The mastermind behind the massively fan-favorite Star Wars universe, George Lucas, never ceases to bring about the most epic of ideas to life. Be it ideas to include in his superhit lore or ideas to protect the same, he has most certainly been one of the most imaginative people to have ever walked on this planet. In fact, he even devised a plan to make his saga leak-proof!
George Lucas. | Credit: Joey Gannon/Wikimedia Commons.
While the rest of the franchises suffer brutally because of all the leaks — even the super-secretive Marvel Cinematic Universe, thanks to actors like Tom Holland (though there’s no one like him, really) — Lucas devised a leak-proof plan for the biggest spoiler in The Empire Strikes Back. And, surprisingly enough, this worked so terrifically that even the internet couldn’t spoil this mystery!
George Lucas’ Leak-Proof Plan for The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, which is the second film in the movie series in the chronological order of their release, holds one of the biggest and most un-spoiled secrets of all time. As those die-hard fans must already know, this was the movie that revealed that Darth Vader was actually Luke and Leia’s father.
A still from Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back.
However, as opposed to many films that have their secrets spoiled in the current era, George Lucas devised a leak-proof plan to avoid any of those unfortunate circumstances. For this, back in the late 1970s when the making of Episode V was still underway, the mastermind simply decided not to include that part of the plot anywhere.
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As he himself shared in an interview with StarWars.com how he managed to keep it all under wraps:
“I think it might have!” Lucas said. “Because the thing about it is I didn’t tell anybody — anybody — about it. And it wasn’t in any of the scripts. It wasn’t even in the story treatments. I kept that aspect of it secret and I was the only one that knew about it.”
The still in Episode V where Darth Vader reveals he is Luke’s father.
Though surprising it may seem, it turns out that he was so secretive with this part that besides him, no one knew about it except for the director, Irvin Kershner. And this “no one” includes the actors who enacted this scene as well!
“It really wasn’t until the day we shot that we told Mark [Hamill] so he could react appropriately,” Lucas revealed.
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That being said, even Mark Hamill, who played the iconic Luke Skywalker in the saga and who was the one to find out that the villainous Darth Vader he was about to fight was actually his father, had no clue about this. But the most interesting part about this story was when they shared this with Hamill and how they managed to keep him quiet about it!
Mark Hamill Was Made to Keep Mum on This Secret Most Epically!
Mark Hamill in a still from the movie.
In another interview with StarWars.com, Mark Hamill shared how this secret was revealed to him and how he kept mum about it. He said:
“In the script that everyone got, the line was, ‘You don’t know the truth. Obi-Wan killed your father.’ I thought, ‘That’s a major twist!’ If Alec Guinness is the ultimate bad guy, I didn’t see that coming.”
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Then, just before filming the scene where Darth Vader tells Luke, “No, I am your father,” Hamill was met with this revelation:
“Kershner said, ‘I’m going to tell you something. I know it. George knows it. And when I tell you, you’ll know it. But that means, that’s only three people. So if it leaks, we’ll know it’s you.’”
James Earl Jones as Darth Vader in a still from the movie.
In fact, while the Luke Skywalker portrayer struggled to keep quiet about this secret for “over a year, maybe a year and a half,” even James Earl Jones (who was the original Darth Vader in the early films from the saga) had to recite his lines later on, he didn’t know about this truth until the premiere of the masterpiece in 1980.
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Needless to say, this became one of the most finely kept and leakproof secrets in the history of cinema; one that even the spoiler king Tom Holland couldn’t spoil!
