Title says it all. When Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was released, it retroactively turned Ben Kenobi into an unreliable source by revealing that actually, Anakin Skywalker wasn’t killed by Darth Vader, but rather that Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker. Kenobi would attempt to justify not telling Luke Skylwalker this information by telling him that it was true, from a certain point of view, in that Anakin Skywalker ceased to be the same man when he became Darth Vader.

A brief aside on plot holes

Now, this is not a plot hole; there is a very important difference. Ben Kenobi telling Luke Darth (yes, Darth was his name, not his title; that was also retconned later) killed his father, but actually he was just being misleading, is not a contradiction; as I said above, it just turns him into an unreliable source of information. A plot hole is a hard contradition, where an established rule of the universe is broken. The classic example (this is the only time in this article where I will refer to Disney canon) is in The Last Jedi, when Rose figures out that hyperspace tracking is a thing the First Order can do while talking to Finn, who is unaware of it, but when they need to know where on the ship it is, Finn says he used to mop that room, indicating that he knows not only that it exists, but where specifically it is.

There are two examples I keep hearing of plot holes in A New Hope; firstly, that the escape pod doesn’t get shot down because there are no life forms in it, and secondly that the Death Star could have such an obvious flaw in it.

For the first, this is not a plot hole. A character makes a (bad) decision, informed by logic. This is a choice made primarily to allow the story to happen. However, at this point in the story, if we assume the Empire is like real world militaries, it doesn’t make sense to shoot everything that moves. The supervisor indicates that he believes it has malfunctioned. Given C-3PO’s resistance to getting into an escape pod, it seems implied there is some protocol that droids may not use escape pods, at least when there are no people taking it, assumedly so that there are enough escape pods for the human crew. And so the Imperial supervisor, seeing there are no humans on board, assumes a droid would not have stolen an escape pod.

For the second, there is no part of that sentiment which could be considered a plot hole. It is a convenience, again primarily made to allow the story to happen, but it does not contradict anything.

George Lucas’ attitudes towards continuity

Now, George Lucas handled continuity in a very seat-of-his-pants kind of way. In Star Wars chronology, there were 3 levels of canon:

• the movie canon that was made by George himself;
• the TV shows;
• the Expanded Universe

The movie canon trumps TV show canon trumps all other canon. That is not to say that any of these canons were particularly consistent even with themselves, however. George Lucas is (in)famous for his revisionism of his previous work, the famous example being editing A New Hope to have Greedo shoot at Han first. George Lucas seems to have an insecurity about his work, despite its great success.

Some final context

In this article, I will be referring specifically to the lines of dialog said by Ben Kenobi in A New Hope. When pointing out contraditions, I will be referring to the other 5 Star Wars movies. I will not be referring to either Clone Wars TV show; in this instance I am specifically referring to movie canon.

And now, the meat

I don’t seem to remember ever owning a droid

You can get technical with “did he ever own the droid”, but Obi-Wan sure spent a long time with R4 to have never owned one. The implication during the Clone Wars was that R4 was Obi-Wan’s droid.

That’s what your uncle told you. He didn’t hold with your father’s ideals. Thought he should have stayed here and not gotten involved.

It’s totally possible that Uncle Owen didn’t hold with Anakin’s ideals; especially since they had maybe a day of interaction, right around the time when Anakin massacred a tribe of Sand People. He could not have told Anakin to “not get involved,” however, when Anakin had been a Jedi for many years when they first met.

Which reminds me. I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn’t allow it. He feared you might follow Obi-Wan on some damn-fool idealistic crusade like your father did.

Anakin most certainly could not have wanted Luke to have the lightsaber, when he didn’t know about Luke at all. He knew Padme was pregnant, but he believed he had killed her; the implication is he believed his children had died as well.

A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father.

For starters: Darth was a name, not a title. Darth Vader was the name of the Jedi who had turned to evil.

Second, Darth Vader was not Luke’s father yet; that became a thing during the writing of Empire Strikes Back.

Now the Jedi are all but extinct.

There was a time where this was true. In A New Hope, Obi-Wan was the only Jedi who had survived the purge later to be known as Order 66. In Empire Strikes Back, Yoda and Obi-Wan were the only Jedi who had survived. So once those had passed, Luke Skywalker was the only Jedi left. In Disney canon, the number of Jedi who survived Order 66 is constantly increasing; you could be forgiven for thinking only the Jedi who are explicitly showed to die are actually dead.

Now let’s see if we can’t figure out what you are, my little friend, and where you come from.

This is easily explained by Ben being coy; however, I don’t believe that was the original intention. This could go either way though.

And these blast points, too accurate for Sand People. Only imperial stormtroopers are so precise.

Remember when stormtroopers were a serious threat? I absolutely hate when people reference stormtroopers when talking about an enemy who is easily defeated cannon fodder. The Empire is very effective in A New Hope. The heroes barely eave the Death Star, and the only reason they do is because Tarkin wanted them to escape. He took a large risk following Vader’s suggestion of tracking the Millenium Falcon back to their base (especially risky as if Leia had done the reasonable thing, and had Han drop her off at a neutral planet and took a more secure route to Yavin, the Empire would have lost her and the location), but that risk paid off, and they nearly wiped out the rebel fleet of small fighters. The only reason they didn’t succeed was because Han Solo surprised everyone and showed up to save the day. If he had not done that, the fleet would have been destroyed, along with the rebel base.