Triumph and Tragedy

The USS Enterprise-D is exploring the Typhon Expanse. Riker, Crusher, Worf, and Data are playing cards, where Dr. Crusher calls Riker's bluff and wins the round. Crusher then goes to sickbay to treat Geordi La Forge for dizziness, but feels that she's performed the same procedure before. After she goes to bed, she is haunted by strange voices. Soon after, the Enterprise loses power as a space-time distortion erupts nearby, and a second Federation ship emerges from it on a collision course with the Enterprise. Attempts to hail the other ship prove unsuccessful; Riker suggests decompressing the main shuttle bay (as the escaping air would hopefully push the Enterprise out of harm's way), but Data suggests using the tractor beam to deflect the oncoming ship, to which Picard agrees. The ship is deflected, but not enough to avoid striking the starboard nacelle. The Enterprise-D has suffered heavy damage. A warp core breach is unavoidable, and Captain Picard issues the frantic order, "All hands abandon ship! Repeat, all hands abandon..." as the ship explodes.

The opening crawl reveals that the Galactic Empire has been working on the construction of a new armored space station which is to be even larger and more powerful than the first Death Star. Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian, Princess Leia Organa, C-3PO, and R2-D2 return to Tatooine in an attempt to rescue Han Solo from the gangster Jabba the Hutt. Leia, disguised as a bounty hunter, attempts to secretly free Solo, who is still encased in carbonite. She succeeds, only to be discovered and captured by Jabba, who makes her his personal slave. Several days later Luke arrives to make one final plea to Jabba to release Solo. Luke is then captured by Jabba's guards and dropped into a dungeon to battle a rancor. After defeating the rancor he is sent along with Han Solo and Chewbacca to the Great Pit of Carkoon to be slowly consumed by the Sarlacc. With the help of R2-D2, Luke escapes and a large battle erupts; during the chaos, Leia strangles Jabba to death with her slave chains, and Han accidentally knocks Boba Fett, the bounty hunter who brought him to Jabba, into the pit where he is eaten alive by the Sarlacc. Following this, Luke blasts Jabba's sail barge with its own deck cannon, and all of the heroes manage to escape before it explodes. Luke then returns to Dagobah to complete his Jedi training. However, upon arriving, he finds Yoda is languishing. Yoda tells Luke that no other training is required, but that he will not truly be a Jedi until he confronts Darth Vader who, Yoda confirms, is Luke's father. Yoda then dies, but not before telling Luke that "there is another Skywalker". The spirit form of Obi-Wan Kenobi then appears and confirms that Vader was once Anakin Skywalker, a former Jedi who was turned to the dark side of the Force. Though he initially seemed to imply that Vader was merely another Jedi who betrayed and murdered Anakin, Obi-Wan explains that Vader truly did this in the sense of the dark side consuming Anakin's mind, apparently destroying the good man who was Luke's father and replacing him as Vader. Luke asks Obi-Wan about the "other" Skywalker Yoda mentioned—Obi-Wan reveals that this "other" is his twin sister, hidden from Anakin and separated at birth to protect them both from the Emperor. Using his intuition, Luke quickly deduces that, to Obi-Wan's confirmation, his sister is Leia. Meanwhile, the entire Rebel Alliance is meeting to devise an attack strategy. As part of the attack, Han is elected to lead a strike team to deactivate the shield generator on the forest moon of Endor which is projecting a protective shield up to the orbiting and incomplete Death Star. Luke, having returned from Dagobah, joins him and Leia for this mission; however, he soon fears that, after sensing Vader's presence within the nearby Imperial Fleet, his own presence may endanger the mission. On Endor, Luke and his companions encounter a tribe of Ewoks, primitive yet intelligent indigenous forest creatures of Endor. With the help of C-3PO, whom the Ewoks believe is a god, they are able to forge an alliance with the forest creatures. Later, Luke decides that the time has come for him to face Vader. He confesses to Leia the truth about her and Vader, and that he has to try to save the man who was once their father. He surrenders peacefully to Vader and unsuccessfully tries to convince his father to abandon the dark side. They go to the Death Star and meet the Emperor, who reveals that he knew of the attack before, and that the Rebel Alliance is walking into a trap. On the forest moon, the Rebels – led by Solo and Leia – enter the shield generator control facility only to be taken prisoner by waiting Imperial forces. Once they are led out of the bunker, however, the Ewoks spring a surprise counterattack. A desperate ground battle begins with the Rebels and Ewoks fighting the Imperial forces. The Rebels eventually gain the upper hand, due in large part to a stolen Imperial AT-ST Walker. During the strike team's assault, the Rebel fleet, led by Lando, emerges from hyperspace for the battle over Endor, only to discover that the shield of the Death Star is still functioning. An intense space battle takes place as the Rebel fleet battles to give the surface party more time to complete their mission of deactivating the Death Star's shield. During the battle, the Death Star is revealed to be operational; its superlaser is fired at the Rebel fleet and obliterates two Rebel star cruisers. This forces a rethinking of strategy and the fleet closes with the Imperial star destroyers to prevent the superlaser from firing on the Rebel fleet. On the Death Star, the Emperor tempts Luke to give in to his anger. A ferocious lightsaber duel erupts between Luke and his father. In the midst of combat, Vader reads Luke's feelings and learns that Luke has a twin sister. When Vader toys with the notion of turning Leia to the dark side, Luke gives in to his anger and brutally overpowers his father, eventually slicing off Vader's robotic right hand. However, despite the Emperor's goading, Luke refuses to kill his father, realizing that he is traveling down his father's path towards the dark side. He declares himself a Jedi, like his father before him. Upon realizing that Luke cannot be turned, the Emperor tortures and slowly kills him with Force lightning; in unspeakable pain, Luke begs his father for help. Facing a moral crisis as he sees his son dying before his own eyes, Vader finally repents in return of his former self, Anakin Skywalker, and turns on the Emperor, grabbing him over his shoulder and throwing him down a reactor shaft to his death. At the same time, however, the life support system in his suit is damaged beyond repair by the Emperor's lightning. Moments from death, he begs Luke to take off his breath mask to see him with his own eyes. Luke does so, and finally sees his father's true face: that of a pale, withered man ravaged by the dark side. He entreats Luke to leave him and save himself, and to tell Leia that there was some good left in him after all. With those last words, Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker dies, finally at peace. Back on Endor, the strike team finally destroys the shield generator. The Rebel fleet seizes the opportunity to launch a final assault on the Death Star in space. Lando leads Wedge Antilles and his fighter group into the interior of the Death Star and they fire at the main reactor, causing its collapse. Luke escapes the Death Star with his father's body in an Imperial shuttle. Moments later, Wedge in his X-Wing and Lando in the Millennium Falcon emerge from the Death Star as well, just as it explodes. Back on Endor, Leia senses that Luke had escaped the station before it exploded. Han believes that she loves Luke and is prepared to let her go, but Leia reassures Han of her love for him and reveals (to his surprise and relief) that Luke is actually her brother. That evening, Luke cremates the remains of his father in his black armor on a funeral pyre on Endor. The entire galaxy celebrates the fall of the Empire and the Rebellion's victory. On Endor, Luke, Leia, Han, Lando, and the rest of the Rebellion, along with the Ewoks, celebrate the victory as well. During the celebration, Luke catches sight of the spirit figures of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and the redeemed Anakin Skywalker, who watch over them with pride.