Star Wars: The most frustrating part of each film in the original trilogy

Yoda’s Reluctance To Train Luke

The Empire Strikes Back is pretty much a perfect film. It is solid from start to finish with very few unnecessary scenes. Overall, it is a very dark film and includes one of the biggest bombshells in the history of cinema when Darth Vader tells Luke he’s his father.

It was very hard to pick a part of this perfect movie that is frustrating but there is one scene that makes little sense, and it makes even less sense after the prequels were released.

After Luke finally realizes the little green creature he encounters on Dagobah is the Jedi master he’s been looking for, Yoda and Obi-Wan’s Force ghost voice get into a bit of an argument about whether or not Luke should be trained. Their brief argument could be just a test of Luke’s patience but it really doesn’t come off that way.

Even before the prequels were released, it is easy to assume that Luke coming to Dagobah to train with Yoda was always part of the plan. Perhaps when the plan was made, Obi-Wan would’ve been the one bringing Luke there, but after his demise on the Death Star, Luke clearly had to travel there alone. So having Yoda train Luke was basically the Jedi’s last hope of overthrowing the Emperor and the fact Yoda is so reluctant to do so is a little baffling.

In Revenge of the Sith, Yoda flat out says that they’ll go into hiding until the time is right. That time is in Empire when Luke seeks Yoda out. His reluctance to train him shows two potential scenarios, either Yoda has fallen too far into despair to believe Darth Sidious can be beaten, or the scene was originally written without the belief that Yoda was always supposed to train Luke. Again, this could all be a test of Luke’s patience and willpower, but thinking about the inconsistency of this scene and how it fits in with the prequels is a little frustrating.