I don't particularly care for your patronizing and condescending tone, but fine, let's discuss this.
I get to use Lucas quotes to back my own argument up because he's been contradictory on this apparently.
"Anakin can't be redeemed for all the pain and suffering he's caused."
Anakin has an OUNCE of good left in him and he uses it to save Luke. Yes, that's a good thing. But is it not, in some ways, still self-serving? He does it for HIS SON, he wouldn't have done it for anybody else. The only thing that makes it even slightly selfless is the possibility that he won't live through the attempt to kill Palpatine, so he's willing to die for Luke I guess, but like. Does this get to count as redemption?
I don't know that I'd say Anakin "turned back to the Light" honestly. Like I know that that's what happens in canon, but Anakin uses that tiny ounce of goodness in him to save someone he personally cares about from dying. Big whoop. It's not honestly all that different from the last time he decided to cause a regime change to save someone he personally cares about from dying aside from the fact that he's going to die, too. Saving someone he cares about from dying by personally murdering the people in charge doesn't make Anakin Light because it's exactly the same thing he does when he goes full Sith, too. The galaxy just got lucky that Luke was stupid enough to throw away his weapon in front of the fucking Sith Master, making himself completely vulnerable and forcing Anakin to make a choice that ultimately led to the fulfillment of a prophecy almost by accident.
This is why it doesn't feel like redemption to me. Nothing is truly fixed, nothing is changed. Anakin himself hasn't even changed all that much. Anakin didn't kill Palpatine because he recognized that he should've done that in the first place, he doesn't do it for the sake of the galaxy, he doesn't do it to make amends for anything he's done, and he never would've even done it for a random stranger Palpatine was crispy frying.
The whole "children bring out the best in you" message doesn't work for me with Anakin because the personal connection to Luke is part of the problem here. Anakin has ALWAYS been perfectly capable of murder for people he considers family. He massacres a Tusken village for Shmi, he commits double genocide for Padme, he murders Palpatine for Luke.
I haven't removed any nuance from the story from my perspective. You can go read my post about redemption via Eliot Spencer from Leverage where I discuss my feelings on redemption in more detail. You can be irredeemable and still choose to be a better person. Or, more accurately, you can do irredeemable things and still choose to be a better person, but those things you've done are still irredeemable. And that's how I choose to view it for Anakin, too. Anakin's not redeemed, he's not redeemable, the things he's done are too big and too unfixable for redemption. Those Jedi can't be brought back to life, the trauma the few who have survived have undergone can't be erased, the Temple can't be un-desecrated and defiled, their history can't be remade. There's no redeeming that. But of course he can choose to make better choices from this point out. Of course he can choose to be better today than he was yesterday. That doesn't change how irredeemable he or his actions are.
Choice is important in Star Wars. Anakin can always make better choices, he's just choosing not to do so right up until the last possible moment where he makes the smallest of better choices by saving someone he personally gives a shit about via murdering a dude who is not so great generally. But the choices he made before still matter. And the things he's done still matter.
I think it's OKAY for someone to be irredeemable, personally. Maybe you're the one who lacks some nuance here. Because at no point have I ever argued that just because Anakin can't be redeemed doesn't mean he can't be better or make better choices. I'm just divorcing the concept of redemption from the fact that he can make better choices. That's not what redemption means to me.
I don't think Anakin can be redeemed. I do think Anakin can always choose to be a better person and I think he makes one final "better" choice at the end of his life. I don't think that means he "turned back to the Light" because quite honestly I think if he'd survived ROTJ and been forced to keep living with the consequences of his actions that he wouldn't have suddenly been a fucking angel who shit roses and rainbows out his burnt up asshole. That man is still someone who was fully a fascist while "in the Light," who 100% believed in dictatorship as a good form of government so long as the right person was in charge while "in the Light" (and we see no sign of that changing, just that his opinion of Palpatine being the right person has probably changed), who is fully willing and capable of murder to protect the people he cares about while "in the Light." Anakin post ROTJ is going to struggle a LOT with still being someone fully immersed in darkness and whose first instinct is NOT going to generally be the better one. I don't see Anakin doing well in a world where he survives ROTJ, honestly. There's just not enough goodness left in him to do well in that world. One ounce isn't enough, it just isn't.
So at this point, yet again, we're at a semantic stand still. Your definition of redemption seems to be about just whether they've made even one better choice. Anakin makes one singular better choice and so he is now redeemed. That's what redemption means to you. More power to you. My definition of redemption is about how well a person can actually make up for what they've done, how much they can fix the mistakes they've made. And it's separate from whether someone can make better choices going forward. So by my definition, Anakin isn't redeemed, regardless of whether he's made a single better choice or many better choices, because there's no undoing what he's done and no fixing any of the damage he's caused. There's no redemption for that available.
But there's no real arguing over semantics. If your definition of redemption differs from mine, I think you're just going to have to accept that. If that bothers you, you know where the block button is, no one's forcing you to read my posts.
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