The Mother's Murder
Palpatine Orchestrated Shmi's Death

CHANCELLOR PALPATINE sits behind his desk, reviewing a holographic dossier. The room is dark except for the blue light of the display. His face is composed, thoughtful — the mask of a concerned statesman. The dossier is titled: SKYWALKER, ANAKIN — JEDI PADAWAN — PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE. He scrolls through it with practiced efficiency. Training records. Combat evaluations. Disciplinary notes. And there, buried in the Jedi Council's internal assessments, the information he's looking for: MASTER WINDU'S ASSESSMENT: "The boy is exceptionally powerful but emotionally volatile. His attachment to his mother remains a critical vulnerability. He speaks of her frequently. His fear of losing her is his deepest wound." Palpatine reads this twice. Then he smiles. PALPATINE (to himself) His deepest wound. He closes the dossier. Opens another file — this one not from the Jedi Temple, but from his own network. IMPERIAL INTELLIGENCE DIVISION (COVERT). A report on Tatooine. INTELLIGENCE REPORT: "Subject SHMI SKYWALKER was purchased and freed by moisture farmer CLIEGG LARS approximately 14 months ago. She resides at the Lars homestead, Jundland Wastes, Tatooine. Subject lives quietly. No security. No protection beyond standard moisture farm defenses." Palpatine steeples his fingers. He has been watching Shmi Skywalker for ten years. Not directly — she is beneath his notice as a person. But as a TOOL, she is invaluable. Anakin Skywalker is the most powerful Force user alive. His midi-chlorian count is higher than Yoda's. He is the Chosen One. And Palpatine needs him. But you can't seduce the Chosen One with promises of power. Not yet. First, you have to BREAK him. You have to shatter his faith in the Jedi, in the Republic, in the goodness of the universe. You have to give him a reason to hate. And the fastest way to break a boy is to destroy his mother. PALPATINE (pressing a comm button) Send in the operative. The door opens. A figure enters — not a soldier, not a politician. A SHADOW. A being whose name does not appear in any record, whose face changes with the assignment, whose existence the Republic does not acknowledge. This is AGENT SIDIOUS-7 — one of Palpatine's personal operatives, trained in manipulation, espionage, and what the intelligence community euphemistically calls "event engineering." PALPATINE I have a task for you. On Tatooine. AGENT (voice neutral, professional) Parameters? PALPATINE A woman. Shmi Skywalker. Currently residing at a moisture farm in the Jundland Wastes. I need her removed. Not killed — not immediately. Taken. By the Tusken Raiders. AGENT (slight pause) The Tuskens don't take human prisoners, my lord. PALPATINE Then you'll need to be creative. The Tuskens are territorial and superstitious. Find their pressure points. Offer them something they value. Weapons, water, territory — whatever it takes. I need them to raid the Lars homestead and take the woman alive. AGENT Alive for how long? PALPATINE Long enough for her son to come looking. He stands. Walks to the window. The Coruscant cityscape glitters below — a trillion lives, none of them aware that their Chancellor is planning the kidnapping and torture of a farmer's wife on a desert planet at the edge of the galaxy. PALPATINE Her son is a Jedi Padawan. Powerful. Emotional. When he senses her suffering — and he WILL sense it, through the Force — he will come to Tatooine. He will find her. And by the time he does, she must be broken enough to die in his arms. AGENT (carefully) You want the Tuskens to torture her. PALPATINE I want the Tuskens to do what Tuskens do. I simply need them to do it to the RIGHT person, at the RIGHT time. He turns back to the agent. His eyes are cold, ancient, calculating. PALPATINE When the boy finds his mother dying... when the rage overwhelms him... he will do something terrible. Something the Jedi cannot forgive. And something HE cannot forgive in himself. That moment — that single, agonizing moment — will be the crack through which I enter. AGENT And if the Jedi Council sends someone else? If they intervene? PALPATINE (smiling) They won't. I'll make sure of it. The boy's master will be conveniently reassigned. The Council will be distracted by... other matters. And the boy will be alone on Naboo with Senator Amidala, heartsick and dreaming of his mother. He sits back down. Picks up the psychological profile. PALPATINE Go. And ensure there are no traces. No evidence. No connection to this office. When this is over, the galaxy will remember it as a random Tusken raid. A tragedy. An act of senseless violence. He looks down at the profile. At the sentence he highlighted: "His fear of losing her is his deepest wound." PALPATINE (whispering) And I am going to open that wound so wide that nothing will ever close it.

Twin suns beat down on endless sand. The Jundland Wastes stretch to every horizon — barren, hostile, lethal. Nothing survives here that isn't built for killing. AGENT SIDIOUS-7 crouches behind a rock formation, observing a TUSKEN RAIDER CAMP through macrobinoculars. The camp is a collection of hide tents, banthas, and warriors in their distinctive wrapped masks and goggles. The agent has spent three weeks in the desert. Learning. Watching. Understanding. Tusken Raiders are not mindless savages. They have culture, hierarchy, religion. They believe the desert is sacred — given to them by their gods. They believe water is divine. And they believe that OUTSIDERS — settlers, farmers, anyone who builds on their land — are blasphemers who must be driven out. The agent has identified the clan leader: UR'RAN, a massive Tusken warrior with ritual scars visible beneath his wrappings. Ur'Ran is proud, territorial, and deeply religious. He believes the moisture farmers are stealing his people's water — which, technically, they are. The agent approaches the camp at dawn, when the Tuskens perform their water ceremony. He comes unarmed, draped in desert wrappings, carrying a GIFT: a crate of CYCLER RIFLES — slug-throwers, far superior to the Tuskens' handmade weapons. The warriors surround him. Gaffi sticks are raised. The agent does not flinch. AGENT (in halting Tusken sign language — learned over three weeks of observation) I bring gifts for the People of the Sand. I bring weapons to defend your sacred land. Ur'Ran pushes through the warriors. He examines the rifles. His masked head tilts — interested despite his suspicion. UR'RAN (guttural Tusken) Why? What do you want, outsider? AGENT (signing) The moisture farmer in the eastern wastes. The one called Lars. He has taken a new wife. A woman from off-world. She is the mother of a powerful warrior — a warrior who will one day return to Tatooine and drive your people from the desert forever. Ur'Ran stiffens. The other Tuskens mutter amongst themselves. UR'RAN (signing aggressively) No outsider warrior will take our land. AGENT (nodding) Then take his mother. Take her before he comes. Show him that the People of the Sand cannot be conquered. The lie is elegant. The agent has no idea if Anakin Skywalker will ever return to Tatooine. But the Tuskens don't know that. All they know is that an outsider is offering them weapons and warning them about a threat — and the Tuskens have survived for millennia by eliminating threats early. UR'RAN (considering) The woman. We take her? AGENT Take her. Keep her. Show the outsiders what happens when they steal from the People of the Sand. Ur'Ran looks at the rifles. Looks at his warriors. Looks at the agent. UR'RAN (decisive) We will raid at the next dark moon. The farmer will know the cost of his blasphemy. The agent bows. Retreats into the desert. His work is done. He transmits a single coded message to Coruscant: OPERATION KINDLING CONFIRMED. TIMELINE: THREE WEEKS. In his office on Coruscant, Palpatine receives the message. He deletes it. Then he opens his calendar and schedules a meeting with the Jedi Council to discuss the "Separatist crisis" — a crisis he manufactured to keep Obi-Wan Kenobi occupied. Everything is moving. On Naboo, Anakin Skywalker wakes from a dream of his mother screaming, drenched in sweat, and doesn't understand why.

The lake retreat on Naboo is paradise. Crystal water. Green meadows. Sunlight filtering through ancient trees. ANAKIN SKYWALKER and PADMÉ AMIDALA walk through the grounds, falling in love despite every rule that forbids it. But Anakin can't sleep. Every night, the dreams come. His mother's face. Her voice, calling to him. Pain — waves of pain that crash through his sleeping mind with the force of a psychic scream. He sits on the balcony, 3 AM, staring at the moonlit lake. Padmé finds him. PADMÉ Another nightmare? ANAKIN (not turning) It's getting worse. PADMÉ (sitting beside him) Tell me. ANAKIN I see her. My mother. She's... in pain. Real pain. Not a memory. Not a fear. It's happening RIGHT NOW, somewhere in the galaxy. PADMÉ The Jedi would say it's just anxiety. Attachment. ANAKIN (turning sharply) It's NOT attachment. It's the FORCE. The Force is showing me something. My mother is in danger, Padmé. She's suffering. I can FEEL it. What Anakin doesn't know — what he CAN'T know — is that the visions are not entirely natural. The Force DOES connect him to Shmi. A bond between mother and child, amplified by Anakin's unprecedented midi-chlorian count. If Shmi were suffering, Anakin would sense it. But the visions are too VIVID. Too specific. Too perfectly timed. Normal Force visions are vague — impressions, emotions, fragments. Anakin's visions are like watching a holovid: clear, detailed, agonizing. Because they're being AMPLIFIED. --- INT. PALPATINE'S MEDITATION CHAMBER, CORUSCANT — SAME NIGHT Three thousand light-years away, PALPATINE sits in darkness, hands raised, eyes closed. The Sith holocrons glow around him. He has found the thread — the Force bond between mother and son — and he is STRENGTHENING it. Turning up the volume. Taking Shmi's genuine pain and broadcasting it directly into Anakin's dreams with ten times the normal intensity. PALPATINE (murmuring, channeling dark-side energy) Feel her, Anakin. Feel every moment. Let the pain become yours. Let it consume your sleep, your peace, your training. Let it drive you mad with helplessness. He pushes harder. The bond between Anakin and Shmi vibrates like a plucked wire. On Naboo, Anakin cries out in his sleep. On Tatooine, Shmi screams in the Tusken camp. Connected. Mother and son. Victim and weapon. And Palpatine — the puppet master — pulling the strings of both. PALPATINE (opening his eyes, Sith gold burning in the darkness) When you can't take it anymore, boy... when the agony drives you to Tatooine... you won't find comfort. You'll find a broken woman dying in your arms. And the rage that follows... the massacre that rage demands... He smiles. PALPATINE ...that will be the first brick in the temple of Darth Vader.

Anakin has broken. He can't take the visions anymore. He's going to Tatooine. Padmé goes with him — not because the mission requires it, but because she loves him and she's afraid of what he'll do alone. The ship streaks through hyperspace. Anakin sits in the cockpit, rigid with terror, the Force screaming in his ears. PADMÉ (from the co-pilot's seat) We'll find her, Anakin. We'll bring her home. ANAKIN (staring ahead, jaw clenched) Something is wrong. The visions... they're too clear. It's like someone is SHOWING them to me. Making sure I see every detail. PADMÉ Who would do that? ANAKIN (shaking his head) I don't know. The Jedi say the Force has a will of its own. Maybe it's trying to tell me something. Maybe it's a warning. He pauses. His hands grip the controls so hard his knuckles are white. ANAKIN Or maybe it's a trap. He says this with the instinct of someone who has grown up on the streets, who survived slavery, who learned early that kindness always has a price. His gut tells him something is wrong — that the visions are too convenient, too precise, too USEFUL for someone. But the instinct is drowned by the agony. His mother is dying. He can feel it. And no amount of suspicion can override the desperate, primal need to save her. ANAKIN I have to go. Even if it's a trap. I have to go. --- On Coruscant, Palpatine senses Anakin leaving Naboo. The Force bond between them — Chancellor and Padawan, mentor and boy — is strong enough that Palpatine can track Anakin's emotional state across the galaxy. He feels the fear. The rage building beneath it. The desperation. PALPATINE (alone in his office, eyes closed) Good. Go to her, Anakin. Go to Tatooine. Go to the Sand People's camp. Find your mother. His hands curl into fists. PALPATINE And when you do... when you hold her broken body in your arms... let the darkness in. Let it fill the hole where she used to be. Because that hole is where I will build my empire.

Twin moons hang over the desert. The Tusken camp sleeps. Banthas snore. Sentries patrol the perimeter with gaffi sticks. ANAKIN SKYWALKER moves through the darkness like a ghost. The Force guides his steps — silent, invisible, lethal. He has left Padmé at the Lars homestead. He has left Threepio babbling in the garage. He has left everything civilized behind. He is not a Jedi right now. He is a son. He finds the tent at the camp's center. Guarded. Sealed. The smell of blood and sweat seeps through the hide flap. He cuts the flap open with his lightsaber. Blue light floods the interior. SHMI SKYWALKER hangs from a wooden frame, bound by leather straps. Her body is a map of suffering — bruises, cuts, burns. She has been here for a month. The medical assessment is clear: she is dying. Not from any single wound, but from the cumulative trauma of sustained captivity and abuse. Anakin's world stops. ANAKIN (cutting her down, cradling her) Mom... Mom, I'm here. I'm here. SHMI (opening her eyes — one swollen shut, the other barely focusing) Ani...? Ani... is it you? ANAKIN (tears flowing freely) I'm here. I'm going to get you out. I'm going to save you. SHMI (touching his face with broken fingers) My son... my grown-up son. I'm so proud... Her voice is a thread. Each word costs her everything. SHMI I love... She dies. In his arms. In the tent. In the dark. The silence that follows is the loudest thing in the galaxy. --- And three thousand light-years away, PALPATINE feels it. He is sitting in his meditation chamber, eyes closed, hands folded. The Force bond between Anakin and Shmi has been vibrating like a wire for weeks — taut, agonizing, electric. And now, in an instant, one end of the wire goes dead. Shmi is gone. The bond is severed. But the ENERGY of that severing — the psychic shockwave of a son holding his dead mother — ripples through the Force like a scream through a cathedral. Palpatine feels it hit Anakin's mind. Feels the grief surge. Feels it curdle into something darker. PALPATINE (whispering, eyes still closed) There it is. He reaches through the Force. Not to comfort Anakin. Not to guide him. Just to WATCH. To bear witness to the moment the Chosen One breaks. In the Tusken camp, Anakin lays Shmi's body gently on the ground. He stands. His lightsaber ignites. His eyes are not blue anymore. They are GOLD. PALPATINE (feeling the first kills through the Force) Yes, Anakin. Yes. Don't stop. Kill them all. Every man. Every woman. Every child. Let the rage consume you. Let it hollow you out. Let it make room for what I'm going to put inside you. Anakin moves through the camp like a force of nature. His lightsaber is a blur of blue death. The Tuskens don't stand a chance — not against a Jedi consumed by rage, powered by grief, driven by the dark side. He kills the warriors. He kills their mates. He kills their children. He kills everything that breathes. When it's over, the camp is silent. Bodies everywhere. Smoke rising from the wreckage. Anakin stands in the center, chest heaving, lightsaber humming, covered in ash. On Coruscant, Palpatine opens his eyes. They are yellow. He is smiling. Not the thin, diplomatic smile of the Chancellor. The WIDE, satisfied smile of a predator who has just watched his trap close around its prey. PALPATINE (to the empty room) Welcome to the dark side, Darth Vader. We've been waiting for you.

Anakin has brought Shmi's body home. The Lars family grieves. CLIEGG LARS, legless from his own rescue attempt, weeps in his hoverchair. Anakin stands in the garage with PADMÉ. He is shaking. Not with grief — the grief has been swallowed by something worse. Shame. Horror. The knowledge of what he's done. ANAKIN I killed them. I killed them all. They're dead. Every single one of them. PADMÉ (stepping toward him) Anakin— ANAKIN (breaking) And not just the men. But the women. And the children too. They're like animals! And I SLAUGHTERED them like animals! He crumples. Falls to his knees. Padmé holds him as he sobs — great, wracking sobs that shake his entire body. ANAKIN I HATE them! PADMÉ (rocking him, helpless) To be angry is to be human— ANAKIN I'm a Jedi. I should be better than this. I should KNOW better. But he doesn't know better. He's nineteen years old. He was a slave until he was nine. The Jedi gave him training but not therapy. They gave him discipline but not love. And the one person who loved him unconditionally — his mother — was just tortured to death in a tent in the desert. This is the moment Palpatine has engineered. Not the massacre itself — that was a bonus. THIS moment. The confession. The shame. The realization that Anakin Skywalker has darkness inside him that no amount of Jedi training can erase. Because from this moment forward, Anakin will carry a SECRET. He massacred a village. Women and children. And the only person who knows is Padmé. Not Obi-Wan. Not the Jedi Council. Just Padmé. And secrets are LEVERAGE. Secrets are the tools of manipulation. Secrets create isolation — the exact kind of isolation that Palpatine needs to separate Anakin from the Jedi Order. PADMÉ (holding him) It's going to be alright. We'll get through this. ANAKIN (whispering) Don't tell anyone. Promise me, Padmé. Don't tell anyone what I did. She promises. And in doing so, she becomes complicit. She becomes part of the secret. And the secret becomes a wall between Anakin and the Jedi — a wall that Palpatine will reinforce, brick by brick, over the next three years, until Anakin trusts no one but Padmé and the Chancellor. This was always the plan. Not a random tragedy. Not senseless violence. A SURGERY — precise, calculated, devastating — performed on the soul of the Chosen One by the most patient predator in the galaxy. Shmi Skywalker was not a casualty of the Clone Wars. She was a sacrifice on the altar of Palpatine's ambition.

ANAKIN SKYWALKER sits in a chair across from PALPATINE. The office is warm, golden, comforting — everything the Jedi Temple is not. Palpatine's office has always felt like a sanctuary to Anakin. A place where he can be himself. He doesn't know why. PALPATINE You look troubled, my boy. ANAKIN (staring at the floor) I'm fine, Chancellor. PALPATINE You are many things, Anakin. Fine is not one of them. A pause. Palpatine pours two cups of tea — Alderaanian silver needle, expensive and calming. He sets one in front of Anakin. PALPATINE I heard about your mother. I'm deeply sorry. Anakin's hand tightens on the armrest. ANAKIN Thank you. PALPATINE The Jedi Council sent their condolences, I trust? Silence. The answer is no. The Council sent nothing. They don't acknowledge attachments. They don't acknowledge mothers. They barely acknowledged that Anakin was gone for a week. PALPATINE (noting the silence) Ah. I see. He sips his tea. Every word is measured. Every pause is calculated. He is conducting a symphony of manipulation so delicate that the instrument itself — Anakin — cannot feel the fingers on the strings. PALPATINE The Jedi ask you to suppress your emotions. To release your grief into the Force. To... let go. ANAKIN (bitterly) That's what they always say. PALPATINE And does it work? ANAKIN (looking up, vulnerable) No. It doesn't. I can't let go. I loved her. She was my MOTHER. And she died... she died in pain. Alone. For a MONTH. PALPATINE (leaning forward, voice soft) And did the Force save her? Did the Jedi protect her? ANAKIN (jaw clenching) No. PALPATINE The Force is powerful, Anakin. But it is also... indifferent. It does not choose sides. It does not protect the innocent. It simply IS. He sets down his tea. PALPATINE But what if it COULD be directed? What if there were those who could use the Force not as a passive river, but as an active tool? To protect the ones they love. To PREVENT tragedies like the one that befell your mother. ANAKIN (eyes widening slightly) The Jedi say that's the path to the dark side. PALPATINE (gentle, almost sad) The Jedi say many things. They said the Republic was safe. They said they would sense threats before they materialized. They said they would protect the galaxy. He gestures at the window, at the city, at the galaxy beyond. PALPATINE And yet a slave woman was tortured to death on Tatooine while the entire Jedi Order looked the other way. Not because they're evil, Anakin. Because their philosophy BLINDS them. They value serenity over action. Detachment over love. And while they meditate, people die. Every word is a needle, precisely placed. Not pushing Anakin toward the dark side — not yet. Just creating DOUBT. Just widening the crack that Shmi's death opened. ANAKIN (whispering) If I'd been faster... if I'd listened to the dreams sooner... PALPATINE (reaching across the desk, placing a hand on Anakin's) You cannot blame yourself. The universe is cruel, Anakin. Random. Unfair. The only defense against that cruelty is POWER. The power to protect the ones you love. The power to change the things you cannot accept. He squeezes Anakin's hand. And through that touch, a whisper of dark-side energy — barely perceptible, like a single drop of poison in a glass of water. PALPATINE I believe in you, Anakin. Even when the Jedi doubt you. Even when the Council dismisses you. I believe you are destined for something greater than their narrow philosophy allows. Anakin looks at the Chancellor. And what he sees is a kind, wise, fatherly man who cares about him. Who listens. Who doesn't judge. What he doesn't see is the architect of his mother's murder, sitting three feet away, drinking tea, and smiling. ANAKIN Thank you, Chancellor. You're... you're always there when I need someone to talk to. PALPATINE (smiling warmly) Always, my boy. Always. Anakin leaves. The door closes. And Palpatine's smile CHANGES. It is no longer warm. It is no longer kind. It is the smile of a farmer surveying a field he has burned and plowed and seeded, satisfied that the harvest will come. He opens a drawer. Inside is the INTELLIGENCE REPORT on Shmi Skywalker's kidnapping — the report from Agent Sidious-7. He feeds it into the desk's molecular shredder. The paper dissolves into atoms. No evidence. No connection. No trace. Just a grieving boy, a dead mother, and a Chancellor who was always, ALWAYS, there to pick up the pieces.

Palpatine stands at the window, watching the Coruscant sunset. He is about to execute Order 66. The Jedi are about to die. Anakin is about to fall. And he is thinking about Shmi. PALPATINE (voice-over, internal monologue) People think the dark side is about rage. About power. About lightning from fingertips and choking men across rooms. They're wrong. He watches a transport shuttle rise from the Senate landing pad, carrying senators home to their families. PALPATINE (V.O.) The dark side is about PATIENCE. About planting seeds in broken soil and waiting — years, decades — for them to bloom. He turns. On his desk, a holographic image of ANAKIN SKYWALKER as a boy — nine years old, newly arrived at the Jedi Temple. Bright-eyed. Innocent. Full of light. PALPATINE (V.O.) I saw Anakin Skywalker for the first time when he was nine years old. A slave boy from Tatooine. The most powerful Force user in a thousand generations. And I knew — in that moment, with absolute certainty — that I would make him mine. He picks up the hologram. Turns it in his fingers. PALPATINE (V.O.) But you can't break a child of the light with darkness. Not directly. Light resists darkness the way water resists oil. You need a SOLVENT. Something that dissolves the barrier between them. He sets the hologram down. PALPATINE (V.O.) Grief is that solvent. Loss. The specific, targeted, unendurable loss of the person you love most in the galaxy. I gave Anakin nightmares. I sent an agent to Tatooine. I armed Tusken Raiders and pointed them at a moisture farm. I arranged for a mother to be kidnapped and tortured for a month. He walks to the center of the room. The sunset paints his face in red and gold. PALPATINE (V.O.) And when her son found her dying in that tent... when the darkness exploded out of him and he slaughtered an entire village... I felt it through the Force. The most beautiful sound I have ever heard: the scream of the Chosen One's innocence dying. He closes his eyes. PALPATINE (V.O.) After that, the rest was easy. The guilt isolated him from the Jedi. The secret bound him to Padmé. And Padmé gave me my second lever — because now he had someone ELSE to lose. Someone else I could threaten. Someone else whose death I could engineer. His comm chimes. It's time. PALPATINE (V.O.) Shmi Skywalker was nobody. A slave. A farmer's wife. History won't remember her name. But without her death, there would be no Darth Vader. No Empire. No Order 66. No galaxy-spanning reign of darkness. He picks up the comm. PALPATINE Commander Cody. Execute Order 66. PALPATINE (V.O.) The death of one woman. The fall of a galaxy. He watches the sunset. And in the Force, ten thousand Jedi begin to die. PALPATINE (V.O.) That is the dark side. Not rage. Not power. He smiles. PALPATINE (V.O.) Patience.

The desert is quiet. Twin suns set over the moisture farm. An old woman — BERU LARS — calls a young boy inside for dinner. BERU Luke! Come inside! LUKE SKYWALKER, five years old, runs through the sand, chasing a desert lizard. He's laughing. Carefree. Innocent. He stops. Something in the sand. A GLINT. He bends down and picks it up — a small, tarnished pendant. Shmi Skywalker's pendant. Lost in the sand years ago, when Anakin brought her body home. Luke holds it up to the light. It catches the sunset, throwing tiny rainbows across the sand. LUKE Aunt Beru! Look what I found! BERU (coming to the doorway, seeing the pendant, face going pale) Oh... oh, Luke. That was... that belonged to your grandmother. LUKE My grandmother? The one who died? BERU (kneeling, taking the pendant gently) Yes. Her name was Shmi. She was... she was a very brave woman. LUKE What happened to her? Beru hesitates. She knows the official story: Tusken Raiders. A random attack. Senseless violence. She doesn't know the truth. No one does. BERU (choosing her words carefully) She... she was taken from us. By people who didn't understand what they were doing. But she loved your father very much. And she would have loved you. Luke takes the pendant back. Holds it against his chest. And for just a moment — a moment so brief it might be imagination — the desert wind shifts, and the air around the boy grows warm. As if someone unseen has wrapped their arms around him. The FORCE stirs. Not the dark side. Not the light side. Something older. Something that exists beneath both. A mother's love, etched into the fabric of the universe, reaching through death and time and the machinations of Sith Lords to touch her grandson's face. Luke smiles. He doesn't know why. He runs inside, pendant clutched in his small hand. Beru watches him go, wipes her eyes, and follows. The suns set. The desert cools. And in the Jundland Wastes, where a Tusken camp once stood, the sand has long since covered the blood. No evidence remains. No monument marks the spot. But the Force remembers. It remembers Shmi Skywalker. It remembers her courage. It remembers her love. And it remembers the monster who used that love as a weapon. And someday — decades from now — her grandson will stand before that monster's apprentice and refuse to give in to hate. He will throw down his lightsaber. He will choose love over rage, mercy over revenge, hope over despair. And in doing so, he will undo everything Palpatine spent a lifetime building. Shmi Skywalker's love, planted in a boy on Tatooine, will be the thing that destroys the Empire. The cruelest irony of Palpatine's plan: the weapon he forged from a mother's death will be broken by a mother's love. SMASH CUT TO BLACK. TITLE CARD: "THE MOTHER'S MURDER" The Force theme plays — but beginning with a Tatooine folk melody, simple and warm, before building into the full orchestral swell. A mother's lullaby becoming a galaxy's anthem. CREDITS.