Lies My (Jedi) Teacher Told Me Part 3: The Truth About the First Skywalker

Previously, I went over what appear to be Star Wars discrepancies, but are actually lies that Obi-Wan Kenobi told so that Luke Skywalker would kill his own father as well as a deliberate pattern of omitting references to Qui-Gon Jinn to avoid the embarrassing admission that the Jedi of the past had acted against their own principles. In this final installment, we turn to the lies about Anakin Skywalker's transformation from a Jedi Knight to a Sith Lord.

Anakin and Vader

It is clear by the end of Empire Strikes Back that Obi-Wan's account of this conversion was deceptive. Here is the initial account he gives to Luke in A New Hope:

When Luke later calls out Obi-Wan's ghost for the deception, his excuse is that this account was technically true:

This is hard to swallow, isn't it? Words like betray and murder have a plain meaning and also have serious implications that simply don't apply to Anakin Skywalker's case. Even if we are to accept that Obi-Wan's perspective is that Anakin Skywalker became a different person when he switched sides, it's obvious by his wording that he intended Luke to falsely believe that his father was dead in the literal sense. The ghost's excuse runs hollow because the deception is obvious.

Obi-Wan and Yoda

Obi-Wan is not alone in this deception, as Yoda is complicit in the effort to deceive Luke. We see this most prominently in Return of the Jedi when Yoda shows reluctance to confirm that Darth Vader is Luke's father:

Obi-Wan and Yoda are allies and it's no surprise that they take the same approach in tricking Luke about his father. They are both motivated to train Luke enough in the ways of the Jedi that he might eschew his familial loyalties to carry out his Jedi duties and kill his own father. However, Yoda provides an account that expands on Obi-Wan's deception in The Empire Strikes Back. As both Yoda and Obi-Wan’s Force Ghost plead with Luke to stay on Dagobah and complete his training, Yoda elaborates just enough on Darth Vader's turn to the Dark Side to create a new lie:

In A New Hope, we saw how Obi-Wan misled Luke into believing that Anakin had similar experiences to himself. In this scene, Yoda is doing the same. The impression that the two Jedi give here is that a still-in-training Vader turned to the Dark Side because he had motivations similar to Luke's. Remember that, in this scene, Luke is interrupting his Jedi training—something he's doing so he can kill Darth Vader—to go off and save his friends from a Darth Vader that he will then attempt to kill. So Space Ghost and Kermit the Alien are telling Luke that Vader (his father) cut his training off short to accomplish a goal that he presumably would have gotten to eventually when he was more ready to accomplish it. But this wasn't the case at all. For one thing, we see from the prequels that Anakin Skywalker was hardly still in training. Obi-Wan Kenobi himself tells him as such:

Gone with the Sith

It's clear that Anakin Skywalker could not have been cutting his training off short, since he was not still in training in the first place—at least, not as a "pupil" as Obi-Wan describes it. Moreover, the "quick and easy path" (as Yoda puts it) isn't something that actually motivated Anakin to turn to the Dark Side; from Revenge of the Sith, we see that Anakin is motivated by his disillusionment with the Jedi Order and the desire to save his secret wife. Plagued by visions of her dying in childbirth, he learns from then Chancellor Palpatine that there is a way to keep this from happening through a thinly veiled story about Darth Plagueis:

...

This desire to cheat death comes to the forefront later on when Jedi Master Mace Windu is attempting to kill Palpatine in front of Anakin:

When Anakin saves Palpatine and pledges himself to become a Sith Lord, he again cites this as his reason for turning:

Anakin's motivations here are far from Yoda's quick-and-easy characterization because there is no way in which the Jedi would be willing or able to help him save his wife from death. Not only do the Jedi force him to hide his marriage, but when Anakin appeals to Yoda for help, he gets this advice:

Saving Padmé isn't the only thing that convinces Anakin, though. When Mace Windu has his lightsaber pointed at the cowering Palpatine, Anakin Skywalker is witnessing what amounts to an extrajudicial killing. Mace Windu has turned a simple arrest (already problematic enough) into a bloody coup d'état. Mace Windu has an obligation to the democratic institutions he serves. The correct course, in the framework of a just, fair, and stable democratic government, would be to peacefully arrest Palpatine and have him stand trial. In Attack of the Clones, Naboo's own queen expresses this sentiment in a manner that is both explicit and prophetic:

This literally happens. The Chancellor announces the reorganization of the Republic into "the first Galactic Empire" the same day Mace Windu tries to kill him. While it's easy to gloss over this as a poorly written and muddled attempt at inserting heroic characters (who implicitly eschew democratic principles) into a political narrative, the choices and consequences fit with Yoda's above syllogism about a dark path. Given that the Jedi path would not have helped him save his wife from death and Anakin was disillusioned by what we might call the corruption of the Jedi, we can see that Anakin's motivations for turning to the Dark Side are far from Yoda's quick-and-easy characterization.

See No Evil

The apparent hypocrisy of the Jedi is the reason for their deception about how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. The Jedi Order itself—Obi-Wan and Yoda included—made the mistake of violating their principles out of impatience and desperation; they ended up losing everything when keeping to their principles likely would have turned out better for them. Thus, if anything, Mace Windu's abrogation of the duty to follow judicial procedure was taking the "quick and easy path." 

The way of the Jedi, hypocrisy is.

From the perspective of the Jedi, they would want to make sure that Luke Skywalker didn't make the same mistake that they themselves fell into. At the same time, they want to maintain credibility in Luke Skywalker's eyes, something that would be undermined if they admitted that they had made such glaring mistakes. Moreover, were Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda to admit to falling into the trap of taking things the "quick and easy" way, Luke Skywalker might realize that they haven't actually corrected their mistaken approach: not only is lying as a means to an end itself a form of taking the easy way, but their wish that Luke kill Darth Vader rather than redeem him is another way that the Jedi approach seems to be to take the easy way at the expense of what is right. If Yoda is correct that doing things the easy way leads one to "become an agent of evil" then both Jedi are evil by virtue of being dirty filthy liars.