George Lucas' Original Plan for Anakin Skywalker Made Him an Evil Secret Jedi Assassin
Anakin Skywalker’s fall to the dark side is one of the great tragedies of Star Wars, a bright, hopeful hero slowly corrupted by fear, love, and manipulation. At least, that's the version we got in the Prequel Trilogy.
But early on, George Lucas imagined something way darker, way colder, and way more disturbing than what we ended up seeing on screen.
Back in 1981, when Lucas was laying out ideas for Return of the Jedi and thinking through Anakin’s backstory, he came up with a version of the fall that wasn’t so much about fear and desperate love... but about calculated murder.
Imagine a version of Anakin who, while smiling and shaking hands with his fellow Jedi, was quietly planning their deaths. That was the original idea.
Here’s how Lucas explained it:
“On his missions through the galaxies, Anakin has been going off and doing his Jedi thing and a lot of Jedi have been getting killed – and it’s because they turn their back on him and he cuts them down.”
Whoa… Anakin wasn’t supposed to just snap one day, he was supposed to be secretly hunting his own friends over time, killing them one by one while still pretending to be the good guy.
That’s so dark and so much more personal and gut-wrenching compared to the Order 66 massacre we eventually saw in Revenge of the Sith. In the final film, Anakin’s betrayal is horrific, but it comes at the end of a long internal struggle, manipulated by Palpatine and driven by a desperate need to save Padmé. It’s fast, brutal, and framed as tragic, not premeditated evil.
Lucas’ original idea hits different. It paints Anakin as already gone, already seriously broken inside, long before he ever kneels before Palpatine. If he had been secretly cutting down Jedi during missions, it would mean he was living a double life for years: a trusted comrade by day, a hidden Jedi butcher by night.
It would also make his betrayal of Padmé even crueler, because it wouldn’t just be a moment of weakness; it would be a sign he had been lying to everyone, even her, all along.
This concept raises some questions like how would the Jedi Council, supposedly some of the most powerful Force users in the galaxy, not notice what was happening? Were there signs they missed? Was Palpatine’s manipulation of Anakin happening way earlier and more subtly than The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones ever showed?
In this version, Anakin’s evil isn’t an accident or a tragedy. it’s a slow, methodical rot. He wouldn't just be the Chosen One who fell. He’d be the cancer that grew inside the Jedi Order, feeding on their trust.
Ultimately, Lucas walked back from that early vision, steering Anakin’s story toward something more sympathetic. Yeah, it’s probably for the best. As painful as it is to watch Anakin’s fall in Revenge of the Sith, it leaves room for redemption.
The Anakin Lucas originally dreamed up, the secret serial killer hiding in Jedi robes, would’ve been a lot harder to bring back from the edge.
Still, it’s chilling to think about how Star Wars history could have been so much darker... if George Lucas had decided to lean all the way into the evil.