Very interesting transcript of a meeting between George Lucas and Alan Dean Foster, the ghostwriter of the original Star Wars novelization, in July 1976, just 11 days after the end of principal photography on the film. Lucas and Foster both relish the subtext that, though he is currently acting like he's Grand Moff Tarkin's lapdog, Darth Vader is actually the far bigger threat, with a much grander and more sinister agenda that will extend into future films. Lucas says Vader is the "Antichrist": "He is the Antichrist. He is the one who's come to spread the Force, the evil side of the Force among--out across the galaxies. Whereas we have been in a time where there are lots of agents of good. And the good was very strong and that's what his thing is. He's really an agent of the Force. Which has nothing to do with the Empire. The Empire is just a means of beginning to transfer the evil." We see here that he is already describing Vader as "an agent of the Force." Later, during the Empire Strikes Back story conference with Leigh Brackett, Lucas will repeat that Vader is "an instrument of the Force" and will further explain that he has really become a slave to the dark side due to its all-consuming nature, even as he struggles to break free and be good again. In this current meeting with Foster, Lucas goes on to explain that "Ben is the agent of good and Vader is the agent of evil," so that after Ben's death "Luke and Vader are really the two agents of this larger force field." So basically he's saying there was an era where there were "lots of agents of good," but then the dark side of the Force took control of Vader as its physical manifestation, and it used him to destroy the Jedi and tip the balance in favor of evil. This seems to anticipate the "balance of the Force" concept from the prequels. But it also sounds like some of the concepts involving the Whills that Lucas told James Cameron he had planned to explore in his version of the sequel trilogy: "[The next three Star Wars films] were going to get into a microbiotic world. But there's this world of creatures that operate differently than we do. I call them the Whills. And the Whills are the ones who actually control the universe. They feed off the Force. [...] Back in the day, I used to say ultimately what this means is we were just cars, vehicles, for the Whills to travel around in.... We're vessels for them. And the conduit is the midi-chlorians. The midi-chlorians are the ones that communicate with the Whills. The Whills, in a general sense, they are the Force." therealcharleslippincott.blo…