Continued...
Back with the Rebel fleet, Luke received a new bionic hand, but while it and his lightsaber were replaceable, his innocence was not. Ben had lied to him, Vader had tempted him . . . Luke faced an uncertain future.
Soon afterward, Luke was back at work with the Alliance, planning with Leia, Chewie, and Lando Calrissian the best way to rescue Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt. By the end of the rescue, Luke had helped destroy Jabba the Hutt and save Han. Upon leaving Tatooine, Luke returned to Dagobah to finish his training, only to discover that Yoda was dying. The Jedi Master confirmed Luke's fears about Vader, and told him that to complete his own training, Luke must face Vader one final time. Luke then confronted the spirit of Ben Kenobi, and learned an even more shocking element of his past: Leia was his twin sister!
Torn by his feelings, Luke became moody and withdrawn. When the Alliance planned a mission to destroy the second Death Star above Endor's moon, Luke did not choose to fly with Rogue Squadron. Instead, he accompanied a strike force to the moon's surface, where they planned to destroy the electronic shield generator that protected the battle station.
On Endor, Luke finally faced up to his destiny. Quietly, in the Ewok village, he told Leia about his father . . . about their father. Luke could feel him nearby, waiting. He needed to go to Vader, not to destroy him, but to save him from the dark side. Luke surrendered himself to Vader's Imperial troops and met his father. He tried to reach the goodness that was Anakin Skywalker, hidden deep below the dark-side powers and black armor, but the power of the dark side was too great.
On board the Death Star, Emperor Palpatine goaded Luke about the fate of his friends until Luke attacked; Vader defended his Master. Father and son were soon locked in deadly combat, but then Luke regained control of his anger and refused to fight.
Probing his son's feelings, Vader sensed something he had never seen before: the secret of Luke's twin sister, Princess Leia. "If you will not turn to the dark side, then perhaps she will," Vader threatened. It was the catalyst that broke Luke's Jedi calm. He attacked his father again, hacking and stabbing with the lightsaber. He finally beat his father down, chopping off his right hand.
Turning his back on the crippled Dark Lord, Luke confronted the Emperor, "You've failed, Your Highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me." Palpatine attacked Luke with blue Force lightning, knowing that the younger Skywalker would never join him. But as Palpatine prepared to deliver the killing bolts, Vader rose up from behind, lifted his Master into the air, and threw him into the burning shaft of the power core. Vader tried to follow him into oblivion, but Luke stopped him.
Vader was dying, and he asked Luke to take his helmet off so he could look at his son with his own eyes for the first time. As he struggled to breathe, he told Luke that he was right. He did have goodness left in him. And then, repentant, he died.
Luke took Vader's armor to the moon of Endor and burned it in a funeral pyre. Later that night, as he slipped away from a joint Rebel and Ewok celebration, he was surprised at a vision. For a few moments, he saw Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, and Anakin Skywalker, all smiling at him. Kenobi and Yoda's pupil --and Skywalker's son-- was, now and forever, a Jedi. And his father, Anakin, was part of the light side of the Force once again.
The day after the destruction of the second Death Star, Luke was part of the strike force that freed the planet Bakura from an invasion by the reptilian Ssi-ruuk.
Luke's relationships with feisty women would strike again --literally-- when he accompanied Hapan Prince Isolder to Dathomir, where they hoped to talk some sense into Han Solo. Whacked with a club by a Dathomirian witch named Teneniel Djo, Luke was amused to find out he was supposed to be her betrothed. Once he helped her and her Singing Mountain Clan defeat the evil Gethzerion and her Nightsisters, Luke was freed of his "obligation." Djo and Isolder would marry.
Luke saw his earlier mentor for the final time in the Imperial Palace on Coruscant. Ben appeared to him as he slept, warning him that the pathways were closing for the fading Jedi. He assured Luke that he was a powerful Jedi, and a hope for the future. Obi-Wan then bid him good-bye, adding "I loved you as a son, as a student, and as a friend. Until we meet again, may the Force be with you." Then, as he disappeared forever, he told Luke to think of himself not as the last of the old Jedi, but "the first of the new."
Shortly thereafter, Luke was caught up in the battle against Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn and his forces. He was also stalked by Mara Jade, a beautiful woman whose compulsion to kill him came from the long-dead Emperor. And finally, he began to train with --and then reject the teachings of-- the mad Jedi clone Joruus C'Baoth.
Using tissue from the hand Luke had lost on Bespin, Joruus had grown a clone of his own. Luke faced his clone, Luuke, in the throne room of the Emperor's Mount Tantiss facility on Wayland. When Mara killed Luuke, Luke joined with her and Leia to defeat and destroy C'Baoth.
Surviving Imperial forces drove the New Republic off Coruscant; its temporary headquarters were established on the Fifth Moon of Da Soocha in the Cyax system. Lando, Wedge, and Luke attacked Coruscant, but their ship crashed. Although the others escaped in the Falcon, Luke allowed himself and Artoo to be sucked up into a crackling blue Force storm. It transported him to an Imperial dungeon ship, which, in turn, took him to Byss. There, he was surprised to find the clone of Emperor Palpatine, alive and willing to teach him.
Like a few others in the history of the Jedi, Luke felt that he could learn about --and destroy-- the dark side of the Force from within. As the training went on, Luke was sure he was staying with the light, but he was becoming corrupted. It wasn't until Leia confronted him, her lightsaber flashing, that he realized how much he had almost lost. Working together, Luke and Leia helped destroy the clone.
Later, Luke found a fallen Jedi named Kam Solusar and freed him from the dark side. Following the advice of the Jedi Holocron, Luke and Kam searched for other lost Jedi on Ossus, the ancient center of Jedi culture. Luke found new students, Jem and Rayf Ysanna, as well as the ruins of a Jedi library. Later, on New Alderaan, Jem was killed when Imperial Dark Siders attacked an Alliance settlement.
Realizing that the training he was giving Leia and a few of the other Force-powerful people he found was not enough, Luke petitioned the Provisional Council for permission to begin a Jedi Academy. He founded it in the Great Temple of Massassi on the jungle moon of Yavin Four. Luke's first class had twelve Jedi initiates, including the exotic-looking Tionne, the generational clone Dorsk 81, the Bespin gas prospector Streen, the angry Gantoris, the Dathomirian witch Kirani Ti, and Kam Solusar. Later, Kyp Durron, Nichos Marr, and the Mon Calamari Ambassador Cilghal would join.