Plot
Luke Skywalker initiates a plan to rescue Han Solo from the crime lord Jabba the Hutt with the help of Princess Leia, Lando Calrissian, Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2-D2. Leia infiltrates Jabba's palace on Tatooine disguised as a bounty hunter and releases Han from a block of carbonite, but she is captured and enslaved. Luke arrives soon afterward and allows himself to be captured. After Luke survives a battle with the Rancor, Jabba sentences Luke and Han to be executed by the Sarlacc. Luke breaks free and a large battle erupts, during which Leia strangles Jabba to death, Han knocks Boba Fett into the gaping maw of the Sarlacc and Luke destroys Jabba's sail barge. While Han and Leia meet with the other Rebels, Luke returns to Dagobah, only to find that Yoda is dying. With his last breaths, Yoda confirms that Darth Vader is Luke's father; he also mentions "another Skywalker". The spirit of Obi-Wan Kenobi reveals that the "other Skywalker" Yoda spoke of is Luke's twin sister, who Luke discovers is Leia. Obi-Wan then tells Luke that he must confront Vader again to defeat the Empire.
The Rebel Alliance learns that the Empire has been constructing a new Death Star, and hatches a plan to destroy it. Han leads a strike team to destroy the battle station's shield generator on the forest moon of Endor, allowing a squadron of starfighters to enter the incomplete superstructure and destroy the station from within. The strike team, with Luke in tow, travels to Endor in an Imperial shuttle; Vader senses Luke's presence on the shuttle, but lets them through so that they will be ambushed by the Imperial forces lying in wait on Endor. Sensing Vader's presence, Luke fears he is endangering the mission.
On Endor, Luke and his companions encounter a tribe of Ewoks and form a partnership with them. Later, Luke confesses to Leia that she is his sister, that Vader is their father and that he is leaving to confront him. Luke surrenders to Imperial troops, so that they will bring him to Vader. He unsuccessfully tries to convince Vader to turn from the dark side of the Force, but Vader takes Luke to the Death Star to meet Emperor Palpatine, his Sith master and leader of the Empire.
Luke learns that the Death Star is fully operational and set to destroy the Rebellion. On Endor, the Rebels are captured by Imperial forces, but a surprise counterattack by the Ewoks allows the Rebels to launch an attack. Meanwhile, Lando leads the Rebel fleet in the Millennium Falcon to the Death Star, only to find the station's shield is still up and the Imperial fleet waiting for them. Palpatine tempts Luke to give in to his anger and join the dark side, and Luke and Vader engage in a lightsaber duel. Vader discovers that Luke has a sister, and threatens to turn her to the dark side. Luke snaps and attacks Vader, severing his father's right hand. Palpatine entreats Luke to kill Vader and take his place; Luke steps back from the brink and refuses, declaring himself a Jedi. Palpatine attacks him with Force lightning. Unable to watch his son suffer, Vader turns on Palpatine and throws him down a reactor shaft to his death, dooming himself to die in the process. With his dying breaths, the redeemed Anakin Skywalker asks Luke to remove his mask so he can look on his son, just for once, with his own eyes instead of through the mask, and tell Leia that there was good in him after all.
On Endor, the strike team, with the help of the Ewoks, defeats the Imperial forces and destroys the shield generator, allowing the Rebel fleet to launch a final assault on the Death Star. Lando leads the remaining ships into the station's core and destroys the main reactor. Luke escapes on Palpatine's Imperial shuttle with his father's body before the Death Star explodes, while Lando escapes in the Falcon. On Endor, Han tells Leia that he knows she loves Luke and offers to step aside; she tells him that Luke is her brother and kisses him. That evening, Luke returns to Endor and cremates his father's armor on a funeral pyre. As the Rebels celebrate the end of the Empire, Luke sees the spirits of Obi-Wan, Yoda and Anakin Skywalker watching over them.
Read more about this topic: Star Wars Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
““The plot thickens,” he said, as I entered.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)