In case you didn’t have quite enough Star Wars content getting Clockwork Oranged into your brain holes these days, a new rumor has surfaced that could make some Star Wars fans very happy. And other Star Wars fans very unhappy. And then a bunch more people who don’t care that much about Star Wars chime in just to make sure everyone knows that they don’t care that much. And on and on we will dance until the heat death of the universe.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. According to a report by We Got This Covered, there are very very very very early talks about a possible series centering around the galaxy’s greatest dad, Darth Vader. The idea would reportedly feature James Earl Jones voicing the Dark Lord of the Sith, with Hayden Christensen returning to the role of Anakin Skywalker in flashback sequences. The story would take place between Revenge of the Sith and New Hope, and fill audiences in on how Vader went from broken-ass robot assistant to the most feared agent of the Empire.
If you’re not an obsessive fan of the franchise like certain staff writers for The Dad *ahem*, you might be a bit confused because the general consensus from the movie-going public was that the prequels were bad, and that Hayden Christensen was bad, and that all of this seems not good at all. However, in recent years thanks to The Clone Wars & Rebels TV show, Marvel’s Vader comic series, and the fact that kids from the prequel era are now grown-ups, there’s been a bit of a resurgence of love for the Star Wars galaxy pre-New Hope.
Even most people can agree that Christensen himself isn’t a bad actor, he just didn’t have Harrison Ford’s Big Grump Energy for telling George Lucas when dialogue didn’t make any damn sense.
So look, we all got excited when Vader showed up in Rogue One, but in just three short years the amount of Star Wars we’ve been through has left some fans a little fatigued. What more could a whole series about arguably the most famous character in the history of pop culture bring to the table?
Well, for one thing, it could give Christensen and Vader a chance at redemption with a story that the actor and character deserve. While some folks have come around on the prequels, it’s safe to say that we’ve gotten a more complex look at the Skywalker patriarch through the comic series and TV shows that have come out since. Bringing those elements into a live-action interpretation of Vader could be amazing. Other than a little show called The Mandalorian, Disney+ is focusing their TV efforts on the span between episodes III and IV. A Vader show could be a chance for some crossover potential with the already greenlit Cassian Andor and Obi-Wan Kenobi focused series’. Disney surely wants to capture some of that Avengers energy with their other major franchise.
There is a good nest egg of stories during this timeline. Throughout the comics and cartoons, we’ve learned that Vader built his castle on Mustafar in order to harness enough bad guy power to bring his wife Padme back to life. When that failed he devoted himself fully to hunting down and exterminating the remaining Jedi with the Fallen Order‘s villains, the Sith Inquisitors. There was even a story where he hunts down the old lady librarian Jedi while she tries to save a bunch of old books, and honestly, it’s pretty badass.
She does a pretty good number on him, too (at first). Support your local libraries.
Anyway whether or not this will even happen is nowhere near certain, but the unidentified source who brought this info to We Got This Covered is the same one who first broke that Ewan McGregor was returning as Obi-Wan and that Robert Patterson had been cast as Batman; so it’s safe to say it’s somewhat feasible. Hayden Christensen himself has also been making more and more appearances at Star Wars events lately, including the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland. Could this be evidence that he and the Lucasfilm execs are gussying up to each other?
So what do you think? In my opinion, if this lets us see a live-action Doctor Aphra or Asoka Tano, I’m in. Sure, James Earl Jones’ voice sounded a little…wobbly in Rogue One, but look if we’re gonna run all our favorite things into the ground, we might as well go full throttle.