, and Anakin (and in the novelization, they find Drallig dead with a lightsaber wound). Of all of these, which one is a) the most likely to have fallen to the Dark Side, and b) has been spending lots of time with Palpatine?
  • Yoda clearly sensed a disturbance in the Force the moment Anakin became Darth Vader, shortly before the attack on the Temple. It wasn't hard for Yoda to put two and two together.
  • Additionally, the 501st were Anakin's legion, and we know they fought some 501st troops in and around the Temple. Even more evidence pointing towards it being Anakin.
• During the fight in his office, Palpatine takes out three Jedi Masters in the space of about 30 seconds. If one is familiar with the EU, this is almost ridiculous, as each is a badass Swordmaster in his own right. Was it just a bad day? Are their skills exaggerated? Perhaps a bit of both, but on the other hand, it might be a case of Underestimating Badassery as well. Most other Dark Siders wouldn't have been able to deal with even two of them, and certainly not all four. Very few Sith in the history of the galaxy could have stood up to those four Masters together, let alone beaten them. They bargained for a skilled and dangerous Sith Lord...they didn't realize that this was pretty much the most skilled and dangerous Sith Lord in history.
  • Not to mention, as pointed out by IMDB, Palpatine's style of fighting is more orientated around fencing, while the Jedi use basic sword fighting, which is less effective in defence and in combat.
  • Which makes sense, since the Sith have been training to fight Jedi, while the Jedi thought the Sith were gone and have been focusing mostly on blast-deflection techniques for the past millennium.
  • Also, Palpatine uses a lot of thrusts. Lightsabers don't really cut through everything they contact effortlessly (see multiple examples in the Cloud City and Death Star II duels), but they do cut extremely well across their entire blade. A thrust is devastating in real sword combat because you can put more power behind it, and focus that power on a very small area (the tip of the sword). But with a lightsaber, a thrust will only damage the tissue the blade actually passes through, and some around that. Compare when Maul stabs Qui-Gon and it takes him several minutes to die, versus Maul dying instantly when Obi-Wan cuts him in half (until his popularity with the fandom brought him back). A thrust is one of the least deadly things you can do with a lightsaber, so Jedi training is probably focused more on cuts and slashes, and thus defending against cuts and slashes. But a thrust can still be deadly, and Palpatine likely knows the Jedi aren't as trained in defending against them as they should be, so uses them to his advantage.
  • The second form of lightsaber combat, Makashi, does include a lot of precise, elegant thrusts. However, given that it was designed for blade-to-blade duelling, it was not much utilized in the last millennium (Dooku being a notable exception). Most Makashi users during the last several centuries were those who studied it along with another style, often Swordmasters who learned all seven (Mace Windu, Cin Drallig, Yoda, Palpatine).
• The Battle of Coruscant is derided by many because of its gratuitous display of ships standing right next to each other and shooting at minimum range. It's argued that the Star Destroyers have no maximum range. But they're fighting over Coruscant, a City Planet and the capital of the Republic. While the Republic fleet could do battle from afar, they're probably trying to contain the battle over just one sector of the planet so that falling ships and debris don't cause even more widespread damage than they already do. It's also worth noting that the Separatist army, especially under Grievous, would jump at the chance to inflict as much collateral damage as possible, to the Republic has to prevent their fleet from spreading out around the planet.
  • That, and preventing their escape: in the novelization it's stated that the Invisible Hand (Grievous' flagship) had been pinned down by a small squadron of Coruscant's defensive fleet to prevent its escape, and considering said ship is surrounded by many more ships it's logical to assume the entire Separatist force there is being kept pinned down and decimated as they try to escape-to no avail, as the Guarlara, a Star Destroyer and a ship the Separatists would do anything to keep from their flagship (as opposed to the smaller and antiquated ships that had only managed to pin the Invisible Hand there by putting themselves on her route and daring it to ram them).
    • Supplementary material supports this position. In the time it took Coruscant's defensive forces to properly mobilize, Grievous had already barged in and kidnapped Palpatine. Engaging the Separatist fleet at point-blank range and forcing them to focus on surviving rather than escaping is the only real option to keep them from bailing with their very important prisoner.
  • Additionally, Coruscant, being the Republic capital, is naturally heavily defended by a massive fleet, forcing the Separatists to muster a fleet of equivalent size for the purposes of storming the planet. Given the sheer scale of the battle, it's pretty clear that at least one factor in why both sides are blazing away at point-blank range is because they have no room to do anything but go at it in close-quarters.
• In the novelization, when Count Dooku looks around the room and the people in it as they relate to the Force, Palpatine is an inscrutable "black hole" whose face he can't see past. In the rest of the novel, Palpatine shows a mastery of using all the right truths to achieve his personal ends; what makes him a deceiver all the same is the things he doesn't reveal.
• Mace Windu's death mirrors Palpatine's. Mace Windu is a leader of the Jedi, Palpatine is the leader of the sith. Anakin kills Mace Windu by throwing him off of something while he is attacking someone with force lightning and becomes Darth Vader, then Darth Vader kills Palpatine by throwing him off something while he is attacking someone with force lightning and becomes Anakin Skywalker again. When he kills Mace Windu, it's to protect Padmé and when he kills Palpatine it's to protect Luke. Love both corrupts and redeems him.
  • It doesn't quite add up. First, Anakin doesn't kill Mace — cutting one's hand off is far from the ultimate punishment, as Star Wars shows on numerous occasions. Of course it's a major contribution towards the latter's fate, but you can't say Skywalker straight up did it. Second, Windu isn't really attacking anyone with force lightning, as described, but rather just deflects the fire from Palpatine. Third, the aforementioned Jedi's death correlates directly with saving Darth Sidious, who then in turn may teach his apprentice-to-be how to prevent said Padmé from losing the will to live. As we all saw, Mace Windu was killed, but it didn't do much to protect Senator Amidala in the end.
• Why does Mace want to kill off Palpatine? It's not him being a jerk, or at least not entirely; what else would he do with him? Palpatine's got the Senate in his pocket, and many of them don't trust the Jedi too much. A trial would just end with him going free, and probably smearing the Order even worse. If they put him in jail at the Temple...well, he already killed three Jedi Masters, how much danger would the rest of the Order be in if he broke out?
  • A critical mistake, as some may have already pointed out above, was the 4 Jedi Masters' approach. From an outside point of view, it could really look like an attempt on the Chancellor's life. What Mace Windu's team should have striven for was to expose Palpatine as a Sith Lord leading the Republic and his unwillingness to give up his extraordinary, temporary powers once the war was over. They failed with both: they didn't bring any witnesses (think senators) or choose a more transparent place than the god-damn office of the Chancellor himself, resulting in Sidious' believable interpretation of what happened, presented in his Senate speech — nor did they even ask him to step down from his office in the first place. They immediately started the “you're under arrest — surrender to us or die” rhetoric instead. Thenceforth, it seemed that the Jedi had already lost, no matter what Mace Windu would do to Palpatine begging for his life.
  • This in turn is Fridge Brilliance. You'd think four senior members of the Jedi High Council would be more politically adept, right? But they just found out that the man running the Republic and the Commander-in-Chief of the clone armies is a Sith Lord. Their (not unreasonable) mindset is that they need to remove him now, before he can, say, legally order the dismantling of the Jedi Order or get the clone armies to execute that contingency order no one ever bothered about before.
• Grievous's claim that Obi-Wan is doomed isn't just empty boasting. Remember, he holds Dooku in really high regard, even if they do argue, he knows firsthand how truly powerful and cunning Dooku is. And now Sidious claims to have a new apprentice. One far younger and MORE POWERFUL. If the outgunned CIS can cling on this long against a materially superior Republic with Dooku, imagine with it could do with an even more powerful Sith at its side.
  • That, and as per Star Wars: The Clone Wars, he's beaten Obi-Wan one-on-one several times by now. He likely figures that he can finally defeat him this time.
• The reason Mace Windu told Anakin to wait in the Council Chambers as opposed to any other safe, Jedi-controlled space was because if what he said was true, Windu would likely have promoted him to be a Master.-Metalshina
• Kind of a funny Call-Back when you notice it: In both the first and last space battles that Anakin Skywalker takes part in during this trilogy, he tries spinning, and both times it proves to be a good trick.
• Chancellor Palpatine famously declares himself The Senate before his fight with Mace Windu and the other Jedi knights. What's the first thing we hear of the Emperor doing in A New Hope? Dissolving the Senate. Along with his deployment of the Death Star starting a chain of events leading to Luke joining the Rebellion and ultimately redeeming Darth Vader, Palpatine symbolically undid himself.
• Many people have mocked Yoda and Obi-Wan for deciding to have Luke raised by Anakin's relatives on Anakin's home planet — but it does actually make a fair amount of sense. Anakin didn't seem to have stayed in touch with Owen and Beru after Attack of the Clones and, if he ever did get wind of the fact that his child survived, he'd naturally assume Yoda and Obi-Wan were training them...as opposed to handing them over to the step-brother he met once and who he's probably barely thought of for the past few years.
  • In addition, source material says that Tatooine is perhaps the last place that Vader would ever return to because of all the bad memories (his childhood in slavery, his mother's death, all that sand), making it the perfect place to hide someone from him.
  • Some fans have also wondered why Padmé's parents weren't considered as potential caretakers for baby Luke, but this would have put him at huge risk at being found by his father. Vader might have bad memories of Tatooine and wouldn't have much reason to check in on his stepbrother, but he's got nothing but good memories of his time on Naboo and might have to drop by at some point while serving Palpatine. It's not unreasonable to think he might hear that his former in-laws suddenly have a little boy running around that looks a lot like him and put the pieces together.
    • Added to that — Naboo is Palpatine's home planet. Putting Luke there is putting him on the planet Palpatine is second-most-likely to visit.
• More of an idle thought than anything: Anakin spends the film seeking the title of "Master", which the Jedi Council refuse him due to his lack of experience. Another use of "Master" is as a title for boy who is too young to be considered a man (see Alfred Pennyworth's Affectionate Nickname for Bruce Wayne: "Master Bruce.")
• The last time Obi-Wan and Anakin speak to each other as friends is just before Obi-Wan boards his cruiser bound for Utapau. Obi-Wan, standing on the gangplank, is illuminated in sunlight, while Anakin, just inside the terminal building, is cast in shadow.
• Say what you will about Hayden Christensen's acting — or, sometimes, lack thereof — but that dull voice he tends to use as pre-Vader Anakin actually helps in that scene when he and Palpatine discuss the differences between Jedi and Sith philosophies. The flat way in which he says that the Sith are evil while the Jedi are selfless makes it sound like he's just parroting what he's heard all his life but doesn't quite believe it.
  • Similarly, as noted above, the flat delivery of his lines towards Padmé shows that he's already starting to fall out of love with her.
• Crossing over with Fridge Horror a bit, Watto is subjected to Adaptational Villainy in the novelization, implied to have beaten Anakin as a slave, when other sources generally show him as being kinder and unlikely to beat them. But the fact is... say he only did it once. Say he only threatened it. But the fact is that even if he only did it once—well, Anakin would have had to suffer it, with no way of getting out, no way of resisting... that kind of powerlessness is going to emotionally scar someone terribly.
  • Alternately, Anakin and Shmi would have inevitably seen other slaves getting beaten by their masters, and they'd be living in constant fear that either Watto might sell them to those masters if they made a mistake, or that he'd ACTUALLY start beating them.
• Sure, the whole "high ground" thing was a dumb move, but Anakin had every reason to think he could make that jump, because he just accomplished it about a minute earlier when he jumped over Obi-Wan onto the floating platform. Obi-Wan even tried to cut him that time and failed. Anakin just didn't take into account the extra distance and terrain required to make it the second time, along with the extra duration gave Obi-Wan more time to react.
• In the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise, Palpatine specifies that Plagueis' apprentice (actually himself) killed him in his sleep. This is unusual given that Sith and Dark Acolytes we see tend to go for a more direct Klingon Promotion route, killing their master in a head-on way to prove their strength. But then you realize that Palpatine killing Plagueis in his sleep is perfect for his character and for the direction Plagueis had been pushing the Sith toward; sneaky and duplicitous, not open and violent. That's how Palpatine managed to become Emperor, after all.
  • The old Expanded Universe elaborated on it, showing it was actually the third attempted assassination on Plagueis by all parties-and they are all symbolic of what happened to anyone who tried to topple the Republic:
    • The first attempt, ordered by a Senator with a politically-motivated grudge against both Plagueis and Palpatine and a man who had been ruined by Plagueis' machinations and had discovered Plagueis' public persona was involved in his father's death, consisted into having him assaulted by a large group of assassins-and it ended with two of Plagueis' Sun Guard bodyguards killed and himself wounded and forced to wear a transpirator for the rest of his life but still killing most assassins, with Palpatine finishing off the survivors with a repeating blaster cannon. Most enemies of the Republic could cause damage and maybe even severely weaken it, but in the end they all failed against its sheer size and might.
    • The second consisted in Palpatine manipulating Ars Veruna, then king of Naboo, into trying to do the deed, something Veruna and his accomplices, the leader of the Black Sun Alexi Garyn, the fallen Jedi Komari Vosa of the terrorist cult Bando Gora, and Hutt crime lord Gardulla, did by nuking his home-only for Plagueis to evade the attack thanks to forewarning from Jabba (a rival of Gardulla whose interests aligned with Plagueis') and then retaliate for it and the death of all his Sun Guards by having the Black Sun decapitated by Darth Maul and personally hunt down Veruna (who had abdicated in fear) to make him drop dead, while leaving Gardulla to Jabba (who reduced him to his representative on Nal Hutta) and leaving the Bando Gora aside as inconsequential (and they would be decapitated by Jango Fett for completely unrelated reasons) and Palpatine not being even suspected. This is akin the past Sith's approach to the Republic, as their direct attacks, while more effective than anything else, ultimately failed and resulted in the Sith brought to near extinction-but survived without being noticed.
    • The third had Palpatine, on the eve of his election, get Plagueis drunk until he fell asleep and then hitting him with Force Lightning. With the Rule of Two, the Sith poisoned the Republic while taking advantage of its assets, and only when it was completely off guard they struck directly and turned it in the Galactic Empire.
• Why is Anakin so hellbent upon becoming a Master? Because he spent so much of his life as a slave.
• The relative ease the Clones have in wiping out the Jedi is strange, especially once one sees Star Wars: The Clone Wars and how hard it would be for them to take on a Jedi. On the other hand, the Jedi are caught completely by surprise and utterly shocked by what's happening, reducing their ability in using the Force or even reacting, as shown by Ki-Adi-Mundi, a powerful Jedi Master who senses what the Clones are about to do and turns to look at them in shock and disbelief before they open fire, Aayla Secura, who can barely look around before the Clones gun her down, and Yoda, who felt the other Jedi dying and thus swiftly decapitates the Clones who try and kill him.
  • Also, the Clones have clearly learned from Pong Krell: with him, the 501st Legion tried to arrest him and suffered heavy losses, but as the tale spread the Clones learned the only safe way to face a Jedi is to use surprise and shoot to kill with abundant overkill-the Clones who killed Aayla Secura shoot her for a while after she's already down, and Cody even calls an artillery strike on Obi-Wan and then orders his troops to track down his body as he (correctly) believes he could have survived.
  • Plus, the clones don't have any malice. There's no hatred or anger towards the Jedi; they're just doing their jobs. All the Jedi would have to warn them is their danger sense, which on a battlefield, would no doubt be overloaded anyway!
• When it is time to exterminate the Jedi, the order to do so is designated as the 66th order. Why that particular number? "F" is the sixth letter in the English alphabet. When converted to numbers, you get "FF". So what could possibly "FF" stand for? "Friendly Fire". Considering what happens later...
  • Alternately/additionally, it's pretty close to "666." Which has a whole other range of implications...
• Darth Sidious never takes off the hood. Not even when he's revealed to be Supreme Chancellor Palpatine all along. In fact, the only time the Saga depicts the transition between the two identities is when Palpatine gets Force Lightning disfigurement and puts on the hood after christening Anakin as Darth Vader. It signifies once and for all that Sheev Palpatine is the real mask, and Darth Sidious is the true face behind that mask.
• When marching on the Jedi Temple, the majority of the 501st Legion is seen equipped exclusively with the DC-15 heavy blaster rifle rather than their smaller carbines, even when the smaller gun's greater maneuverability would be better against opponents as agile as the Jedi. On the other hand, especially powerful blasters can actually push back a lightsaber and make it harder to deflect further bolts (as actually demonstrated by Jango Fett in an easily missed moment in Attack of the Clones-that's why the Jedi Coleman Trebor was looking at his lightsaber when Jango shot him in the shoulder, it was the surprise at the sheer strength of what had hit his lightsaber just a moment before), and that was what they hoped to achieve.
  • Additionally, Jedi in general can be annoyingly stubborn and hard to put down, even when they're not fighting for their home and adoptive family. The extra stopping power would be necessary to make sure of a One-Hit Kill.
• Obi-Wan stows away on Padmé's ship so she'll lead him to Anakin/Vader. Note that he hides in a small, small room with just one seat. Yes, Obi-Wan spent the flight in the bathroom. How did he know he could stay safely hidden? It's obviously the men's room, so Padmé doesn't have any reason to look in there.
  • Not likely. A small ship like Padmé's would have a unisex bathroom, as there wouldn't be enough space or people to justify separate bathrooms.
• The line "Sith Lords are our specialty" gets a bit of mocking, given that Obi-Wan gets knocked out by Tyranus about five minutes later. That being said, Obi-Wan is personally responsible for killing Darth Maul (twice!), crippling Darth Vader, and training the men who killed Darth Tyranus and Darth Sidious (and Luke metaphorically destroyed Darth Vader by bringing back Anakin). Directly or indirectly, Obi-Wan is responsible for every defeat the Sith suffer throughout the entire saga! So really, it's quite fitting.
• Anakin and Padmé take a lot of flak from fans for being so careless as to get pregnant while both being high-profile figures carrying on a clandestine relationship during wartime. They probably ‘’were’’ careful about using protection, but birth control isn’t 100% effective — especially if the Force is putting its metaphorical thumb on the scale. Considering the roles Luke and Leia played in bringing down the Empire, their conception may very well have been the will of the Force, and nothing — short of complete abstinence — would have prevented it. And even then, considering how Anakin himself was born...
• Despite having the chance to call out Palpatine for throwing him under the bus Dooku remains completely silent. While the shock of the situation and his own pride plays a part, there's another good reason why even if Anakin were to hesitate Palpatine can remain relatively confident Dooku wouldn't try to rat him out; Dooku already told Kenobi about a secret Sith Lord in the Republic as part of a Reverse Psychology gambit. In the heat of the moment, why would Anakin think Dooku is telling the truth and not just buying time to save himself/cause further dissention? Especially since Anakin trusts Palpatine's word over anything Dooku could say.
  • Proven in the novelization, where Dooku does try to rat him out only for Anakin to cut him off by decapitation, unwilling to listen to whatever rambling Dooku could come up with to try and be spared.
• It is likely that Palpatine planted the visions of Padmé dying in Anakin's head when you consider the fact that he had Anakin kill Dooku not long before they started, which was immediately after he found out she was pregnant. It is not unlikely that Palpatine already knew, and his getting rid of his apprentice (as well as his words to General Grievous, again before the nightmares) shows that he was planning on replacing him with Anakin in the immediate future, and otherwise it would have been too perfectly convenient for him.
• Why would Palpatine send Anakin to personally kill the younglings? So he can publicly frame the Jedi for killing them. If it looked like the Younglings were gunned down by clone troopers, the public and the Senate would immediately turn on Palpatine and reject his Empire but if it looks like they were killed by a lightsaber, it would be easy to pin the blame on any adult Jedi that the clones had gunned down. Yet another way to frame the Jedi as cultists who kidnap and indoctrinate children who would rather kill said kids rather than let them be taken care of and protected by the Empire.
  • Additionally, it firmly cements Vader on the Dark Side. Anakin's killing of Mace Windu was impetuous, unmeditated. His killing of the Separatist Council is morally wrong by any standard, but they're people who he's hated for years (in the case of Gunray and Haako, ever since he was a kid) and have been directly or indirectly responsible for millions of deaths, war crimes, etc. Murdering innocent children is utterly, completely, totally, 100% wrong. If Anakin has time to think about what he did, he might well repent. But once he's made the willing, conscious choice to slaughter his comrades, his adoptive family, children...then he's thrown his lot in once and for all on the Dark Side.
• Courtesy of "Addie Counts": Anakin burning on the shore of the lava river on Mustafar. "It's kind of like. . . that was a Jedi funeral. . . and Anakin died." Yeah, we saw in Return of the Jedi Luke burning what was left of Vader's body on a pyre, and in The Phantom Menace saw Qui-Gon's body also being burned. Symbollically, Anakin's burning body is burning away what was left of the good man Anakin Skywalker. From this point, Anakin really is dead, subsumed by Darth Vader. Until, ultimately, Luke is able to do what Anakin wanted but never could: bring someone he loved back to life.

Fridge Horror:

• Anakin Skywalker (newly named Darth Vader) is ordered to kill all the younglings in the Jedi Temple. Pretty bad already. And then you recall the fact that Force sensitive children are brought in to the temple when they're a few months old...
  • It gets even worse. Imagine Anakin, weeks later, getting ready to rest, thinking of the child that will never be... and then visions of the murdered babies fill his mind...
  • As twisted as it seems, he may have justified it to himself as a Mercy Kill - those children would never be anything more than slaves, and he knew all too well what that would mean.
  • Don't forget, he's lived in the Temple on and off for the past decade and a bit. He probably knows a fair few of them, and certainly the Knights and Masters; heck, he's probably trained some of the kids he cuts down, not to mention having sparred, lived, and fought alongside many of them-they were the closest he's had to family since he was nine.
  • One of the kids addresses him by name, so he clearly at least knows that one. Also, for further knife-twisting: That's the only time anyone ever addresses him as "Master Skywalker" in the entire trilogy. Worse of all, it's possible that he was going to spare the younglings and have them secretly escape. With the Jedi Order collapsing from Order 66 and any survivors going into exile or hunted down by him, they could have just quietly left the sinking ship and lived normal lives on remote planets with any influence the Jedi Order had over them fading over time, all the while fulfilling his orders under the Metaphorically True clause. So what happened? Notice that he ignited his lightsaber after being addressed. His desire to be a Jedi Master in order to save Padmé was what started this chain of events in the first place. So being addressed as such during that pivotal moment in context, the kid was essentially unknowingly addressed him condescendingly which pushed his Berserk Button. The novel adaptation even made this train of thought canon!!
  • More likely, the infants would have been raised to be Imperial agents. Palpatine was keen on obtaining force-sensitive children to act as spies and assassins for his reign as part of Project Harvester, and killing infants would have been a wasted opportunity. Unlike the younglings, the infants would not have been old enough to be indoctrinated by the Jedi.
• Mace Windu's decision to rush off and confront Palpatine in the middle of the night with only a few Jedi may seem rash and impulsive, but think about it; he's just received confirmation that there is a Sith Lord on Coruscant, and it's the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic! One of, if not the most powerful and influential men in the Galaxy. And he's been right in front of them for years, meeting with the Jedi Council on a weekly basis, helping them run the war effort and the government, living and working right not far from their damn temple. He's running off to take care of him because, even though he doesn't show it, inside he's panicking at how badly the Jedi Order screwed the pooch in their search for the Sith, and is very worried about their future.
  • The rash and impulsive decision from Mace Windu is quite horrific, too. Palpatine received quite strong arguments for the Jedi plotting that he could easily manipulate in front of the Senate to push his interpretation of facts, making the Order, the seemingly most noble and peaceful men in the galaxy, public enemy number one. What makes it so horrendous, however, is that it could have been avoided — one could argue. A short message from Master Windu to all the other Jedi out there warning them to be extra cautious about possible traitors and treason in general would have possibly saved a lot of lives, which could then regroup and try to face the threat together. What happened, though, was too much Samuel-L.-Jackson-ish, and it backfired.
  • In the old EU, it was even worse: Order 66 was one of 150 Contingency Orders the Clones had committed to memory, but Order 65, that could be issued by either a majority vote of the Senate or the Security Council (a smaller number of Senators tasked with protecting the security of the Republic), was to arrest the Chancellor and authorized lethal force^note  That being said, there's pretty much no chance they could've gotten a majority of the Senate to agree, and undoubtedly Palpatine's got enough support in the Security Council to nix that idea. Windu had a legal way to deal with Palpatine then and there, but opted to try and take him in himself and got killed as result.
    • The fact Order 66 was public knowledge probably played a role in Windu's decision: he has not only received confirmation that there's a Sith Lord on Coruscant and it's the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, he also knows that the Sith Lord can order the execution of the entire Jedi Order on a whim and has had this power for three years. That, and the fact that for some reason he hadn't issued Order 66 yet, clearly played a role in Mace Windu's decision: he was trying to kill Palpatine before he decided to kill them all. If he'd tried to play it legally, he would've been taking the battle to Palpatine's arena (literally and figuratively), while giving Palpatine plenty of time to figure out some other way of destroying the Jedi.
• If one takes a backstep to consider the political state of the galaxy as the Clone Wars are about to end, it really showcases that there's no winning scenario whether Palpatine lives or dies. While we know of the former case and the subsequent Order 66, let's consider what would have happened had Windu dealt the killing blow to Palpatine:
  • The entire Jedi Order would have been hunted down anyway because Palpatine enjoyed Universally Beloved Leader status by the time Revenge of the Sith happens while the Jedi are squarely into Hero with Bad Publicity territory. Even if the reveal that he was indeed a Sith Lord became public, that wouldn't stop people from distrusting the Jedi and they still would have to face the scandal of allowing this entire war to happen right in their faces, which brings us to the next consequence...
  • The Republic would face a cataclysmic crisis had the truth came out as it would have revealed the full web of corruption within the system that allowed a Sith Lord to manipulate it and the Separatists to fight across the galaxy, if anything, it would have boosted the Separatist cause as now many systems would have a legitimate reason to not want to do anything with the Republic. This finally means...
  • The Clone Wars would have either went on for even more years, if not devolving into a decades long conflict now that the reputation of the Republic is in tatters and the cause of the Separatists gain a new lease of life. Or, the Republic accepts a ceasefire and recognizes the Separatists as a legitimate entity. Whatever the outcome, it would have not been able to remain whole by the end.
• Not only was it downright stupid for the Jedi to make use of the clone army without question, it was also incredibly immoral: They're essentially an army of brainwashed slaves, since it's not like the clone troopers exactly got a choice about joining. Extra material points out the fact that many clones could prove mentally unstable and their accelerated development included a shortened lifespan. So essentially, the Jedi condone the creation of genetically-modified child soldiers. Plus, they're still on guard duty and quite possibly have been for hundreds of years.
  • In Attack of the Clones, Lama Su told Obi-Wan that the clones are conditioned to 'obey any order without question'. He never said those orders had to come from the Jedi.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Jedi "recruiting" methods aren't any better. Take them from infancy, cut them off from all ties, ban everything but training and duty, shut them up in a training facility, and by the time they're 13, they're either washed out into a dead end job or have deadly weapons shoved in their hands and a licence to kill. The Jedi wouldn't be capable of understanding just how screwed up the situation was, the Senate was too corrupt to care, and the Republic citizens were just glad it wasn't their children in the trenches, but some expendable cloned slaves. The Republic charter banned slavery as part of its founding principles, but push came to shove and that principle got chucked out the window for convenience. This was the Last Straw that showed that the Republic probably deserved to die because they were merely The Republic In Name Only.
    • But the seemingly mindless Jedi serving as holders of peace worked for hundreds, if not thousands of years. It took a mastermind of Palpatine's caliber to rig the system and take over.
  • In the EU, there are clones who do end up deserting, however their lives aren't exactly easy after that. Palpatine's method for dealing with deserters? Send Clone assassin squads after them. Or worse yet, what happens to clones who are injured to the point that they can survive, but never be fit for duty again? The only way you could officially leave the army was in a body bag. The Force Awakens later elaborates on the topic of Stormtrooper desertion, and it goes along similar ways.
    • Except for the fact that they didn't quite condone it. Get Traviss's preaching out of your head, what other choice did they have? It was either the clones or the few poorly trained and equipped security forces they had. Besides, they had no input into the creation of this army, it was a last-minute reveal. Is it still bad to use slave armies? yes it is, but it would kind of be a kick in the nuts to just cast them aside right after they deployed.
    • If the Rebellion was anything to go by - they had options; commission privateers from Hutt Space, organize the security forces and planet militias (which is how the US operated until the Civil War, each state had their own militia that got pressed into service in wartime), recruit like crazy from their bigger population and better supply lines. The Alliance was a de facto Republic remnant had less money, fewer supply lines, less diplomatic recognition, fewer personnel, lower-grade equipment, and much fewer Force wielders than The Empire (which inherited all the infrastructure and perks of the Republic). But the Republic chose an easier option and paid for it in the long run, which fits with one of the overarching themes of the universe - that going for the quicker and more expedient option over the ethical one is going to end badly for everyone.
    • The thing people seem to forget is that the Jedi were technically only servants of the Republic, not its policy makers. Even if the Jedi had refused to take leadership of the clone army, the Republic still would have used the Fett-clones anyways, and it's implied that the Jedi in general treat the clones much better than other non-clone Republic officers. This is why Palpatine's plan was so clever in its evilness; even if the Jedi kept their involvement in the war minimal, the clone army would still be used and the galaxy would tear itself apart anyways. It's understandable that they'd ultimately decide to get more involved in an effort to mollify the worst of the conflict, even if it ultimately did nothing but sully their reputation as ethical peacemakers.
    • Indeed, if the Jedi hadn't gotten involved, the people of the Republic (not entirely unjustly) would have blamed the Jedi for putting Honor Before Reason and lost faith in the Jedi entirely. Which would have still played exactly into Palpatine's hands.
• Even creepier, try thinking about how the Fett-clones were described as the best clone army the Kamino folks had ever made. So how many previous armies have they made, for what purpose, and how bloody must the wars have been that they fought in, if they were wiped out so thoroughly that the very idea of a "clone army" seems novel to Obi-Wan?
  • Remember, Kamino is actually on the very far outskirts of what is Republic space at the time of the films. They were so far on the margins that the freaking Jedi didn't know about them until Obi-wan found out about them from an old prospecting friend of his. It's possible that those wars were fought by/with cultures even further removed, species who have never seen a member of the Republic.
• Vader's choking of Padmé is basically domestic abuse. Even worse, Padmé is pregnant, meaning that it's not just her life being threatened, but two other lives as well. She dies as a result. And this is real; women do get abused, regardless of whether they're pregnant or not. And more often than not, it only makes things worse in the long run.
  • The comic makes things even worse: When Anakin stops force choking Padmé, he doesn't just let go; he force-throws her against the wall, and she would possibly sustain even greater bodily damage if the movie also did that.
  • There's a horrific real-life subtext to this as well. Statistically, when physical abuse escalates to strangulation, it becomes much more likely that the abuser is willing to kill their victim. It's very possible that Vader had it in him to straight up murder his wife right there on the platform.
• Yoda's pained reaction when he felt the massive disturbance in the Force due to Order 66. When you think about it, it wasn't just the mass murder of the Jedi that pained him. He was no doubt feeling the free will of the thousands of Clones suddenly being shut down and each one robbed of their sense of self.
• While Bail Organa's order to have C-3PO's memory wiped is played for hahas in the film, consider it from Threepio's point of view. Of all the characters in the film, he has the least control or understanding of the events that surround him. And now he's effectively about to "die" for something he barely had anything to do with.
• Anakin, "despite" being an excellent pilot, orders to "open all hatches, extend all flaps and drag fins" on General Grievous' ship, which causes half the ship to break off and burn in the atmosphere. With it, the forensic evidence is destroyed that Anakin killed Dooku in a non-Jedi way.
  • In the novelization, it's described as being an attempt to slow down the ship's entry into the atmosphere. However, it could be that this was a secondary motivation as well.

Fridge Sadness:

• The Battle over Coruscant opens with Obi-Wan and Anakin demonstrating teamwork and comradery as they fight against the Separatist armies of droids. This seems like a fun introduction that reveals how they have fought tooth and nail together, until you realize that this is the last battle that these two will ever fight where they are on the same side. Never again would the iconic "Anakin and Obi-Wan" duo be the Republic's ultimate tag team.
• Due to the retroactive ending of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, we find out that Anakin had just been reunited with Ahsoka and given the chance to fight alongside her. But then Palpatine lures both him and Obi-Wan back to Coruscant, robbing him of this chance and denying Ahsoka any opportunity to rejoin the Jedi she considers brothers.
• While not explored in the film, in the novelization Dooku is revealed to be a beloved hero of the Separatist movement. Many rallied behind him because they truly thought that he was going to provide a better galaxy for the Separatists than what was given by the Republic. However, because Dooku pledged himself to the Sith he doomed the Separatists to being manipulated by the enemies of the dark side and turned into something it didn't have to be.
• The clones end up betraying the Jedi due to Order 66 and are the new enforcers of the Galactic Empire... for only the first few years. As shown in Star Wars: The Bad Batch, the Empire starts phasing out the clones in favor of conscripted Stormtroopers, and by Obi-Wan Kenobi there are plenty of retired homeless clones drifting about, with nowhere to go and nothing to do. In the end, they ended up being discarded by the New Order just as the Jedi were. Without any Jedi to hunt down, the Empire could simply focus on recruiting cheaper recruits rather than buying the expensive clones.
• Padmé losing the will to live seems contrived until you really take into account everything that has happened. She just lost her husband to the dark side of the Force, she knows that her children will grow up in a world where the forces of evil have triumphed over good, in part because she was the one who originally called for that vote for no confidence in Chancellor Valorum which led to all of this happening in the first place, and she was likely going to be deemed a traitor to the New Order the moment she appeared to be disloyal. And all of this happened in a matter of days. She is clearly overwhelmed and not without cause.
• Based on how this movie plays out, it really does seem that Padmé's pregnancy is truly what sets everything in motion that will lead to Anakin desperately turning to Palpatine with the hopes that he can save her. While unexpected, Anakin and Padmé were both clearly happy about this happening, only for this joy to immediately be taken away once Anakin starts to become unstable and terrified of what could happen. Had they been allowed to be married, Anakin might have been able to turn to Obi-Wan for help but is denied that opportunity. All a sad tragedy in the sense of how much could have been avoided if Anakin simply had people to turn to.
• It's implied (and all but stated outright in Legends) that Obi-Wan knew what was happening with Anakin and Padmé but simply chose to be ignorant. However, because Anakin never spoke to him, he never got to find out if Obi-Wan would have sided with him, which he very well could have. Truly tragic that a trust as strong as brotherhood was forsaken by Anakin in a moment of need.
• A major aspect to the novelization, and implied in the movie, is Anakin's belief that everybody should be on the same side: wanting to bring an end to the war. Naturally, Anakin is willing to believe that the Jedi and the leaders of the Republic like Palpatine want this same thing, regardless of the seemingly petty conflicts involved. The sad truth is that many do want this, such as Padmé, Obi-Wan and several others, however, there are a corrupt elite that are all to willing to support Palpatine and the war in general because they get to profit off of it. However, the only major political figure Anakin talks to is Palpatine himself, and Anakin can't see that Palpatine as such an individual because of the corrupt friendship that Palpatine convinced him he had. Had Anakin confided in pretty much anyone else to the degree he did with Palpatine, such as Obi-Wan, Yoda or Padmé, the entire war could have indeed ended peacefully.
• When Obi-Wan and Yoda end up leaving Coruscant towards the end of the movie, they end up leaving for good. Never again would they set foot on the galactic capital that they used to call home.
• As Padme takes off with C-3PO, the latter mentions that he is beginning to get the hang of flying. Once his memory wipe occurs, C-3PO will forget about all of this and will go back to hating space travel. The Threepio from this movie does go away due to said memory wipe, meaning he will also forget all about Senator Amidala whom he served so faithfully.