>>150047441
The trouble with this is that, for all its faults, Return Of The Jedi deals with Vader, and Palpatine, a lot better than Book 3 deals with Azula and Ozai.

Within the connected trilogy, it's not impossible to believe that Vader is shaken by the events in Bespin at the end of Empire Strikes Back. He thought he had Luke in the bag; he thought he had him nailed. Instead Luke rejects him and would even rather choose suicide over him. It's the sort of thing that I could see knocking Vader off his game, jarring him loose after decades of being the baddest dude in the galaxy. Knocking him loose enough, spiritually, for Anakin to start to resurface, and for his loyalty to the Dark Side to start to crack. Finding out that Luke was STILL alive later, as he most certainly did, would have only emphasized those feelings, not tamped them down. And you can even make the argument that they've been there all along, given Vader's desire to have Luke as his ally/apprentice. It's just that Vader thought he was in control of those feelings, but the events of ESB and ROTJ knock him OUT of control.

By contrast, Azula doesn't seem to have a good reason for suddenly being more sympathetic in Book 3. On the contrary, Azula should be smugger, colder, and more ruthless than ever in Book 3 because she's literally gotten everything she's wanted so far. She comes home in absolute triumph after taking Ba Sing Se, something Iroh never managed to do. She's got Zuko wrapped around her finger because if Aang is still alive she can topple him from Ozai's favor effortlessly. There's no incentive here for her to suddenly start being nicer to Zuko, or to suddenly feel warm squishy feelings she wasn't feeling before.