lionhead

Question: When the Emperor says that Luke is the offspring of Anakin Skywalker, is Darth Vader genuinely surprised, or is he pretending? If he is surprised, why was he already focused on finding Luke before the Emperor told him this? He was talking about Luke in particular before the Rebel base was found on Hoth.

Answer: Vader did sense the Force within Luke, but didn't know he was his son. The Emperor stating specifically that he is Anakin's offspring, and not Vader's (who are the same person after all), shows the Emperor tries his best not to link Vader to his own past. Vader himself clearly tries to do the same after finding out, but fails at the end.

lionhead

Question: What happened to Luke's hand after Vader cut it off?

Answer: It fell into the reactor shaft alongside his lightsaber, unrecoverable. It probably fell outside like Luke did and dropped into the clouds of the gas giant Bespin.

lionhead

Well, what about the thing that fell after Luke landed on the satellite dish outside? Was that Luke's hand?

For what it's worth, the descriptive audio identifies the falling object as a piece of the antennae that Luke is hanging from.

TonyPH

No, nothing as macabre as that. Probably a piece of cloth or something that fell out of his pocket. Or, possibly, his lightsaber. But I doubt they would have him watch his own hand fall.

lionhead

I always assumed that was his blaster, falling out of the holster.

In the Legends continuity someone found Luke's severed hand and used it to create Luke's evil clone, known as Luuke.

Answer: In the books before Disney, the hand was recovered by an Ugnaught (the pig-like people in Cloud City) and was taken with his lightsaber to the Emperor's secret storehouse on the planet Wayland. It was later used (in the Thrawn trilogy) to create a clone of Luke.

LorgSkyegon

Question: This is a question that applies to this movie and others - how do Anakin and Luke understand R2-D2, when in their respective starfighters?

DFirst1

Answer: As shown in the film, while in their fighters, a display screen shows a full translation of what the droids say.

Answer: The astrodroids are linked into the starfighter, the pilot can hear the astrodroid just as the astrodroid can hear them. Luke and Anakin and many others (like Rey) can understand the droid language they speak.

lionhead