10 Star Wars Moments Deeper Than You Think
6. Luke Enters The Dark Side Cave - The Empire Strikes Back
In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) famously enters the Dark Side Cave while training with Yoda on Dagobah, and is exposed to his worst fear.
Here Luke encounters a vision of Darth Vader, strikes him down, and then is horrified to see his own face within the mask. Though many interpret the scene simply as proving that Luke wasn't ready to fend off the Dark Side and thus succumbed to fear, there's a bit more to it than that.
Luke's real failure was in failing to listen to Yoda and allowing himself to surrender so immediately to fear.
Yoda told him that the Cave contains "only what you take with you," and in Luke's case it brought his biggest flaw to the surface - no matter how improbable Vader's presence in that cave was, Luke immediately drew his lightsaber and struck.
Luke's face wound up in the Vader mask because Luke was scared and primed to attack - he didn't heed Yoda's advice ("your weapons, you will not need them") and feel the situation out before considering violence.
And so, the lesson was thus: if Luke continued down the path of fearful violence, he would indeed become the very thing that terrified him most.