What Did Uncle Owen Know???

So...there's a lot of potentials, but let's see if we can reduce the variables.

In Episode II, Anakin reconnects with his family on Tatooine and meets Owen and Beru. Padme's with him, right? So, I think Owen and Beru know that Padme is the mother. They would assume, anyway.

Because of Episode IV's dialogue, we know that Owen does not want Luke to become like his father. That *might* mean that Owen thinks Anakin was adventurous, hot-shot, and vainglorious - typical hero type. In fact, I'd guess that's what the original line maybe meant - that Luke would go off and get himself killed. Of course, that's speculation.

Here's why I think they didn't know: Beru doesn't say "He has too much of his father in him," with any sort of dread. She's almost got a, "Boy's will be boys, Owen, he wants to fly amongst the stars and have adventures!" vibe. Her tone does not suggest that she knows what's what.

Combine that with Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan took the "betrayed and murdered" story and ran with it. He probably fed that line to Beru and Owen so that they a) wouldn't think Luke could go all "Dark Side" and flip out and kill them, and b) maintain the integrity of his story. I think Obi-Wan might have felt that Anakin was "murdered" by the Dark Side, and didn't consider it to be much of a lie at all. I bet Obi-Wan warned them of Vader, but just said Vader was Palpatine's new flunky/ right-hand Sith man.

You know, I never thought about this until you brought it up. My knee-jerk reaction was to say, "Yeah, he knew," but when thinking about the evidence, I think maybe Owen didn't know squat.

He knew (or guessed):
Anakin was gone
Luke was Anakin's son
Padme was the mother

He thought:
Anakin was dead
Luke was a singleton.

I bet Obi-Wan left out the twin thing, too. That way Owen and Beru would never make a dumb move, like reaching out to the Royal Family of Alderaan for help, which would have exposed both twins.

Owen didn't know anything. When the movie was made, Vadar was not Lukes father. The idea to become his father was made during the making in episode 5.

I honestly do not think he did. I think, by the time A New Hope takes place Owen was used to having Luke there to help and wanted to keep him there. By telling Luke his father was dead made keeping Luke there easier as he did not have the desire to find his father.

Owen Lars of the OT is obviously not the Owen Lars of the Prequels.

I choose to believe that he was Luke's biological Uncle and that he and Anakin, both idealists, at some point had a parting of the ways due to Anakin beginning to head down a dark path. He removed himself from involvement with the Jedi and the clone wars and decided to take up an anonymous life on Tatooine with Beru. Probably blamed the Jedi - maybe correctly - for how Anakin turned out.

He landed up taking care of Luke and begrudgingly knew and accepted Obi-Wan being in the vicinity knowing he was trying to make amends for his previous failure with his family.

Considering that Obi-Wan was undoubtedly VERY selective about the sort of truth he told Lars Owen...

What does Owen know? He knows his stepbrother was a Jedi, who was a jerk in person and who massacred a whole village of Sandpeople, and left Owen and the other locals to deal with the consequences. Ya think the Sandpeople might have retaliated against the other humans, not caring that the actual killer had left the planet? You think that might have been a problem for someone like Owen, who lived in an isolated farmhouse on the edge of the Sandpeople's desert? So Lars's personal experience with Luke's father would have led him to conclude that Anakin was thoughtless, violent, unstable, selfish, stupid, and didn't give a rat's ass about ordinary people.

I don't think he knew that Anakin had become Vader, if he had, he'd never have agreed to keep Luke and let him run around in public. I think Lars assumed that Anakin had died with all the other Jedi and good riddance, and Obi-Wan never told him otherwise.

Owen knew that Anakin built the secret Sith lord C3P0. C3P0 used mind control to get Owen to pick him from the Jawas, called in the stormtrooper raid on the house, and acted as a tracking device aboard the Millennium Falcon leading the Death Star to the secret rebel base.

I do not think he did know that Anakin was Darth Vader. I think Obi Wan lied to Owen to insure Luke was safe. His Uncle was obviously prejudice against the Jedi who he blamed for the death of Anakin and for the rise of the empire.

One thing that's important to realize is, Owen and his family lived on a farm that was way out in the desert, probably few hours' ride from the nearest town or Anchorhead by hovercraft, so he wouldn't have heard very much news of what was going on in the greater galaxy, save for the times he went into town to sell water, had travelers visit once in a long while, or talk to the Jawa traders. Even then, civilians such as him were not always privy to what the Republic army was doing during the Clone wars, and he would have heard even less from the Empire's doings.

Based on what we saw in Episode II, he knew Shmi Skywalker as his stepmother. He was a teenager at the time, and already had Beru as a girlfriend. He knew about his stepmom being kidnapped, and he knew he had a stepbrother named Anakin who had gone off to become a Jedi. He also got to meet Anakin and Padmé in person when they came to the Lars homestead to find Shmi. However, most of the talking was done between Cliegg and Anakin. He mostly just witnessed what was going on from the background.

I think Anakin and Padmé did tell the Lars family that Anakin had attempted to rescue his mom, and that she died at the hands of the Sand People; but Padmé probably had Anakin omit the part where he slaughtered the whole tribe in revenge. That wouldn't have gone over well with their hosts.

Owen would have certainly heard about the Clone Wars, and snippets about the Jedi fighting the Separatists. Chances were, he figured out that Anakin was one of the Jedi warriors spearheading that effort. However, I doubt he ever knew Anakin's ultimate fate of becoming Vader. Now he knew that Luke was the son of Anakin Skywalker, and he was more than happy to raise the baby with Beru as his "nephew" (though he was technically his "step-nephew"), but again, I doubt he was told what happened in the Clone Wars or on Mustafar. It was already too painful for Obi-Wan at the time, and the less people who knew, the better.

In Episode III, we don't hear hardly any dialogue in the scene where Obi-Wan brings baby Luke to the homestead, though he probably just told the Lars family that the child's dad had died in the war, his mom had died in childbirth (not really naming who she was, though I have a feeling they knew it was Padmé) and the kid needed a family to raise him. Owen had every reason not to want Luke to one day grow up and get involved with anything relating to the greater galaxy, simply because it was what led to his dad's "death," so he probably made up that whole story on his own to make Luke's dad sound less interesting and fantastical than he truly was.