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
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