A version of this article was first published in 2023.

Remember that moment when Darth Vader revealed he was Luke Skywalker's older brother? No?! Well, in the first ever Star Wars sequel, that's exactly what would have happened.

Long before Star Wars went into hyperdrive as a global phenomenon, there were fears it would it simply wouldn't take off.

George Lucas was hopeful about his new sci-fi movie, but there was every possibility it would become just another forgotten film. So he put a precaution into place: a potential low-budget sequel that would allow the story of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) to continue.

Of course, we instead ended up with the phenomenon that is The Empire Strikes Back. But that forgotten first sequel, titled Splinter of the Mind's Eye, lives on in a novelisation by Alan Dean Foster.

Speaking exclusively to Radio Times, Foster reveals all the twists that could have happened had the original sequel made it to the big screen.

1. Han Solo and Chewy are written out

It's hard to imagine Star Wars without our two loveable rogues, Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) and they're responsible for so many iconic moments in the franchise (not least, Ford's improvised "I know" line).

But the original sequel couldn't use the two characters at all, with Foster recalling: "I could not use the characters of Han Solo and Chewbacca because at that point in time, Harrison Ford had not signed on to any future projects."

Sadly, Chewy was then collateral damage: "I didn't have to ask about Chewbacca, because with no Han Solo, there didn't seem any point, at least at that point in the Star Wars universe, of having Chewbacca included. So no Han Solo, no Chewbacca in Splinter of the Mind's Eye."

2. There was an awkward romance between Luke and Leia

Of course, it's not until Return of the Jedi that Luke (Mark Hamill) and Leia (Carrie Fisher) find out they're siblings. By that point, there have been a few awkward moments, including kiss in The Empire Strikes Back.

So, looking back, it's not surprising that Foster decided there should be some romantic tension between the pair after the first film.

"I don't think George, or anybody else, knew at that time that Luke and Leia, particularly based on George's original notes and preliminary script work, that they were going to turn out to be siblings," Foster explains.

He continued: "I thought from the beginning that you were going to have a fairly understandable love triangle there, with the two guys competing for the love of the princess. But George went a different way with it.

"At the time, of course, that was the impression I had. So there is this little, and fortunately it is little, frisson between Luke and Leia in Splinter of the Mind's Eye because that's the way the story seemed to be going.

"Certain things you can fix in hindsight and retrospect and certain things you can't!"

3. Darth Vader was Luke's older brother – not his father

It's one of the best twists in cinema – a secret so well-guarded that the words were never spoken on set. But the twist involving Darth Vader (James Earl Jones) could have gone down very differently.

In Splinter of the Mind's Eye, Darth Vader's arm is cut off at the end, a twist Foster believes could have been "easily fixed" to fit in with the rest of the stories.

But while Luke and Vader's familial relationship is not explored in the book (after all, that reveal only came in The Empire Strikes Back), if he had his way, Foster says the pair of them would have a very different relationship.

"I do not think that Vader should have been Luke's father," he says. "I can see George sitting around, thinking, 'What can we do to really surprise people?' And of course, it really did surprise people.

"The way I would have done it – as long as we're speculating here – was that Vader was actually Luke's older brother. This is how you would fix it so it would work with Empire, who killed their real father and pretended to be Luke's father. And that would have made a revelation at the end.

"Vader would have stayed a villain in other words. I couldn't accept Darth Vader's redemption."

4. No big space battles

The key part of this sequel is that it needed to be low-budget. So, while Foster had envisioned a big space battle at the beginning, Lucas asked for it to be cut.

"George had in mind that, if the film Star Wars was not a big success, or not a colossal failure, he would still be able to make a sequel on a low budget that would use as many as the existing props and costumes and backgrounds and performers as possible," Foster explained.

He added: "George accepted the book as written, with the exception that I had to cut two things out of Splinter of the Mind's Eye.

"One I don't remember, it was quite small. The other was, the book originally opened with a very large, fairly complex space battle and I had to take that out because it would have been expensive to film... we've certainly seen plenty of exciting space battles in the history of Star Wars so nobody is really missing anything!"

5. Luke Skywalker could have been very different

Foster was there from the very beginnings of Star Wars, starting his work on Splinter of the Mind's Eye before A New Hope had been released. He recalls giving George Lucas his less than impressed thoughts on Skywalker's original, scrapped name...

"I said, 'I think maybe you've got too many stars in this movie.' You've got the Death Star, you've got Star Wars, and your main character is called Luke Starkiller, which he was at the time.

"George just kind of nodded, which I later learned was a method of his, and I forgot about it and, what do you know? The film comes out and there's no more Luke Starkiller. I'm sure I'm not the only one who pointed this out, but I can say that I made that little contribution for whatever it's worth."

But one thing did make the cut...

Not everything from Splinter of the Mind's Eye was ditched.

"I was able to introduce something called the Kaiburr crystal, which they changed the spelling of [Kyber crystal] and slightly the purpose of, and of course the planet itself, Mimban where they crash-land, lo and behold shows up in an entirely different Star Wars film later on," Foster revealed.

Kyber crystals have most recently been referenced in the likes of The Acolyte and Andor. Mimban, meanwhile, was used in Solo: A Star Wars Story.

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