There’s an interesting complaint about what might be the most famous plot twists of all time: Luke and Leia being brother and sister, and both being the children of Darth Vader. The complaint, which is not entirely illegitimate, is that, though interesting, this also takes a galactic adventure story and turns it into a family feud.

There is, of course, an element of truth to this, but in another way it is actually a mistake. It is not true that everyone is related to everyone else, and by the time of Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader, Luke, and Leia are actually somewhat minor characters, with regard to the fate of the galaxy.

This is not as true in A New Hope, though even there, it’s mostly because Leia had been entrusted with the plans to the death star and Luke takes the critical shot which blows up the death star. If one doesn’t pay attention, it’s possible to get the idea that Leia is in charge of the rebellion, but it’s really not the case. Even Vader says as much; he objects to Leia saying that she was on a diplomatic mission for Alderaan by saying “You are part of the rebel alliance, and a traitor” (emphasis mine). She’s not the head of it.

Luke does take a critical role in blowing up the death star, and there’s no getting around that. However, his role fades after this. He spends much of The Empire Strikes Back training on Dagoba, then gets his ass handed to him by his father. (Not literally; it’s actually his hand which gets handed to him, except he doesn’t catch it.) His major contribution to the rebel alliance is to blow up a couple of AT-ATs, which doesn’t accomplish much as the AT-ATs destroy the shield generator anyway. In terms of his importance to the galaxy in this movie, he has none. In Return of the Jedi, it might be argued that Luke trying to save Vader distracted the Emperor, which is why the Rebels were able to destroy the second death star and kill the Emperor, but that’s actually quite unclear. The emperor was not omniscient, and everything had been proceeding as he had foreseen right up until it didn’t. The only thing we really know for sure is that Luke saved his father’s soul. (I will grant that he did help to save the team sent to blow up the shield generator from the ewoks, but for the most part all he did was levitate C3PO so that the ewoks would take his anger seriously; there probably was another way to get them to take C3PO seriously.)

Vader has a very interesting roll in the Star Wars trilogy. On the one hand, he is the apprentice of the Emperor and his right hand man. On the other hand, he only sort-of is even in the military hierarchy of the Empire. In A New Hope he takes orders from Grand Moff Tarkin (“Enough of this pointless bickering. Vader, release him.” “As you wish.”). Even Leia remarks on this, “I should have known I’d find you holding Vader’s leash.”

In The Empire Strikes Back, we are told that Vader is intent on pursuing the rebels as a sort of monomania because he is obsessed with finding young Skywalker. He is free to direct some imperial star destroyers, but not that many. He’s even forced to employ bounty hunters. He is a major character in this movie and a major driver of its events, but The Empire Strikes Back is, on a galactic scale, a very small movie. The rebels seem to be able to fit on a single planet, and not very much in the way of imperial resources have been dedicated to hunting them down at this point.

In Return of the Jedi, Vader has an even smaller role. He shows up at the new Death Star to oversee its construction. Other than that, he’s present when Luke surrenders and the Emperor tries to tempt Luke to the dark side. In galactic terms, he basically does nothing.

Leia’s ark is somewhat similar to Luke’s, though in a different direction. She starts out smuggling plans to the death star in A New Hope. In The Empire Strikes Back she’s clearly important, but at the same time doesn’t seem to be in charge in a highly practical sense. She spends most of the movie being chased aboard the Millennium Falcon. On a galactic scale, big whoop. In Return of the Jedi, she joins the special ops team led by (now general) Han Solo. The team does important work, but Leia is only a small part of that work, and not really critical to it.

So, when we really consider it, yes three major characters from the first movie turn out to be closely related to each other, but the curious thing about this is that while they loom large in the story, it’s because the story zoomed in and wasn’t so big. After A New Hope, no one in the Skywalker bloodline did anything of any real galactic importance, at least that would not likely have happened without them, and shortly afterwards.

Which is, actually, fine. The truth is that it’s people who matter, not nations or empires or republics or even rebellions.

I think that it was a mark of brilliance on the part of George Lucas that it was Lando Calrissian who fired the shot that destroyed the second death star, and with it, the Emperor. He wasn’t even in the first movie. This is, indeed, what life is often like. Most of the time, people only make one big contribution, and after that they tend to only help the next guy who makes the huge accomplishment. And Lando wasn’t even a major character in the second or third movies. He wasn’t in the movie poster for The Empire Strikes Back and barely made it into the poster for Return of the Jedi. And yet, he’s the guy who destroyed the second death star.

Life is often like that.