this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2025
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If all we had to go off from is the quote then I would agree but there is also concept art and leaked scripts but most importantly the empire strikes back was building thematically towards Luke turning to the dark side, I'm not sure how early he scraped the idea but he definitely had that as a goal in episode V.
That's one possible direction, and I think because you favor it you are considering it the "true" and lost ending.
There was a lot of concept art, such as a volcano throne room that ended up being completely changed.
I think in the conversation between Lucas and Kasdan the fact that the idea seemed thrown out on the spot and novel means it wasn't meticulously prepared for previously. Star Wars has never been as planned out as people think, it is full of soft retcons and handwaves. There's a lot of concepts that get lost. Saying any given tossed off concept is what is "supposed" to have happened is just leaning into a personal preference.
Was the Volcano Throne room thrown out? See Episode III - Rogue One. He obviously wanted it and it did happen eventually but the earliest scripts for episode VI had him Join the sith, this would indicate that during the filming of Episode V he had that on his mind.
Yes the volcano throne was thrown out for the intended purpose. What I said:
Yes it was changed. It was later reworked into something else, just like a lot of concepts, but it didn't appear in ROTJ as the Emperor's throne room on the imperial capital. This was its original intended purpose, what would, in how you read things, be what was "supposed" to have happened in ROTJ. Obviously it didn't get used that way.
Creative process is, well, a process. Han Solo was at one point supposed to have died in the carbonite freezing. Luke and Leia were being set up as possible love interests and then changed to siblings. Darth Vader was once intended to be a completely different person than Luke's father with Obi-Wan's story in ANH being completely on the level, that was then changed and made to fit with a smooth retcon line. Jabba was supposed to be some guy wearing a fur coat. Things changed from movie to movie, often with new creative directions conflicting with things placed into previous ones. I don't think it is fair to point at something, especially something early in the process and dig in saying "this is how it was truly supposed to be".
Even the idea of "Sith" as an full on ideology was something that had to get settled on. The word itself was used once prior to ROTJ (and not used in ROTJ) in a novelization as a full title for Darth Vader which was never elaborated on, and therefore could have meant anything. The Thrawn books which were written with notes from Lucas used "Dark Jedi" rather than "Sith" to describe Vader and the Emperor. It took a while for the word to be given a meaning as flipside ideology to the Jedi. That means even the idea of Luke picking up the helmet in ROTJ and turning evil wouldn't have been "joining the Sith", as that concept didn't really exist yet.