Warning:SPOILERS Ahead for Darth Vader #1
Fear is the path of the dark side. Anger leads to fear. Fear leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. These are words spoken by Jedi Master Yoda to a young Anakin Skywalker in Episode 1 of Star Wars. It’s a wise warning but also the trajectory for Skywalker’s fate and eventual transformation into Darth Vader. However, Anakin did not fully become Vader overnight.
As the Marvel Comics series featuring the Dark Lord reveals, Vader did indeed suffer. His journey is immensely tragic, with several key comic moments occurring between the films, showing Vader’s pain in great detail. From his time just after Revenge of Sith, to the latest issue of Darth Vader #1 that takes place after revealing himself as father to his son Luke. And thanks to the latest comics, Vader’s journey is only getting more tragic.
This first comic series following Disney’s acquisition begins immediately after Vader’s sorrowful scream, having just learned that his wife, Padmé Amidala, has died as a result of his rage. Palpatine tells him that her death and his subsequent pain was a gift for him to harness and use. He orders Vader to find and defeat a Jedi and take his lightsaber, in order to fashion his own Sith blade. Once doing so, he travels to Mustafar, pouring all of his pain and rage into the lightsaber’s crystal. During the process, Vader receives a vision, seeing an alternate path he could take: a path of redemption where he chooses to kill Palpatine and beg Obi-wan to kill him as penance. Instead, Vader refuses this option, believing the dark side to be all that’s left for him.
Later on in the series, Vader is given the planet of Mustafar as a gift from the Emperor. There, he builds his fortress atop a dark side locus of power with the express purpose to open a gateway in order to bring back his deceased wife from the beyond. However, Vader is unsuccessful in his goal. Padmé tells him that Anakin Skywalker is dead, jumping off a ledge, refusing to come with him. From that point on, Vader truly embraces his destiny with the dark side. He is now wholly Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, and Palpatine’s servant, letting his past die. However, that confidence in his identity could be shaken with Soule’s new Darth Vader series with its first issue.
In the new Darth Vader #1, Vader is angered by his son’s refusal to join him. Looking for someone to blame, Vader seeks to find and punish those who made his son weak. He travels to Tatooine, ignoring communications from the Emperor. Unfortunately for Vader, Owen and Beru Lars are already dead and unable to be punished. He decides to investigate further, searching for any others who kept his son hidden from him. Vader’s investigation also forces him to look back to his past as Anakin Skywalker, something that he had wished to keep buried before learning about his son.
Vader believes that if he and Luke were to join together, they could overthrow the Emperor and rule the galaxy together, which perhaps gave Vader some sort of dark and twisted hope before Luke rejected his offer. When looking back at the encounter, Vader equates Luke’s refusal and jumping down into the chasm below as similar to Padmé’s refusal to join him. When Vader tracks down a crew that was keeping tabs on Padmé’s old apartment, he discovers Padmé (or someone who looks exactly like her) standing right before him. It appears as though Vader’s past isn’t going to stay buried, with these most recent events continually pushing it back to the surface, potentially serving as additional motivators for his redemption in Return of the Jedi.
The journey of Darth Vader that fans see in the films is certainly tragic on its own. However, the addition of these immensely deep and heartbreaking moments from the comics fill in the gaps between the films and make Vader’s tragic path that much more meaningful. Thus, both of Charles Soule’s series, (as well as Keiron Gillen’s 2015 series) come highly recommended for any fan of Vader. There’s no telling what will happen next on Soule’s current series, but Star Wars fans should eagerly anticipate the next chapter of the Dark Lord’s journey.
Darth Vader #1 is on comic book store shelves now.
More: Star Wars: The Best Darth Vader Scene NOT in The Movies
