With Star Wars: Return of the Jedi wrapping up the original trilogy in 1983, it’s hard to remember a time when Star Wars wasn’t chock-full of lore like it is today. With the transformation of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader being one of the most iconic villain stories in movie history, many newer fans of the franchise wonder what was known about Vader before the prequels existed.
After re-watching the original trilogy, it’s surprising how many references there are to the prequels, despite being released 20 years apart. In Star Wars: A New Hope, the first conversation between Obi-Wan and Luke gives the best example of how much George Lucas had built for this world. Obi-Wan casually mentions the Clone Wars, with fans at the time not knowing that multiple films and several animated seasons would end up revolving around this one line.
What Vader’s Backstory Looked Like Before the Star Wars Prequels
During this same conversation on Tatooine, Obi-Wan mentions, “I was once a Jedi Knight, the same as your father,” and goes on to say how “He was the best star pilot in the galaxy and a cunning warrior.” Both of these went on to be some of the most defining features of Anakin, so audiences in 1977 already had a good idea of what the character was like.
However, Obi-Wan chose to hide the truth from Luke, claiming that Darth Vader was a former pupil who “betrayed and murdered” Anakin. Things pieced together for fans in the next two movies, which revealed that Anakin was Vader all along and that he turned before realizing that his wife gave birth to twins. While this is already quite a lot of backstory, the novelization for Return of the Jedi took things even further, with Obi-Wan saying, “We fought… your father fell into a molten pit.” This means that their fight on Mustafar was planned years before the Star Wars prequels reached theaters.
What the Star Wars Prequels Added to Vader’s Origin
With the outline of Vader’s backstory already in place, the prequels simply had to build upon it. The idea of Anakin being a slave on Tatooine was introduced with Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and it makes sense seeing as Luke’s aunt and uncle also live there. Then, there was the introduction of the prophecy, with Anakin being called the Chosen One. Many fans still debate the validity of this prophecy, and even if it’s true, it’s arguable that Luke was the Chosen One all along.
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones then introduced the relationship between Padmé and Anakin, which went on to be his downfall in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. It had always been assumed that Palpatine manipulated Anakin to the Dark Side, and Revenge of the Sith definitely confirmed it. Fans now knew that Anakin’s desperation to save Padmé is what turned him, and the final fitting of the iconic Vader suit brought fans up to speed on his entire origin.
While the prequels provided three movies worth of lore around Darth Vader, fans already had a surprisingly large amount of knowledge about the character. And although it would’ve been easy for George Lucas to retcon some one-off lines about Anakin in the original Star Wars trilogy, he stuck to the continuity as well as he could.
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