10 Shocking Stories From The Star Wars Expanded Universe
9. Luke Turns To The Dark Side
As has been mentioned before, George Lucas flirted with the idea of Luke taking up the mantle of Darth Vader at the end of Return Of The Jedi. Thankfully, he didnt make that call. Instead, imagining Luke as a minion of evil was left to the writers of the Expanded Universe. Specifically, the job fell to Tom Veitch, who wrote the aforementioned Dark Empire comics. Therein, when Luke meets the newly cloned resurrected version of the Emperor, it doesnt take long for Palpatine to seemingly corrupt him. Yes. My fathers destiny is my own, he tells his new boss upon accepting an offer to become his apprentice and command a fleet of Devastators (a type of Star Destroyer). To start with, Luke is actually lampooning Sidious in an attempt to infiltrate his base of operations and destroy the remaining clones. He nearly succeeds, before the Emperor manages to stop him and transform the Jedi into a true denizen of the Dark Side and, essentially, his obedient lapdog. Palpatine kick starts a plan to capture Leia, before finding that the bond between the Skywalker siblings was enough to break the Dark Side spell consuming Luke. Enraged, he attempts to destroy the Rebel fleet with a huge Force storm, which the Skywalkers then use against him, vanquishing Emperor for the time being.
