Important inconsistencies between the 6 movies

[Eternal_Freedom]

Vader saying in ROTJ that he must obey his master isn't contradicting his plan from ESB, since both involved Luke joining the Dark Side as a first step. In ROTJ the options for Vader have become "turn Luke" or "kill Luke." Nothing to me indicates that once Luke joins the Dark Side the "overthrow the Emperor and rule the galaxy" isn't still there, it's just that first step is becoming more urgent.

[Channel72]

Vader wants to turn Luke to the dark side in both - however, in one of them it's to unite against the Emperor; in the other, he's doing his master's bidding and wants to add Luke to the triumvirate presumably.
He clearly says "I must obey my master", directly contradicting what came before - it's not "irrelevant anymore", it's contradicted.

In both ESB and ROTJ, the motivation is to "add Luke to the triumvirate". That's what Vader and the Emperor discussed via hologram. That's why Vader was trying to have Luke frozen in Carbonite, so he could bring him to the Emperor. The "join me and overthrow the Emperor" line came out of nowhere, had no foreshadowing, and had no follow up. I had always taken it as a seductive attempt to stir up Luke's Dark Side tendencies by tempting him with power, especially in light of Yoda's earlier warning that "a Jedi craves not power", (paraphrased). In fact, the whole sword fight with Vader is designed to get Luke started on a course towards embracing the Dark Side - humiliating him and then tempting him with power was part of that. But then Luke demonstrated that he'd rather die than rule the galaxy with his evil father. So that pretty much brought that whole plot thread to an end - there really wasn't a need for any followup there.

Regardless, it seems pretty obvious that if Vader successfully turned Luke to the Dark Side, then Vader would have eventually conspired with him to overthow the Emperor. And the Emperor obviously knew that, since he basically tries to get Luke to kill Vader. I mean, a lot of fucked up psychological shit is going on between these three, which is why the throne room scenes in ROTJ are so interesting.

Also, remember that ROTJ was written by a different writer than ESB, so it's not surprising that some of the ideas in that script weren't explored. I mean, even when a series of movies is written by the same writer, it's often the case that some plot point or foreshadowed future plot line is dropped or forgotten.

And I'm pointing out they were forgotten

Or maybe changed on purpose, I don't know.

In this case, who cares? I wouldn't even have even expected Vader to bring it up later. In ROTJ he hasn't even seen Luke for like a few years (or whatever, I can never get the OT timeline straight), and when they finally meet again, Luke is totally different and stubbornly insists that Vader still has good left in him.

[lGrand Anhoop]

Um... obey master =/= overthrow master.

Turn to the dark side = parallel in both cases,
but the other part is the difference.

[lGrand Anhoop]

Regardless, it seems pretty obvious that if Vader successfully turned Luke to the Dark Side, then Vader would have eventually conspired with him to overthow the Emperor. And the Emperor obviously knew that, since he basically tries to get Luke to kill Vader.

Actually no, it appears as if Vader is unable to act against the Emperor and won't overthrow him.
And when the Emperor tells Luke to kill his father it seem that's because Vader has turned out to be weaker.

Same motif can be found in V where Vader first tries to get him into the freezing chamber but then is "impressed", and allows for Luke to fall out of that window implying that he's testing whether he's worthy.



And if he'd frozen him, we don't know what he'd do - keep in mind, he also didn't tell him he was his father before the very end. BOTH came "out of nowhere" in that sense, so why would one simply be a hard truth while the other a lie?


This brings us all the way back to Empire and just how ambiguous and off-throwing that whole twist cliffhanger was. Any directions could've been gone into, however the way ROTJ did it, "let's just not talk about that overthrowing part, but accepting the father part", and make up a backstory where Vader "couldn't get himself to kill Luke", simply wasn't an option that picked up all the threads properly, or even consistently.