Warning: this story contains a major spoiler for The Empire Strikes Back.
At least, it would have been a spoiler for Bash Akhtar’s four-year-old son Faris, who’s charming the Internet with his shocked reaction to the news that Darth Vader is actually Luke Skywalker’s dad.
Even though the video clip has 250,000 hits and counting, Akhtar told the Daily Dot that he did not set out to make a viral video.
“I uploaded it onto YouTube just so that my mother-in-law and sisters-in-law could see it as it was a large file,” he said. “I had no idea it was going to be popular at all.”
Not every viewer believes this United Kingdom family isn’t in on this staple of Star Wars lore. Some viewers have said the kid is faking it, and point to Faris’s camera glance 10 seconds in as proof.
“0:10 the kid is staring directly to the camara. Ultra Fake,” one commenter wrote.
However, Akhtar said this was his kids’ first time watching the movie. He said Faris did know a big secret was coming though.
“He knew there was something I was not telling him because his sister had kept asking me who Princess Leia’s daddy was and I said it was a secret. And that’s why we were watching it in the first place,” he said.
Akhtar is suprised by the positive and negative reactions his video has received, but he said it’s “best not to dwell or care about that.” He said he simply wanted to capture a moment that he remembers as being a magical part of his childhood.
“I remember seeing that scene in the cinema as a kid and it gave me goosebumps back then,” he said.
