Although Psycho’s chilling finale and Chinatown’s harrowing reveal give it a run for its money, the “I am your father” rug-pull in The Empire Strikes Back is arguably the greatest plot twist in film history. It was completely unexpected, yet it also made total sense in the grander scheme of things. The twist had been subtly foreshadowed – “Vader” is the Dutch word for “father” – but the audience still didn’t see it coming. Star Wars will never have another plot twist that comes close to matching the way Empire Strikes Back’s “father” reveal shocked audiences in 1980.
The worst movie plot twists, like The Happening, fall apart at the “fridge logic” stage when the audience starts to poke a few holes in them. The best ones, like Shutter Island, fill in all the gaps in the viewer’s mind in one earth-shattering revelation. Darth Vader being a fallen Jedi and absentee father became the emotional crux of the entire saga.
The original 1977 movie had made Vader an instantly iconic villain, but it characterized him as a cold-blooded, faceless embodiment of pure bureaucratic evil. There was no guarantee that Star Wars would become the highest-grossing movie ever made and Lucas would get to make a sequel, but he planted the seeds in anticipation of that eventuality. After Lucas left Vader’s personal life a mystery and left his fate in the Battle of Yavin ambiguous, Empire significantly raised the stakes with the revelation that Vader is Luke’s father.
Throughout Empire, little glimpses of the man underneath the suit humanize Vader. An Imperial officer sees Vader’s medical pod opening as the helmet is lowered down over his heavily scarred head. After being hopelessly defeated in lightsaber combat, Luke learns that his ruthless opponent – the fascist dictator ruling the galaxy with an iron fist – is his biological father. Vader isn’t just a faceless embodiment of evil after all; the human being under that helmet was once a promising Jedi who trained under Obi-Wan.
This set the stage for Return of the Jedi to redeem Vader. When Vader sacrifices himself to kill the Emperor, saving his son’s life and freeing himself from his master’s control in one fell swoop, he isn’t necessarily redeemed for his years of heinous war crimes, but he is redeemed in his son’s eyes. Luke initially didn’t want to fight his father when he arrived in the Emperor’s throne room, because he believed there was still good in him and he wanted to bring him back to the light without violence. Of course, the Emperor manages to get Luke to take up his saber and fight Vader, but in the end, Vader still sees the light and proves Luke right. The paternal plot twist in The Empire Strikes Back doesn’t just have value for its immediate shock factor; its contributions to the overall narrative arc are unparalleled.
Director Irvin Kershner frames the moment beautifully, shooting Luke from a high angle and Vader from a low angle to emphasize just how powerful and intimidating the fearsome Sith Lord is. John Williams’ slow, somber “Imperial March” melody kicks in at the perfect moment to give this reveal the kind of emotional weight it deserves. Mark Hamill’s reaction is authentic, because he was given a fake script with a different line. Luke is just as stunned and befuddled by the identity of his father as the audience.
The 1980 Star Wars sequel’s impact on contemporary moviegoers was hilariously spoofed in The Simpsons’ classic flashback episode “I Married Marge,” in which Homer and Marge conceive Bart after watching The Empire Strikes Back. Homer walks out of the theater and loudly exclaims in front of a long line of Star Wars fans waiting to see the second show, “Wow, what an ending! Who would have ever guessed Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father?”
Since Disney has shareholders to please and is understandably determined to get every cent of profit out of its $4 billion investment, Star Wars will likely be churning out regular content for a while now. With creators like Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, Deborah Chow, and Patty Jenkins at the helm, the future of Star Wars looks pretty bright. But, no matter how long filmmakers keep revisiting a galaxy far, far away, the franchise will never be able to produce another bombshell twist that has the kind of cultural impact “I am your father” had.
The Star Wars saga itself has explored similar twists in subsequent stories, like Kylo Ren being Han and Leia’s son, casually revealed by Snoke in conversation, but these twists have just felt like a pale imitation of Empire. When George Lucas was writing Episode III, he contemplated including a moment in the Darth Plagueis scene at the bubble opera in which Palpatine would reveal to Anakin that he manipulated the midi-chlorians in Shmi’s womb to create him. However, Lucas wisely ended up cutting it because he felt it was stepping on the toes of Empire’s “I am your father” twist.
The Star Wars franchise will never be able to top Empire’s twist, because arguably no movie will be able to top Empire’s twist. And on top of that, the days when a twist could blow audiences away like the revelation that Vader is Luke’s father did are long gone, because the biggest twists in a given tentpole movie are all over the internet by the end of the opening weekend.