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Dark side

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on Leia's ship. The Emperor has built the Death Star, a weapon that can destroy an entire planet with the push of one button. At the end of A New Hope, though the Death Star is destroyed, so is Luke's mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, while Darth Vader and the all-powerful Emperor still live. Even though Obi-Wan claims he will be more powerful when dead, we never actually see any displays of power from him after his death. He can still talk to Luke, and he shows up every so often to give Luke wise advice, but otherwise he seems to have no power of his own. Yoda as well has been reduced to an ancient creature whose time has come and gone. He lives in exile on Dagoba, and while he still has enough power to raise Luke's ship out of the swamp, he clearly has no desire to attempt to fight the Dark Side anymore. The Dark Side has beaten all of the hope and courage out of our little green friend. Meanwhile, the Emperor has gotten his people together to build another Death Star. His resourcefulness and cunning have not diminished any since he first started gaining power, and he continues to rule with an iron fist. Before dying at the hands of Darth Vader, he manages to wipe out most of the fleet that has come to attack the Death Star, leaving the Rebel forces crippled. While at the end of Return of the Jedi, the characters who embodied the Dark Side have been killed, the final scene with Luke by the funeral pyre of his father and the party with the Ewoks is hauntingly similar to the scene at the end of Episode I, with Qui-Gon's funeral pyre and the party on Naboo. Although it appears the Dark Side has been wiped out for good, because of the similarity between those two scenes, it appears that some vestige of the Dark Side remains. Though everyone is happy at the moment, it is just a matter of time before the evil resurfaces.

Thus, even though the characters who embodied it are dead, the Dark Side is never fully extinguished.

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