Movies - TV
Luke Skywalker’s Star Wars Family Tree Originally Looked A Lot Different
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
One of the greatest twists in pop culture history was Darth Vader revealing himself as Luke Skywalker’s father at the end of the 1980 sci-fi epic “The Empire Strikes Back.”
While the moment had shocked the world when it was first revealed, it wasn’t in Leigh Brackett’s original draft of “The Empire Strikes Back.”
George Lucas hired the Hugo-nominated sci-fi writer to brainstorm a “Star Wars” sequel. However, Brackett’s version was quite different from the final draft.
While Brackett’s draft also had Yoda’s “There is another” line he utters as Luke goes to save his friends from Vader, Leia wasn’t the character he was referring to.
Luke was going to have a different long-lost sister in the form of a character named Nellith and would have learned of her existence from the Force ghost of his actual father.
Meanwhile, Darth Vader would have remained merely an evil Force-user employed by the Galactic Empire. Brackett sadly died of cancer in 1978 and her script was changed.