Darth Vader’s Millennium Falcon Obsession Reveals An Amazing Secret To Fans
The Empire Strikes Back is most definitely the best Star Wars film, but it’s still one that left fans with questions. For example, it’s never clear exactly why Darth Vader is obsessed enough to risk thousands of Imperial lives to chase down the Millennium Falcon. However, one fan theory provides an elegant answer: he would have sensed a strong Force user onboard, and not knowing that it was actually Luke Skywalker’s twin sister Leia, he would have assumed the man who destroyed the Death Star was on the ship.
Darth Vader Wants The Millennium Falcon
In case you need a quick recap, Darth Vader helped personally invade Hoth, and after the Millennium Falcon escaped, he led the pursuit from his own Star Destroyer. The Rebels’ escape is successful thanks to both the cunning and the piloting prowess of Han Solo, and we see that the pursuit costs the Imperials deeply in terms of lives lost. Two Star Destroys collide and another appears to get destroyed by an asteroid, and fans have spent decades wondering why Vader was willing to lose nearly 47,000 lives (the overall complement of a Star Destroyer) to chase down two humans, two droids, and one alien.
There are obviously several practical reasons why Darth Vader might be obsessed with capturing the Millennium Falcon, including that it would be the only way to interrogate any Rebels after the botched invasion of Hoth. Additionally, he was getting additional pressure from the Emperor, who piped in via hologram to warn him about their “new enemy, Luke Skywalker.” According to this fan theory, Vader’s obsessive pursuit of the Falcon boils down to the fact that he was completely convinced Luke Skywalker was onboard, and he was willing to sacrifice countless Imperial lives to capture the Empire’s greatest enemy.
Darth Vader Sensed Leia On The Millennium Falcon
It’s a very good theory because the climax of Return of the Jedi confirmed that Vader had no idea about the existence of Leia. In fact, Luke Skywalker doesn’t give in to his anger until his Dark Side daddy threatens to find Leia and convert her to his cause. Therefore, the Darth Vader of Empire Strikes Back would have sensed the strong Force user aboard the Millennium Falcon and simply assumed it was Luke. From a distance, her presence would have likely felt very much like Luke’s presence did during the Death Star attack (“the Force is strong with this one,” he said at the time).
Some Star Wars fans might feel Darth Vader’s Millennium Falcon obsession didn’t need a compelling reason, and it’s admittedly funny to think that the Dark Lord of the Sith simply doesn’t care about the body count of his obsession (almost 47,000 people gone, and that’s just from the Star Destroyer that we know about!). However, we like the idea that Vader always has a secret purpose. In the novelization of A New Hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi speculated that his former pupil was “marking time in preparation for some incomprehensible abomination.” Take it from his old Jedi Master, this bionic baddie is never doing anything without a reason.
If nothing else, this fan theory will change how we view the events of The Empire Strikes Back. Next time Darth Vader is chasing the Millennium Falcon down, remember that he most likely thinks he’s hunting down Luke Skywalker. Little did he know that the young man was chilling on Dagobah, taking the one-week crash course that would help him eventually become the galaxy’s greatest Jedi Master.
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