Never forget the Star Wars plot holes so big you could fly the Falcon through them.
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00:00Now, when any franchise gets as impossibly gigantic as Star Wars, it's only inevitable
00:05that some plot holes are going to slip through the cracks. But Star Wars is definitely a unique
00:10case in this regard, given the sheer depth of its lore and the expansiveness of its universe,
00:14especially including the various novelisations and comics which have entered and exited the
00:19canon over the years. Ultimately, Star Wars is enough of an awe-inspiring spectacle
00:24– most of the time, anyway – that fans are largely willing to forgive or even entirely
00:28overlook narrative inconsistencies. But that doesn't mean they aren't worth discussing,
00:32and that's what we're here to talk about today as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:35and these are 10 Huge Star Wars Plot Holes That Everyone Overlooks.
00:4010. Vader Doesn't Recognise Leia Is His Daughter
00:43So let's kick things off with a plot hole evidently created by the fact that George
00:47Lucas hadn't yet mapped out the original Star Wars trilogy, and it's far from the only one
00:52generated by that lack of planning. When Darth Vader boards the ship housing Leia at the beginning
00:56of A New Hope and first crosses paths with the princess, why doesn't he sense a familial
01:01connection to her, even though she's standing directly in front of him? Again, the real
01:05explanation is that Lucas was simply making things up as he went along, and hadn't yet
01:09conceived of Leia being related to Vader. And yet, some fans have attempted to hand-wave this by
01:14suggesting that Vader couldn't sense his daughter because she wasn't using the force or being
01:18force-sensitive at the time. Hmmm... In the 45 years since A New Hope's release, various comics
01:24and novels have also taken a more authoritative stab at explaining this away, such as claiming
01:30that Leia managed to resist Vader's mind probe through sheer mental metal. But ultimately,
01:34reasoning like this just seems like a pretty transparent and not terribly convincing attempt
01:38to plug up a plot hole that's existed since the series' inception.
01:429. The Rule of Two Kind of Makes No Sense
01:45The Sith Rule of Two dictates that only two Sith Lords can exist at any time, a Master
01:50and an Apprentice. And yet, this rule, which was first mentioned by Yoda in The Phantom Menace,
01:55has created quite the massive headache amongst the fans trying to make sense of it.
01:58The wider Star Wars universe has seen the Rule of Two frequently be disobeyed.
02:02While in the original trilogy itself, it's not entirely clear what the outcome would have been
02:06had Vader managed to seduce Luke over to the dark side, alongside himself and the Emperor,
02:10seemingly violating the rule in the process. While one can argue that the Rule of Two simply
02:15isn't as strict a rule as Yoda makes it out to be, in reality this is more likely an inconsistency
02:20on George Lucas' side, that Yoda's fateful remark imposed a far stricter set of boundaries
02:25on the Sith methodology than it really needed to.
02:288. Obi-Wan's Terrible Attempt at Hiding Luke
02:31With Obi-Wan hiding Luke on Tatooine in A New Hope, why exactly would he let him
02:35keep the surname Skywalker, while stashing him on his father's home planet with his aunt and
02:40uncle no less, immediately making it easier for any interested party to track him down?
02:45Now there have been numerous suggested answers to this over the years,
02:48none of which feel fully satisfying, however. Some claim that the name Skywalker might be a
02:52lot more common in the Star Wars universe than we think, though the series' media in general
02:56seems to suggest that this is not the case. Back in 2016, Lucasfilm's story group member
03:01Pablo Hidalgo acknowledged this plot hole as a fair question, while claiming that Obi-Wan's logic
03:06in hiding Luke on Tatooine was that he knew Anakin would not revisit the planet given the trauma that
03:11he and his family suffered there. While Anakin admittedly didn't know that Padme gave birth
03:15before dying and therefore wouldn't have any reason to look for a son, it still seems pointlessly
03:20risky not to have Luke live under a pseudonym. Ultimately, this is really because George Lucas
03:24didn't settle on Luke being Vader's son until he completed a rewrite of the Empire Strikes Back
03:29script, which was finished almost a year after A New Hope hit cinemas.
03:327. The Millennium Falcon Is Fueled Up On Jakku
03:36Let's face it, we were all so damn happy that Star Wars The Force Awakens brought the series
03:40back to terra firma that we weren't necessarily open to scrutinizing every aspect of its plot,
03:45straight away at least. With some decent critical distance from the sequel trilogy
03:49as a whole, though, there are certainly some aspects of the story, both large and minor,
03:53that really don't make much sense. For example, when Rey and Finn hijack the Millennium Falcon
03:57on Jakku, why exactly is it fuelled and ready to go despite seemingly sitting around on this
04:02dusty-ass planet for years? Penny-pinching scrapper Unkar didn't exactly seem like the
04:07kind of guy to just leave a dilapidated ship fuelled up with the liquid metal fuel it requires,
04:11especially as in addition to being expensive as hell, the fuel is canonically said to be
04:16highly explosive. When it was stolen from Han and Chewie, it would have certainly evaporated
04:21over the years before Rey and Finn commandeered it. The real answer to this, as is so often the
04:25case, because the plot needed it to be. 6. Why Didn't The Empire Fire At Yavin Prime?
04:31In A New Hope, before the Death Star can fire upon the Rebel base on the moon of Yavin 4,
04:35it needed to be manoeuvred around Yavin Prime, for some reason. This naturally buys the Rebels
04:41time to destroy the Death Star. And so you have to wonder why the Empire didn't simply just fire
04:46the Death Star's laser at Yavin Prime itself, which as a gas giant would likely allow the
04:50laser to penetrate through and in turn obliterate Yavin 4. The most cited answer is that the Empire
04:56simply didn't expect that the Rebels would be able to do anything to compromise the Death Star
05:00in the time it required to get a good shot at Yavin 4. If you want to be generous to George
05:05Lucas, it's because the Empire got complacent, but really, it's a classic case of just giving
05:09the bad guys the idiot ball for a few minutes to keep the story going.
05:125. The Jedi Being Forgotten So Quickly
05:16One of the more absurd implausibilities between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope is that the
05:20galaxy seemed to largely forget entirely about the Jedi, or at least view them as quaint relics,
05:25in a period of just 19 years. Think back to 19 years ago in our own reality. 2003 isn't really
05:31that long to forget about something as significant as the Jedi, so it is a tough pill to swallow.
05:36Some will argue that Palpatine's efforts to erase the Jedi legacy were just that industrious,
05:41while others have stated that, in the grand scheme of the galaxy, the 10,000 Jedi who
05:46existed prior to Order 66 isn't really a whole lot. Plus, there's the whole fact that the
05:50remaining Jedi were in hiding, and as such not terribly active in keeping their story alive.
05:54A small subset of fans have more dubiously cited the existence of Holocaust denial as
06:00proof of humanity's ability to forget or deny something in bad faith. Though there have
06:04evidently been attempts to explain this aspect of Star Wars' lore away, it still doesn't feel right
06:10that the Jedi are basically an unknown entity less than two decades after they were integrated into
06:15society.
06:164. Luke's Inexplicable Escape From Hoth
06:19In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke heads to Dagobah in order to train with Master Yoda,
06:24as instructed by the Force spirit of Obi-Wan. However, the film conveniently glosses over
06:28the fact that this required Luke to circumvent the Empire's blockade in Hoth, which should
06:33have theoretically prevented his escape. So what gives? Well, Pablo Hidalgo himself
06:37admitted that asking about the nature of Luke's escape was a very good question,
06:41while adding that The Empire Strikes Back makes the least amount of sense of the films.
06:46The most sensible answers are, of course, that the Empire was busy chasing down the
06:50Millennium Falcon, which may have allowed Luke to sneak through the blockade, but it's still
06:54not a particularly persuasive explanation. Ultimately, Luke escaped Hoth because he
06:59had to, not because it actually made complete sense.
07:023. Droids Feel Pain For Some Unknown Reason
07:06In Return of the Jedi, you might recall that we briefly see droids being tortured in Jabba's
07:10palace, namely a gonk droid whose feet are being branded as it screams out in apparent pain.
07:15Except, why on Earth would a droid feel pain? Because it's a droid. While in the original
07:20trilogy we saw C-3PO appear to experience both pleasure and pain, this doesn't quite vibe with
07:26the events of Attack of the Clones, where 3PO is straight-up dismantled without appearing to
07:30be hurt at all. Beyond any philosophical questions about whether droids are feeling pain,
07:34or whether it's the pre-programmed illusion of pain, one has to ask again,
07:39why? What could the possible benefit of this offer anyone? There's never been a clear answer
07:44about this, and beyond perhaps heightening a droid's self-preservation potential,
07:48there doesn't seem to be many upsides of allowing droids to feel a distinctly human emotion.
07:522. Leia Has Memories of Padme
07:55And now, another plot hole that was deemed a legit question by Pablo Hidalgo.
08:00In Return of the Jedi, Leia tells Luke that she can remember images and feelings of her birth
08:05mother, which, of course, is contradicted by Revenge of the Sith, which shows Padme dying
08:09soon after giving birth to Luke and Leia. So, what exactly is Leia on about here? Obviously,
08:14the real answer is that it's an inconsistency between the sequels and prequels that George
08:18Luke has just lost sight of. However, some fans, in their desperation for answers,
08:22have pawned it off as either Leia using the Force to conjure memories or visions of Padme,
08:26or that she's in fact remembering her adoptive mother, Queen Organa. But,
08:31anyway, you slice it, it's a blatant textbook prequelitis problem.
08:351. Vader Only Disables the Falcon's Hyperdrive
08:39In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke, Leia, and company manage to escape Darth Vader's grasp
08:43after R2-D2 reactivates the Millennium Falcon's hyperdrive. But why wouldn't Vader order the
08:48hyperdrive to be more catastrophically compromised or even outright destroyed,
08:52rather than disabling it in trivial enough fashion that R2 could repair it with relative ease?
08:57One popular theory amongst fans is that Vader simply didn't want the heroes noticing that
09:01the Falcon had been tampered with, as this might have prompted them to fly another ship
09:05out of Cloud City instead, in turn making it much more difficult for the Empire to track them. But
09:10really, the most sensible answer is that Vader didn't count on an astromech droid interfacing
09:14with Cloud City's central computer and figuring out what was wrong with the Falcon. Even so,
09:19that's short-sighted enough to feel like a narrative inconsistency rather than a mere turn
09:23of plot. And there we go, my friends, those were 10 huge Star Wars plot holes that everybody
09:27overlooks. I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it
09:30down in the comments section below. As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on
09:34Twitter at RetroJ but the O is a zero, and the same for Instagram, RetroJ but the O is a zero.
09:41Hope to see you over there. But before I go, I just want to say one thing,
09:44hope that you're treating yourself well with love and respect, my friend,
09:47and I hope that this little message of positivity gives you that boost to fill
09:50your own plot holes in your own lives, to help you make sense of things around you,
09:53because at the end of the day, I just want you to live a healthy and happy life. You are
09:57a massive ledge and you deserve all of the best things like love, happiness,
10:01and success, and I want you to go out there and absolutely smash it. I believe in you.
10:06As always, I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.