George Lucas's Original Star Wars Plans Reveal a 12-Film Saga That Never Happened

How a 12-Film Saga Shrank to Just One More Movie

When Lucas first started planning the sequel to Star Wars, he imagined a saga of 12 total films, partly as a way to generate enough money to fund Skywalker Ranch, which already carried a massive annual overhead. By 1979 that number had already been cut down to eight sequels. Then The Empire Strikes Back happened, and the production spiraled out of control, going over schedule and over budget and forcing Lucas to go back to Fox for more money in exchange for handing the studio a larger share of the profits.

The business side was just as draining. Lucasfilm had reorganized, company leadership had changed, and the pressure of keeping the whole operation running left Lucas dealing with constant headaches, dizziness, and stress, on top of everything he had already gone through making the first film, when an indifferent crew, a visual effects company on the brink of collapse, and the pressure to finish left him thinking he was having a heart attack.

After Empire, Lucas was burned out. He had once pictured Star Wars as something he could keep expanding for years, but it had consumed almost every part of his life. His marriage to his wife Marcia was suffering, his health was deteriorating, and even Skywalker Ranch, the dream he needed Star Wars to pay for, had become another financial burden. His deal with Fox was for three films, and he decided that was all he was going to make. The next sequel would not just end the trilogy, it would be his last chance to pay off the ranch, close the book on the biggest project of his life, and settle down with his wife.

Leia Was Never Meant to Be Luke's Twin Sister

At the end of Empire's second act, when Luke leaves Yoda's training early to rush to Cloud City, Obi-Wan's voice tells Yoda that boy is their only hope, and Yoda answers, "there is another." Audiences in 1980 wondered who that could be, and the next film revealed it was Leia, Luke's twin sister. But that was never Lucas's original plan. Luke's twin was originally meant to be a completely different character.

A large part of the first film was built around a love triangle between Luke, Han, and Leia. Many fans point to the moment in Empire where Leia kisses Luke, which she does to make Han jealous, but there was another scene cut from the final film in which Leia tends to Luke after his Wampa attack, tells him she was worried, and the two nearly kiss before C-3PO interrupts them. At the time, who Leia would end up with was a genuine open question among fans, and Empire was meant to push that further, with Leia choosing Han while Luke went off to train as a Jedi.

Lucas's plan was always that Luke had a sister, just not Leia. His idea was that Luke's father had twins and hid one with Uncle Owen while sending the other to the far side of the universe to keep them safe. That wording matters, because Lucas originally saw Anakin himself hiding his own children, meaning even during early Empire story sessions Lucas did not yet see Vader as Luke's father. Luke's sister would have been training as a Jedi at the same time Luke was, and Luke would eventually become aware of her through his own Jedi training.

As a result, episode six as originally planned had no reveal that Luke and Leia were related at all. Luke would have a final showdown with Vader before leaving to pursue his life as a Jedi, Leia would be elected queen of her people and left isolated, Han Solo would die, and there would be no Emperor in the film. The sequel trilogy would then introduce Luke's real sister from the other side of the galaxy, and the two would team up in episode nine to finally defeat the Emperor, who would be introduced there. A further trilogy after that would introduce the next generation, a concept that eventually evolved into what became the Disney sequel trilogy.

Return of the Jedi's Ending Was Overhauled After Empire's Production Nightmare

Lucas scrapped all of that after the ordeal of making Empire and set out to wrap up the entire franchise with one more film. Episode six was reworked in several ways. The assault on the Death Star had originally been planned for episode six, but when Lucas made the first film he worried that if it was not a hit, he might never get the chance to do the Death Star attack, so he moved it up to episode four. That left episode six without a climax.

His early plan was to set that climax on Coruscant, with two new Death Stars being built in orbit. But bringing Coruscant to life with early 1980s effects was deemed too expensive and complex, so Lucas simply decided to build another Death Star instead.

He also pivoted to a happy ending, famously reasoning that "a dead Han Solo doesn't sell toys," and decided the smuggler would survive the film. Boba Fett, a character built up as a mysterious, dangerous bounty hunter, apparently did not measure up to Lucas's standards, and in the name of time and frustration he reportedly said, "Just throw him in the pit. I don't want to see him anymore."

A Joke at Dinner Turned Vader Into Luke's Father

Vader and Anakin being the same person was also never the original plan. Lucas had envisioned Anakin hiding his own children across the galaxy from Vader and the Emperor. Even once work began on Empire, Lucas had not landed on the twist that would redefine the franchise. He knew he wanted some sort of major revelation for the film but was struggling to find one.

According to Marcia Lucas, she and George had screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz over for dinner, longtime collaborators who had also done uncredited work on episode four and would later write Temple of Doom. When Lucas explained the problem he was having with the sequel, Huyck jokingly suggested that Vader could be revealed as Luke's father. It was meant as an offhand joke, but the idea stuck with Lucas, and from there Star Wars turned into a story about the Skywalker family and the tragedy of Darth Vader.

Other Ideas Lucas Abandoned: A Second Love Triangle and Vader's Redemption

One idea Lucas considered was a love triangle between Anakin, Vader, and Luke's mother, with Obi-Wan unaware of the true identity of Luke's biological father, as part of Vader's betrayal of Anakin involved an affair with Luke's mother. This would have mirrored the love triangle between Luke, Han, and Leia. Lucas eventually scrapped the idea entirely and simply made Anakin and Vader the same person.

Another abandoned thread grew out of episode five, when Vader asks Luke to join him to rule the galaxy as father and son. This was originally meant to become a much bigger part of episode six, and the idea was not simply that Vader wanted to replace the Emperor and become the new evil ruler. Vader had begun looking back at what he had done, where his life had gone wrong, and who he had spent all those years serving. In a more samurai-inspired sense, he saw Luke as a chance to make amends, hoping that father and son together could overthrow the Emperor and undo some of the damage Vader had helped create.

The Prequels Were Originally Built Around a Politician, Not a Sith

The prequels were always meant to show the rise of Palpatine and the Empire and the fall of the Republic, but Palpatine was never meant to necessarily be a Sith. He was meant to be a politician, which is why in episode six he looks at Luke's lightsaber and calls it a Jedi weapon, the same as his father's. Lucas viewed Palpatine and Yoda as spiritual chiefs or gurus whose powers were much stronger than the warriors on the ground using lightsabers. In his mind, Jedi and Sith were the lightsaber-wielding warriors, while Yoda was not a Jedi and Palpatine was not a Sith, but rather grand priests whose powers were so great they did not need lightsabers at all. Lucas even told episode six director Richard Marquand that Yoda would not be good in a lightsaber fight and would get trounced by Vader. He would eventually retcon and simplify all of this, calling the good guys Jedi and the bad guys Sith and giving both Yoda and Palpatine lightsabers.

Lucas also viewed the Force as something anyone could use, comparing it to yoga: "If you take the time to learn it, you can do it."

He had also planned to show Anakin secretly tricking and killing the Jedi one by one, catching them off guard and using his knowledge of the Force to kill them without them realizing what was happening, while the trusting Jedi Council failed to see he was the murderer decimating their ranks. Eventually Padme would suspect something was wrong with Anakin and alert Obi-Wan, leading to a confrontation that ends with Vader falling into the volcano. Lucas also had a version where Anakin and Vader were two separate Jedi, with Vader killing all the Jedi until only Ben and Anakin were left before Vader killed Anakin too.

Lucas had also planned for Luke and Leia to already be born at the start of episode three, both around five years old. After Obi-Wan defeats Anakin and leaves him for dead in the volcano, he learns Anakin has been pulled from the lava and is in the Emperor's hands, so he goes back to Padme with a plan to separate the children to protect them. Ben takes one child to a couple on Tatooine and secretly watches Luke grow up nearby, while Padme and Leia go to Alderaan and are taken in by a king who is a friend of Ben's. Padme dies shortly after, and Leia is raised by her foster parents, which explains the line at the end of episode six where Leia says she remembers her mother. But when Lucas actually sat down to write episode three, he wanted to wrap everything up neatly, so he ignored that line, had the twins born at the very end of the film, and killed Padme onscreen instead.

Lucas was also unsure if the droids would even appear in the prequels. He always saw C-3PO as being repaired by a young boy, specifically the son of a junk dealer, but that boy was never meant to be a young Anakin. He also saw the tone of the prequels as different from the originals, which leaned more into action adventure. In 1975 he called the prequels more melodramatic, focused on political intrigue and Machiavellian plotting that led to the downfall of a once noble republic, with enough action to keep the plot moving. He said the prequels would be impossible to do but great to dream about, and once technology caught up, he went back and changed many of these details.

The Sequels Were Modeled on Apocalypse Now, With a Trilogy for the Daughter

Lucas had originally planned to direct Apocalypse Now before Star Wars. When that project stalled, he turned his attention to a space opera, and his friend Francis Ford Coppola took over Apocalypse Now without Lucas's blessing. Lucas would claim Coppola "sort of stole it from under him," and that it was never Coppola's to direct.

For the sequel trilogy, Lucas had planned to turn Luke into a Colonel Kurtz type figure, hiding from the world in a cave after some traumatic event, giving him a chance to explore themes he never got to by not directing Apocalypse Now. He said he planned for the first trilogy to be about the father, the second trilogy to be about the son, and the third trilogy to be about the daughter and the grandchildren. He also wanted to expand on how the Force worked, exploring its microbiotic side as well.