Return of the Jedi

The book

James Kahn's 1983 novelization. A gangster's palace, a rescue that costs a carbonite year, a second battle station built as bait, and a forest moon full of small allies. It ends with an emperor goading a son to kill his father, and the father choosing the son instead. Kahn writes the inside of Vader's head, which the film never could.

Why Ralph McQuarrie

The throne room is McQuarrie's: the great round window over the reactor shaft, the fleet battle burning silently beyond it while two men duel in the dark, was his geometry before it was a set. So were the walkers among redwoods and the half-built station hanging in its scaffold.

The trilogy also ends where his paintings began it — this cycle closes a loop the 1976 plates opened.

What to look for

The window. Every throne-room plate keeps the battle OUTSIDE the glass — silent, distant, decorative — because that is the scene's whole cruelty. And Endor's scale: the trees are drawn as the giants, the machines as intruders among them.

Plates

The Second StationJabba's PalaceThe Rancor PitThe PlankThere Is AnotherThe Stolen ShuttleSpeeder BikesThe EwoksThe BunkerThe Fleet ArrivesThe Battle Above the MoonThe Lightning