The identity of Anakin Skywalker's father has been a point of contention ever since
it was first brought up in The Phantom Menace.
Now, however, we have a piece of information that might shed some new light on the true
identity of Darth Vader's deadbeat dad.
The major selling point of the prequel trilogy of The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones,
and Revenge of the Sith was that we'd be able to see Anakin Skywalker's origins, learning
more about who one of cinema's greatest villains was before his fall from grace.
In practice, well, we didn't get a whole lot that we didn't already know.
He used to be a Jedi, then he went bad, and telling audiences that took six hours and
$345 million.
There was, however, one Death Star-sized truth bomb hiding in Episode I, and none of us were
really prepared for it.
When Anakin's mom, Shmi Skywalker, is asked about who his father is, she simply explains
that there wasn't one.
Instead, she just woke up one morning to find that she was pregnant.
The religious overtones at play here are pretty obvious: a virgin birth foretold in prophecy,
heralding the arrival of one who will bring balance to the world.
They're also a bit on the nose, even for Star Wars a series where the guy who's really good
at piloting spaceships is named "Skywalker," the guy who doesn't want to join up with the
Rebel Alliance is named "Solo," and the first hope for the Light Side of the Force to come
along in years is named "Rey."
These movies have never exactly been subtle, but giving us a messianic figure via virgin
birth is on a whole different level.
Except, of course, that there's a twist to it.
Rather than becoming the savior that the Jedi have been waiting for, Anakin grows up to
put down a bunch of children with a lightsaber, get rebuilt as a cyborg, and then commit full-on
genocide by blowing up entire planets.
Not exactly what any parents would hope for their child unless one of them happened to
be a tyrannical overlord devoted to death and corruption, that is.
But we'll get to that in a bit.
Rather than letting its biblical overtones stand on their own, Episode I did provide
a further explanation for Anakin's conception although fans weren't exactly thrilled with
it.
Up until that point, the Force had always been portrayed as being essentially, well…
magic!
It was a metaphysical presence that ran through all living things and united the galaxy as
one.
Then it turned out that it was actually just a bunch of tiny bugs that lived in your blood.
Episode I introduced the concept of midichlorians: microscopic organisms found in the bloodstream
forming a symbiotic relationship that allows their hosts to connect with and, well, use
the Force.
The more midichlorians you have floating around your circulatory system, the more raw power
you have when it comes to the Force.
It's essentially a plot device, allowing for a quick explanation of why Qui-Gon Jinn and
Obi-Wan Kenobi are so convinced that Anakin is a big deal: his "midichlorian count" is
over 20,000, which is even more than Yoda's!
Unfortunately, the implication here is that a bunch of tiny midichlorians got together
and decided that they should just go ahead and make a baby inside some woman who had
zero knowledge that this was happening, let alone why.
That is, at the bare minimum, pretty weird.
If nothing else, Luke Skywalker's grandfather being a collection of sentient microbes that
construct babies as a hobby is going to make things pretty weird when the whole family
gets together on Life Day.
"Awwwkwaaard."
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?
We thought not.
It's not a story the Jedi would tell you.
It is, however, the subject of one of the best scenes in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge
of the Sith.
While watching a space opera, Chancellor Palpatine soon to claim unlimited power as the Emperor
tells Anakin about a Sith Lord named Darth Plagueis, whose mastery of the Dark Side of
the Force was so complete that he could not only stop people from dying, but also create
life by manipulating midichlorians.
"So that makes perfect sense."
As Palpatine tells both Anakin and the audience, Plagueis passed down this "unnatural" knowledge
to his apprentice, who then killed him in his sleep.
This is the tale that leads Anakin, who not too long ago wasn't able to save his mother
from death, to study the Dark Side and ultimately become Palpatine's apprentice.
What Palpatine doesn't tell us although it is heavily implied in the original scene,
given the subject matter is that Plagueis' apprentice was in fact Darth Sidious, perhaps
better known as Emperor Palpatine himself.
To find that out for sure, you have to dig deep into the rebooted Star Wars canon and
keep up with the novels and comics.
If you did, then you might already understand that there was a deeper meaning to Sidious
telling Anakin about the knowledge of how to manipulate midichlorians to create life.
That all brings us to the release of Marvel's Star Wars: Darth Vader #25.
It's the final issue of the series the second and almost certainly not the last Darth Vader
comic Marvel has published since Disney acquired the property back in 2012 and the final chapter
of a storyline set on the planet Mustafar.
If the name sounds familiar, it's not just because it reminds you of the tragic patriarch
of a certain animated Disney flick it's because this fiery world is where Anakin Skywalker
"died," and where Darth Vader was truly born.
It was the planet we saw at the end of Revenge of the Sith, where Obi-Wan chopped off Anakin's
limbs and left him to die, and where Darth Vader's ominous castle was seen in Rogue One.
The comic fills in the gaps between those two events, with Vader's return to Mustafar
and the construction of the castle alongside a forgotten Sith Lord called Momin.
In keeping with Vader's obsession with mastering death, Momin himself has managed to persist
beyond the grave, existing as a spirit that could possess anyone who donned the helmet
that he'd worn in life.
To make a long story short, Star Wars: Darth Vader #24 sees Momin betray Vader and use
the power of the castle basically a giant magic key to resurrect his body.
Yup, that's right: He literally uses the Force to recreate life, just as Sidious told Anakin
all those years before.
Needless to say, since we know that Vader continues to exist in the Star Wars universe
and most moviegoers have never heard of Momin, Vader defeats the traitorous spirit, and uses
the portal for his own ends.
Darth Vader #25 sees the Sith lord tapping into the Dark Side in a way that we've never
really seen before: His soul leaves his body and merges with the Dark Side itself.
The visual is both striking and clear: this is Vader as he is within the armor, a creature
sustained entirely by the Dark Side, with whatever good remains in him hidden far beneath
the mass of anger and fear.
As Vader journeys through the strange, hallucinatory terrain beyond the portal, he's shown key
moments from his past, complete with disjointed dialogue lifted from the films.
Though the original spoken dialogue like that instance in Episode I, where Anakin asks Padmé
if she was an angel sounded innocent in their previous contexts, here they read straight-up
sinister.
We see these moments as they happened in the films, and then we get one that seems new
a memory that Vader himself couldn't possibly have, which must instead be something that
he's learning from his communion with the Dark Side.
The image is of Shmi Skywalker, pregnant.
At first, she's alone, accompanied by the line she spoke to Qui-Gon back in Episode
I: quote, "There was no father."
Then, as Vader watches, the spectral image of Darth Sidious appears behind her, accompanied
by the word "unnatural" the exact word that Sidious used to describe Darth Plagueis' life-creating
techniques in Episode III.
The message here is far more clear than the implication back in that scene at the space
opera: Sidious himself had a hand in Anakin's creation, and was manipulating his life to
bring down the Republic long before Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Padmé encountered him on Tatooine.
Of course, like a lot of things in Star Wars, not everything Vader sees during his surreal
trip through the Dark Side is meant to be taken literally.
Like Luke Skywalker's vision in the cave on Dagobah, there's plenty of it that's meant
to be shrouded in metaphor.
There is, for instance, a scene where Vader's soul has to fight its way past an army of
Jedi who were killed during Palpatine's coup, which is less about their ghosts actually
showing up for the Jedi equivalent of revenge, and more about Vader metaphorically "killing"
the person he was before his fall.
The Kylo Ren quote that echoes backward through time to accompany this moment, "Let the past
die; kill it if you have to," tells us as much.
There is another scene where this becomes very important, though, and it's accompanied
by what is unquestionably Vader's most famous piece of dialogue: quote, "I am your father."
That in itself is a prophetic glimpse of the future this story takes place long before
Vader will utter those fateful words to Luke Skywalker in Cloud City but it's also connected
to the past.
The phrase is positioned on the page so that it's suspended between images of Palpatine
and Obi-Wan, Anakin's two father figures.
Each of them guided Anakin as their apprentice, and ultimately, each of them will fail him
in their own way.
In the vision, Palpatine and Obi-Wan face off in the fight they never had in the movies,
with Palpatine winning.
Then, Vader strikes the Emperor down himself to continue on his journey.
The idea of these two men as father figures plays into the Star Wars saga's prominent
themes, but that scene in particular echoes what we see from Luke's vision on Dagobah.
In that film, Luke strikes down the character that we will eventually learn is his father,
only to discover his own face underneath Vader's mask.
Here, in the comic, Vader kills Palpatine with a shower of force lightning, which foreshadows
their final conflict in Return of the Jedi, and recontextualizes what we see there.
Just like in Empire, Vader's true face is revealed, but he bears very little resemblance
to Luke.
Instead, his face, pale and ruined from years of embracing the Dark Side, looks a lot more
like Palpatine's.
In the end, we're left with the question of what all this means for the future of Star
Wars.
On one level, this is just another entry in the saga's long line of sons dealing with
the legacy that was passed down by their fathers, matching right up with Luke and Vader or Kylo
Ren and Han Solo.
It's a recurring theme, and given that Palpatine plunged to his death back in 1983, it doesn't
seem likely that it'll be anything more than just another branch on the complicated tangle
that is the Skywalker family tree.
"I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate."
Or, at least, it wouldn't seem likely if we were talking about this way back when.
But since the release of the trailer for Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, we've all heard
the familiar, sinister echo of Palpatine's laugh.
Plus, we already know that Ian McDiarmid, who played Palpatine in Return of the Jedi
and the prequel trilogy, is set to make an appearance in the film.
Nobody saw that coming!
"We deal, as you know, in Star Wars — they're very good at dealing in unexpected moments
the whole time."
Considering the timing of the issue and the fact that its big reveal came after these
elements were already in place, it seems likely that it's going to come up in some form when
Episode IX hits theaters.
If nothing else, we're going to be seeing Darth Sidious knowing, for the first time,
that he's much more tied into the Skywalker family than we thought.
Whether that's in the form of flashbacks, a first Dark Side Force ghost, or even a shocking
return from a pretty definitive death, it's bound to have an impact.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite films are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.