George Lucas joins soap wars on ”O.C.”

Josh Schwartz, the twentysomething creator of Fox’s teen soap “The O.C.,” would like to think it was just the sheer quality of his show that drew “Star Wars” creator George Lucas to do a guest shot in tonight’s episode.

He could think that, but he’d be wrong.

“It was a combination of things,” Schwartz says. “I wrote a very passionate letter appealing to him. His daughter is apparently a big fan of the show, and I think that was probably the thing that pushed it over the top.

“He’s a pretty shrewd guy, and it was a good way to talk about (his movie), but I think his daughter convinced him to do that. For that, we’re all very grateful.”

It turns out Schwartz is right about that.

“They asked me to come and do this,” Lucas says in comments recorded during filming, “and my daughter is a huge fan of the show, so basically she insisted that I come down.”

With “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith” due in theaters next Thursday – completing Lucas’ pair of “Star Wars” trilogies – “The O.C.” was lucky to catch the Northern California film mogul during one of his rare downtimes.

In the episode (airing tonight at 8 on KAYU-28 in Spokane), Lucas expresses interest in the graphic novel created by Newport Beach teen Seth Cohen (Adam Brody), which forces Seth to make a difficult decision about his relationship with classmate Summer (Rachel Bilson).

To make things more complicated, Lucas invites Seth to dinner and offers him advice.

“In this episode,” Schwartz says, “It’s our junior prom. It’s the ‘Under the O-Sea’ theme, which I’ve borrowed from ‘Back to the Future.’

“Seth has to make the choice that all teenage guys have to make: Do you go to prom, or do you go meet with George Lucas? I think it’s a universal quandary that we’ve all faced at some point in our lives.”

Working with Lucas turned out to be a positive experience.

“He was amazing,” Schwartz says. “He was an unbelievably sweet guy, really nice, really humble. It was a good model for everybody. Here’s, like, probably the most successful filmmaker in the history of Hollywood, at least in the last 50 years, and he couldn’t be a nicer, more grounded guy.

“He sat down, the camera came on, I thought he was really funny. He was really loose. He was improvising. It was great. I thought he really came off.”

Lucas enjoyed the experience as well.

“They’ve been fun to work with,” he says of the “O.C.” crew. “The nice thing about television, it’s a community. So everybody knows everybody, and everybody’s worked with everybody. Everybody’s much more relaxed. It’s a much easier environment to work in.”

Along with the release of Lucas’ new movie, the season finale of “The O.C.” also is airing next Thursday.

“Season finale is going to be big, and it’s going to be emotional, and it’s going to be exciting,” Schwartz says. “It kind of reminds me of the Tijuana episode we did last year. It’s going to have all the emotion of last year’s finale, but with a lot more action. It’s going to be pretty surprising.

“I didn’t turn in the last page. No one from the cast or the crew got the last page. There might be a couple characters coming back from the past, sort of revisiting the show, and I think not who everyone will be expecting to see.”

Regarding plans for next year, Schwartz says, “Year three, for us, is going to be senior year, so obviously that’s a huge event in these kids’ lives, and for their parents as well.

“So we’ll be dealing with all sorts of things, like what does the future hold, college, graduation, all those kind of gigantic, kind of epic events in high school life.”