Hayden Christensen's Return Can Finally Solve Decades-Long Darth Vader Mystery
When the new Obi-Wan Kenobi series was announce at the end of 2020, fans started asking if Hayden Christensen was going to return as Darth Vader. When President of Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy announced that Hayden was returning after 15 years to reprise the role of Darth Vader, the Star Wars community went wild, as this may answer one of the biggest questions about Vader that was never answered.
Ever since the new canon was established, many questions from the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy have been answered through the many novels, comic books, and series. Questions like how Luke recovered his X-Wing from Cloud City, and how Vader got his red lightsaber.
Although many of these questions have been answered throughout the expanded franchise, there’s a specific question from Return of the Jedi that is still to be answered. When Vader captures Luke on the forest moon of Endor, Luke tells his father that there are still some traces of Anakin left in him, to which Vader replies, “Obi-Wan once thought the same.”
For years, fans have been wondering how Vader knows this. When we last see them together before their reunion on the Death Star, Vader is lying on the ground and burning, while Kenobi leaves the scene heartbroken after losing his Padawan, his brother, and his best friend.
Hayden returning as Vader in the new upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series means that this question that is almost 40 years old can finally be answered. Comments about the upcoming Kenobi series allude to Vader and Obi-Wan having a rematch before their final confrontation aboard the Death Star.
When we see Vader and Kenobi in A New Hope, Master Kenobi has completely lost his faith in Vader. This attitude toward Vader continues throughout Episodes V and VI. Obi-Wan never truly believes in Vader at the end. It is Luke who proves him wrong.
Maybe this confrontation in the upcoming Kenobi series will finally show Obi-Wan trying to reach out to Vader one last time, before he finally realizes that Vader has fully given into his hate and the dark side of the force.
Obi-Wan and Anakin’s relationship is one of the hardest things to watch fall apart, throughout the entire Skywalker saga. The amazing friendship that grows even stronger thanks to The Clone Wars animated series is extremely hard to watch break apart during their duel on Mustafar.
Anything can happen in this upcoming Star Wars series, one of the things we will presumably see is Kenobi’s suffering after cutting the limbs of someone he considered family. The horrifying memories that Obi-Wan has in his head may be tearing him apart, and all that Vader wants to do is find him and kill him.
Obi-Wan seeing Vader in the suit for the first time would give him even more pain, as he would probably feel a lot of guilt since he is the one who cut Vader’s limbs before leaving him to burn and die in Mustafar. Vader’s mission after Episode III has always been to find his old master, and finish what he started on Mustafar.
Many unexpected things can happen in this upcoming confrontation between Obi-Wan and Vader. Fans expect that Luke and Vader’s dialogue on the forest moon of Endor may finally be cleared up. The Kenobi series is still a huge mystery when it comes to plot, but we all know that, whatever happens, it will add to the destruction of the greatest friendship within the Star Wars universe.
Source(s): IGN