The Return of Anakin Skywalker: The Eschatology of the Star Wars Universe

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Title:	The Return of Anakin Skywalker: The Eschatology of the Star Wars Universe
Creator:	Bev Clark
Date(s):	summer 1985, December 1987
Medium:	print
Fandom:	Star Wars
Topic:
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The Return of Anakin Skywalker: The Eschatology of the Star Wars Universe is a meta essay by Bev Clark. When it was reprinted two years later, it was under the title: "The Return of Anakin Skywalker: The Eschatology of Star Wars."

It was published in Scoundrel #7 in 1985, and reprinted in Southern Enclave #19. It is now online here.

Excerpt

As I write this, it is almost two years since Return of the Jedi premiered and about three weeks until its rerelease. At the film's climactic moment, Anakin Skywalker, until now overwhelmed by and subsumed in his dark side, Darth Vader, overthrows Vader's dark dominion and saves the life of his son, Luke Skywalker. In so doing, he is himself mortally injured. He dies, is given a hero's funeral pyre by his son and, at the film's end, reappears in the company of the other two fully-trained Jedi, Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi. A happy ending, and one that opened the way to controversy about its nature and meaning—and not just in active fandom, either. I heard the same arguments among decidedly nonfannish co-workers and from fannish, but not media-oriented members of my apa (amateur press association). While the crux of the argument is a very specific worldview, I have heard it advanced by people who claim to reject the worldview on which their argument is based. This basic argument is that Anakin Skywalker didn't deserve a happy ending because his crimes as Darth Vader were too heinous to be atoned for by the single act of saving his son's life or killing the Emperor. Discussions have tended to focus on whether Anakin did, in fact, deserve to be "saved", to use the word he himself used.