OT without the Skywalker family drama

[Stravo]

This is a completely open ended question and invites people to sort of free form some things but hey it's Christmas time and I just finished watching a Spike OT marathon.

OK, here's the idea. Assume that the premise as set up by ANH remained unchanged by the prequels and ESB and ROTJ. By this I mean everything is what it seems in ANH - Vader is a fallen apprentice of Obi Wan's that did kill Luke's father. Leia and Luke are not related. Obviously Vader and Luke are not related. Han and Luke love triangle with Leia no longer creepy and they are indeed competing for her affection. You can go ahead and add in any other factors.

The best way to phrase this is how would the OT unfold without the Skywalker family drama of "Luke, I am your father."

In free forming your opinions for simplicity's sake just assume the basic plots for ESB and ROTJ remain the same - i.e. Attack on Hoth, Vader duels Luke on Bespin, trap on Endor, etc. And if you want to suggest your own plots for the follow on sequels instead of the ones we know that's fine as well.

[TOSDOC]

I could see the events in ESB playing out exactly the same, right up to the big reveal at the end of the duel. Then it gets dicey. If Vader is not Luke's father, he has no vested interest in Luke other than to just take this kid as an apprentice and overthrow the Emperor. Luke has no self doubt about the truth, he just gets angrier at Vader because he's an evil prick who killed his father, aunt and uncle, tried to kill him in the trench, tortured his friends, and chopped off his hand. By ROTJ, Luke's anger has grown instead of a desire to redeem his father because he has felt no good in this evil unrelated prick. I could see him slipping further into the dark side than what was depicted, maybe even killing Vader and the Emperor himself--the movie would end in a Rebel victory and Han still gets Leia, but Luke is standing aloof as the new Sith.

It was Vader being Luke's father that gave Luke a sense of purpose other than destruction of Vader and the Emperor--redemption of Vader doesn't seem possible to anyone else in the movies, even Yoda and Obi Wan. Without that, Luke's objective is a Justice/Revenge arc, and he loses himself in the process.

[Solauren]

Assumption
#1 - Vader goes "Kenobi killed your father" (what everyone, including the actors, thought, up until they saw the premiere of Empire. Only Lucas, James Earl Jones, and like 3 sound editors knew the truth. Hmm, that sounds familair....)

#2 - Luke still does the header, and the rest of ESB goes 'as is'.

#3 - Everything is ROTJ is fine right up until Dagobah. Now we have an arguement between Kenobi and Skywalker. Revealing either
a)- Anakin's death was an accident. it was Vader vs Kenobi + Anakin, and Anakin got killed by a accidental swing from Kenobi
b)- Anakin had turned to the Dark Side before Kenobi defeated him, and Vader is Anakin's replacement. Vader betrayed Anakin to become the Sith apprentice.

#4 - During the Death Star duel, Luke is still cool as a cucumber, but has none of the family ties. Prior, he's not trying to turn Vader, he's looking for information about Anakin. During the duel, instead of trying to appeal to Vader's former ID, he's appealing to his former life as Anakin's friend.

#5 - Duel finale either
a) - Goes as is, with Vader redeeming himself to save his best friends son.
b) - Luke kills Vader, and ends up fighting the Emperor.

There are other options, but that's getting into 'Alterate Universe rewrite of Return of the Jedi' territory.

[SCRawl]

If Luke is unrelated to Leia, would he be able to direct her to him after the Vader duel? In other words, does Luke tumble to his death instead of being rescued? I assumed that that ability was due to her Force sensitivity. Also, if he *does* make it to RotJ in more or less the same shape as he did in the films, would he be able to defeat Vader, since he wouldn't be goaded into using his emotions with threats of going after his sister. And even if Luke did manage to defeat Vader, would he have even a snowball's chance of defeating the Emperor? He wouldn't have thrown away his lightsabre, I think, but even with it I can't believe that he's a match for Palpatine.

[dworkin]

If everyone's unrelated then Luke is still a badass force user that Vader and Palpy want on their side. The big reveal at the climax of ESB would be that Ben killed Anakin. Luke can still call out to Leia because he's the one with the magic powers.

In ROTJ Luke confronts Ben's ghost and gets the same 'point of view' except at this point an older and wiser Luke calls Ben on his BS and asks him how he knows Vader is beyond the pale. After all, Vader's irredeemable evil is only 'a point of view'. Luke realises that to defeat Vader and the Emperor they must be turned from evil.

Events proceed pretty much as before. Luke reluctantly fights Vader until Vader goads Luke into going all 'dark side' but Luke steps back and refuses to finish him off. Palpy electrozaps Luke and fails. The light side is stronger as Yoda mentioned, just harder. Palpy burns himself out literally trying to kill Luke, who then leaves carrying Vader. Vader dies enroute to the shuttle. The rebels burn Vader's armour in celebration, thanking Luke for killing the monsters. Luke is left wondering if anything has really changed.

[Shannon]

WRT the love triangle between Han, Leia and Luke, the novelisation of TESB makes it clear that in the final scene (as Luke and Leia watch the Falcom depart), Luke is well aware that Leia has chosen Han:

They needed no words in this moment. Luke knew that Leia's mind and heart were with Han, no matter where he was nor what his fate might be.

It goes on to say:

As to his own destiny, he was now more uncertain about himself than he had ever been - even before this simple farmboy on a distant world first learned of the intangible something called the Force. He only knew that he ahd to return to Yoda and finish his training before he set off to rescue Han.

So we could have a quite different ROTJ given that Luke could indeed return to Yoda before heading to Tatooine (the novel does repeat the line that that is where he will meet Lando and Chewbacca). If he returns to Dagobah first and completes his training along with having a little chat with Obi-Wan and Yoda both re Vader and the Emperor, he may then re-evaluate how he wants to proceed after rescuing Han. He may indeed set out to kill both Vader and the Emperor as a distraction while the Rebels attack DSII - he may even die a defiant death at the hand of the Emperor seconds before DSII explodes.

[Praxis]

Assumption
#1 - Vader goes "Kenobi killed your father" (what everyone, including the actors, thought, up until they saw the premiere of Empire. Only Lucas, James Earl Jones, and like 3 sound editors knew the truth. Hmm, that sounds familair....)

#2 - Luke still does the header, and the rest of ESB goes 'as is'.

#3 - Everything is ROTJ is fine right up until Dagobah. Now we have an arguement between Kenobi and Skywalker. Revealing either
a)- Anakin's death was an accident. it was Vader vs Kenobi + Anakin, and Anakin got killed by a accidental swing from Kenobi
b)- Anakin had turned to the Dark Side before Kenobi defeated him, and Vader is Anakin's replacement. Vader betrayed Anakin to become the Sith apprentice.

#4 - During the Death Star duel, Luke is still cool as a cucumber, but has none of the family ties. Prior, he's not trying to turn Vader, he's looking for information about Anakin. During the duel, instead of trying to appeal to Vader's former ID, he's appealing to his former life as Anakin's friend.

#5 - Duel finale either
a) - Goes as is, with Vader redeeming himself to save his best friends son.
b) - Luke kills Vader, and ends up fighting the Emperor.

There are other options, but that's getting into 'Alterate Universe rewrite of Return of the Jedi' territory.

Luke only searched out Vader and went to the Death Star willingly to help turn his father.

Otherwise, he'd have stayed on Endor and helped destroy the Death Star that way, figuring Vader would die in the blast.

If we take Grand Admiral Thrawn's "Palpatine was using the Force to coordinate his troops" theory at face value, without killing Palpatine, the Empire curbstomps the Rebel fleet.

Otherwise, ignoring that, the question is whether Vader sensed Luke going down to Endor. If he did, then Vader goes to Endor, seeks out Luke, and they duel to the death. If he didn't, Luke and the strike team successfully destroy the shield generator, Vader dies when the Executor is destroyed, and the Emperor is killed when the Death Star explodes.

[Pelranius]

If we take Grand Admiral Thrawn's "Palpatine was using the Force to coordinate his troops" theory at face value, without killing Palpatine, the Empire curbstomps the Rebel fleet.

Actually it was Grand Admiral Declann who was doing the Force battle meld. Killing Palpatine caused him to stop and run to the throne room.

[Eternal_Freedom]

^
Either way killing Palpy would still stop the Battle Meditation.

[Purple]

For some reason I feel it would work out about as interesting as WW1 without the Hapsburg family drama. And that it would be about as interesting.

[TheHammer]

Assumption
#1 - Vader goes "Kenobi killed your father" (what everyone, including the actors, thought, up until they saw the premiere of Empire. Only Lucas, James Earl Jones, and like 3 sound editors knew the truth. Hmm, that sounds familair....)

#2 - Luke still does the header, and the rest of ESB goes 'as is'.

#3 - Everything is ROTJ is fine right up until Dagobah. Now we have an arguement between Kenobi and Skywalker. Revealing either
a)- Anakin's death was an accident. it was Vader vs Kenobi + Anakin, and Anakin got killed by a accidental swing from Kenobi
b)- Anakin had turned to the Dark Side before Kenobi defeated him, and Vader is Anakin's replacement. Vader betrayed Anakin to become the Sith apprentice.

#4 - During the Death Star duel, Luke is still cool as a cucumber, but has none of the family ties. Prior, he's not trying to turn Vader, he's looking for information about Anakin. During the duel, instead of trying to appeal to Vader's former ID, he's appealing to his former life as Anakin's friend.

#5 - Duel finale either
a) - Goes as is, with Vader redeeming himself to save his best friends son.
b) - Luke kills Vader, and ends up fighting the Emperor.

There are other options, but that's getting into 'Alterate Universe rewrite of Return of the Jedi' territory.

Luke only searched out Vader and went to the Death Star willingly to help turn his father.

Otherwise, he'd have stayed on Endor and helped destroy the Death Star that way, figuring Vader would die in the blast.

If we take Grand Admiral Thrawn's "Palpatine was using the Force to coordinate his troops" theory at face value, without killing Palpatine, the Empire curbstomps the Rebel fleet.

Otherwise, ignoring that, the question is whether Vader sensed Luke going down to Endor. If he did, then Vader goes to Endor, seeks out Luke, and they duel to the death. If he didn't, Luke and the strike team successfully destroy the shield generator, Vader dies when the Executor is destroyed, and the Emperor is killed when the Death Star explodes.

Now, on the surface maybe that seems like a cakewalk for the rebels. With a Jedi on their side and no Vader planet side, and the added bonus of Ewok canon fodder, they should be able to overwhelm the defenses quicker than before. However maybe Vader decides to dust off his old Tie X1 and take a personal role in defending the Death Star. Just because the shield was down doesn't guarantee victory for the Rebels, especially with the best starpilot in the galaxy out there blasting x-wings.