Star Wars: The Story Of Darth Vader Answers A Lingering Force Ghost Question From 1983
Since the first "Star Wars" film came out in 1977, the sci-fi universe has continued to spawn fan debate. At what moment did Darth Vader (portrayed by David Prowse, voiced of James Earl Jones) figure out that Luke was alive and his son? Why doesn't Darth Vader recognize R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels)? Why in the world would Luke still keep the last name Skywalker when his father Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) might find him? How did Leia (Carrie Fisher) remember her mother's sadness if she'd just been born when Padmé (Natalie Portman) died?
We ask these questions with love ... mostly. One that has always bugged fans (including me) is this: If both Obi-Wan Kenobi (Sir Alec Guinness) and Yoda (Frank Oz) disappear when they die, before becoming Force ghosts, why doesn't the same happen for the redeemed Anakin Skywalker? If you recall, Obi-Wan's brown robes just fall to the ground after Darth Vader kills him. Yoda melts into nothing on his bed on Dagobah. But Anakin appears to die in his mechanical suit without disappearing.
We know that Anakin sheds the Vader persona as he reconciles with his son, and comes back as a Force ghost at the end of "Return of the Jedi" (originally in the form of Sebastian Shaw, whose face we saw horribly scarred in the death scene, with Hayden Christensen replacing him a new update after the prequels). That means he did truly move back to the light side of the Force. So why didn't Vader's body disappear? Why was Luke able to burn the body on the moon of Endor? As it turns out, there is actually an explanation for all of this confusion, and it comes from an official "Star Wars" children's book of all places.
Making the canon work
In my own little kid head, I always assumed that his body didn't disappear because he'd been evil for so many years, and it took his spirit a bit longer to make peace with itself than it did for Obi-Wan and Yoda. (Little kid logic, right?) My kid self was wrong, according to the book "Star Wars: The Story of Darth Vader," by Catherine Saunders, from 2015. The death scene is described with Vader being reminded of who he was by Luke and sacrificing himself to save his son. Then it says:
"As Anakin lay dying, he asked Luke to remove his helmet so that he could look at his son's face with his own eyes. When Anakin died, his body disappeared into the light side of the Force. Luke was sad that his father was dead but proud of him, too. The light side of the Force had overcome the dark side and Anakin Skywalker had returned. On the forest moon of Endor, Luke burned Vader's armor."
That would mean that Anakin's body disappeared after the camera cuts away, and what Luke is burning on the pyre on Endor's moon is merely Darth Vader's suit. That makes sense, and symbolically burning the thing that kept the darker part of Anakin alive for so long and allowed him to destroy so many (including an entire freaking planet full of people his daughter cared for) could have been the thing that let his spirit find peace. So maybe it works. Do I think that this explanation was just a convenient way to retroactively fix a film mistake? Yup. Do I think it's better than my kid explanation? Yup, and it's kind of perfect.
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