When I found out Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker’s father, I was five years old.  It didn’t mean anything to me.  It was a foreign movie I hadn’t even seen, nor had I seen the movie before then.  So what?

Everywhere I went there was Star Wars everything and I thought everything was awesome-looking.  We went to the mall and I recognized everything as Star Wars-themed.  But really, toys don’t need marketing.  I didn’t know this then, of course.  I had action figures, dolls, whatever you want to call them, of characters from a movie serial I’d not seen.  My parents never talked about it, but now I think they got my brothers and I these toys because every kid had them.  Toys, I’d learn later, were marketed to parents.  I had Ewoks and Stormtroopers but I didn’t know what they meant.  They were new and came with weapons: this was all I needed.

When one of the neighborhood kids came over and we were playing he showed me the black toy with the red sword and he told me it was Darth Vader, the main bad guy.  He didn’t have Luke Skywalker (neither did I), but he said the blond one in the movie - you know, the good guy - was this guy’s kid.  Darth Vader looked like a black robot with a cape, which made him immediately cool.  I mean, AROBOTWITHACAPEANDASWORD!!  But when he told me about Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker’s relationship, I didn’t care.  Because why should I care?  But I couldn’t express it yet.

Of course, many years later, when I watched these movies, finally, the impact was lost on me because I already knew this.  Who cares?  But every once in a while, I’d wonder whether or not something was taken from me before I knew it.  Isn’t that a weird thought?  You ever see those documentaries from 1977 and 1980 and everyone’s so shocked and so in suspense about it all?  Weird.  There hasn’t been anything like that in my lifetime and I wonder if that would’ve been me had I been old enough.  Hope not.

Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father.  Big fucking deal.

Have you ever seen these movies?  Probably.  Be objective: don’t they strike you as being made up as they’re being made?  I mean, really?  The incestuous subtext of it all.  Now, you wanna shock the audience with a bullshit plot twist?  What if the “another Skywalker” had been Han Solo?  See?  Also, we would’ve had a Luke-Han make out session on Hoth.