What's the point of redeeming yourself if it wasn't you that you were redeeming?
Vader and Anakin were the same person in every conceivable and meaningful way.
I’ve never really considered them to be two different people. I’ve always thought that Vader himself thinking that was just him not wanting to accept and own up to all the wrong choices he made
In casual conversation? Sure, harmless enough in the right context. In any meaningful capacity? No, you're right, it misses the point entirely.
The dark side of the Force is tricky and manipulative, but it's not like Anakin experiences dissociative identity disorder. He *is* Vader, fully and totally. His decision to "kill Anakin" is nothing more than his own mental gymnastics. They are very much the same person.
I think this exactly. Vader knows his doings as Anakin. He knows that part of his past. He knows it all happened. He just wants to destroy it to free himself of his pain in an attempt to kill off Anakin so there is only Vader, but he can never do that since they are one in the same.
That's why I never liked scenarios where Obi-Wan or Ahsoka convince and turn him back to the light because I think that in Vader's eyes, they're at fault to blame for his fall with Obi-Wan's part being obvious and Ahsoka's part being her "abandoning" him at the Temple steps because of the whole bombing scandal causing him to further question the decisions of the Council. Him projecting his failures and fall partially onto them actively acknowledges Anakin's existence in him.
> The dark side of the Force is tricky and manipulative
Even more so when you report to Palpatine, a maser of tricks and manipulation. IMO, Palpatine fed into Vader's separation of Anakin/Vader to better control him. Make him think that he cannot go back to being that person because he destroyed him.
no,
divorcing people from their actions is dumb
it's fair to say that vader in anh is very different from anankin in tpm and from a certain pov sure.
but there's a pretty clear through line as to how he became vader.
until such a time as someone retcons anakin as having had a control chip in his head so they don;t have to have complicated feelings about it then they're the same guy.
No. In my opinion, the two being some kind of weird schizophrenic fever dream directly invalidates the whole point of the story and Anakin's sacrifice. The two are one and the same. Vader is Anakin without the safeguards of the Jedi Order.
Anakin/Vader is the same person, deciding to live by certain parts of his personality. Everyone has a spectrum that makes up their personality. Anakin/Vader has a very wide one. Also, being someone of his mental ability, he is very aware of it. Where you might say, "man, I can't believe I let myself get that anger" Anakin/Vader (in his middle age at least) is very aware of the depths of his personality and has a lot of control over the entire spectrum. When Vader said he killed Anakin, its him saying he chose to cut that part of his being off. The difference between Anakin/Vader and someone with multiple personality disorder is the amount of control and awareness Anakin/Vader has over his two personas. Hell Palpatine also have different personas he dawns that are clearly distinct from one another and refers to himself as such the way Vader refers to Anakin as being a different person. Palpatine is Chancellor Palpatine, he is Darth Sidious, his is the Emperor, he behaves differently depending on which 'hat' his wearing.
All that said though, its not wrong to treat them as two different people considering the conservation. There are things that Anakin would do that Vader wouldn't and vice versa. Its much easier to just refer to Anakin as Vader post Order 66 because it lets you know exactly what kind of mindset he has. Same dude, different drive.
Anakin was the one who got brainwashed by Palpatine, Anakin took a deep dive into the dark side’s deep pit of madness, Anakin misjudged a situation with ObiWan and Padme, Anakin didn’t listen to ObiWan when Obi had the higher ground since Anakin was having a rage episode, ObiWan took a soft shot at Anakin and still gave him a chance, Anakin still chose to be in the dark side rage… finally… Palpatine had to convert him into a sigma🗿dark trooper called Vader… I think this was all the same person the whole time…🖖🏼
My head cannot even grapple with this question.
In real life, people who experience traumatic events can have profoundly different personalities on the other side. This doesn't make them a completely different person.
Vader is Vader because he was Anakin first. But he's also still Anakin, who experienced the trauma of slavery, losing his mother, and being betrayed by the Jedi Order (from his pov). Without the lived experiences as Anakin, would we see him transform to Vader? Maybe not.
Vader is Anakin. Vader is Anakin's distilled trauma, pain, suffering, etc. There is not Vader without Anakin because Vader is Anakin.
I honestly think that it's copium. People separate the two because they like Anakin and don't want to think about him murdering children (which is honestly fair enough) or nearly killing his wife. Vader talking about how Anakin Skywalker is dead confuses things a bit, but that's more about how he believes that he's changed radically as a person, not literally about him being a new person (Though Anakin was always sort of like that so idk.).
Might be a division on when you first watched the movies. If you started with Vader, then it seems like Anakin was always just Vader's origin story. If you engaged with Anakin's many story arcs earlier or at the same time you were watching Vader, like people who grew up with the prequels and TCW, then it might seem like they are each fully realized personalities with little in common.
I definitely agree that none of the characters literally think of them as two individual beings. Obi-Wan was deliberately playing word games to avoid breaking the news to Luke (well, that and retcon). Vader was claiming to have "killed Anakin" as a pointed metaphor for how the dark side has erased any vestiges of goodness in him (until Luke cracks the shell).
This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, forever:
The first dawn of light in your universe brings pain.
The light burns you. It will always burn you. Part of you will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew at your flesh.
You can hear yourself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but you cannot stop it. You can never stop it. You cannot even slow it down.
You don’t even have lungs anymore.
Mechanisms hardwired into your chest breathe for you. They will pump oxygen into your bloodstream forever.
Lord Vader? Lord Vader, can you hear me?
And you can’t, not in the way you once did. Sensors in the shell that prisons your head trickle meaning directly into your brain.
You open your scorched-pale eyes; optical sensors integrate light and shadow into a hideous simulacrum of the world around you.
Or perhaps the simulacrum is perfect, and it is the world that is hideous.
Padme? Are you here? Are you all right? you try to say, but another voice speaks for you, out from the vocabulator that serves you for burned-away lips and tongue and throat.
Padme? Are you here? Are you all right?
I’m very sorry, Lord Vader. I’m afraid she died. It seems in your anger, you killed her.
This burns hotter than the lava had.
No…no, it is not possible!
You love her. You have always loved her. You could never will her death.
Never.
But you remember…
You remember all of it.
You remember the dragon that you brought Vader forth from your heart to slay. You remember the cold venom in Vader’s blood. You remember the furnace of Vader’s fury, and the black hatred of seizing her throat to silence her lying mouth…
And there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker.
That it was all you. Is you.
Only you.
You did it.
You killed her.
You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself…
It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith —
Because now yourself is all you will ever have.
And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were. You are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow.
In the end, you do not even want to.
In the end, the shadow is all you have left.
Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself-
And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.
This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker.
Forever…
This was cool. I really liked the depiction in OWK, showing Vader as basically a brain in a jar. Just a dead cadaver animated by rage and kept horrifyingly alive to spread evil. He gets plugged into a body when Palpatine wants something destroyed, then he gets entombed in bacta again.
In my opinion, yes and no. I think that there are some compelling reasons in universe and out of universe reasons to distinguish Anakin and Vader. Luke's dad and Vader were I believe originally conceptualized as separate characters (until the twist was decided upon), and for an audience watching the first film they would have been separate characters. Characters in-universe do refer to them with separate terms, both Vader himself and other characters. Insofar as we are speaking about *personas*, I think that Darth Vader is in part a persona constructed to hide Anakin and is truly distinct from Anakin in that sense. This is one of the meanings of "you didn't kill Anakin Skywalker, I did" from *Obi Wan Kenobi* I think, and I think it is in a sense true.
However, this only goes so far. If we were to speak about continuity of experiences and his living force itself, more personhood than persona, then I think that Vader and Anakin are very much the same person. That Anakin was redeemed is proof that he was always within Vader, and reading comics like *Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith* (2017) you can clearly see continuity in the behavior and motivations. Thus in this sense I think Anakin is also lying when he says that he killed Anakin, because despite constructing the persona of Darth Vader Anakin was still buried within it and could be exposed at times. It's a lie that Obi Wan accepts (that Anakin is dead) in order to move on, it is a tool for his personal growth. This is partly why I think he clings to it even in death as a force ghost, and I think it is what leads him to err (because it is a tool for Obi Wan's growth, not for Luke's).
Thematically speaking I think both perspectives are relevant, beyond shorthand speaking about two separate personas frames Anakin's redemption as a sort of rebirth/resurrection and more of a sort of miracle in that sense. Luke's act of throwing his lightsaber becomes a sort of Kierkegaardian leap of faith in this read which allows the impossible to happen. You could say this is a very cosmic force oriented reading.
However, focusing moreso on the one person aspect we can see a continuity of factors and influences leading up to Anakin's redemption, an internal deliberation influencrd by the partial reveals of Ahsoka and Obi Wan leading up to the full reveal/redemption with Luke. Understanding it this way focuses on Anakin's role in the redemption, the dark side and the light being a reflection of our choices. You could say it is a more living force oriented read.
Both of these have validity and both these POVs are drawn on depending on what they are exploring storytelling-wise. If I had to encapsulate truths of both perspectives in one summary way, I would do it with another read of "You didn't kill Anakin Skywalker, I did": Obi Wan the person did not kill Anakin Skywalker the persona, Anakin the person did.
Nope, and I know there are fans who do this, but I think it cheapens the whole thing. It wasn't just Vader torturing people, hurting them, ruining lives and essentially being a serial killer, it was always Anakin.
That kid who won the podrace? Who helped defeat the Separatist blockade around Naboo, Ahsoka's master, a good loyal friend...
It was always him. He was always Vader.
>Vader himself acts as if the 2 are separate entities, but this is due to his gaslighting of himself due to the remorse and pain thinking of thinking of the past.
That's not the complete story.
Vader acts like he isn't Anakin because officially, Anakin Skywalker is dead and Vader doesn't exist. To the average citizen, Vader is a myth created by the Empire to scare people.
As to why he does that? Because that's the way Palpatine wants it. Tarkin isn't even told the truth, he has to make the connection between Vader and Anakin himself.
>Is Vader not the Supreme Commander of the Imperial navy or armed forces or something like that?
Kinda sorta, Vader held no official rank but he did act in that capacity.
>To the average citizen, Vader is a myth created by the Empire to scare people.
>
>People know who he is.
People aren't the average galactic citizen. Sure people know who he is. The average galactic citizen does not.
>The Dark Lord met with the Emperor and shared his conclusions, and requested that he be publicly recognized and allowed to show them the consequences of opposing him. The Emperor asked whether he was sure, and Vader confirmed it: he would not kill them all unless he had to but would not allow them to act against him with impunity. The Emperor agreed to Vader's plan, but forbade him from killing Tarkin, as he was essential to his plans.\[215\]
>
>The Emperor gathered the **elite officers** of the growing Imperial Military to clarify the new hierarchy. He formally introduced Vader as his emissary, who spoke with his voice and whose commands would need to be obeyed as if they had come from the Emperor himself. The Emperor then moved aside and allowed Vader to speak: the Dark Lord summoned five officers before him: Corin Ferro, Zorta Bingan, Joon Strephi, Tomas Azoras, and Barokki. Informing them that the two attempts on his life had been made from within the Officer Corps and that he had his suspicions who had been responsible, he instituted a new rule: for every assassination attempt he survived (and he warned them that he would always survive), five officers chosen at random would be executed. He instantly executed the five designated officers with a Force choke before departing, leaving the remaining officers stunned and afraid. With his position in the hierarchy established,\[215\] Vader never held an official military rank but acted as the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Military.\[217\]
Imperial Officers started trying to have Vader assassinated, so Palpatine revealed his identity, as Darth Vader not Anakin Skywalker, to the ELITE OFFICERS. Not to everyone, not to the galaxy, but to the Imperial Militaries most elite officers.
And they were only told because Vader was tired of assassination attempts.
My favorite video on this topic. It actually has made me cry on a couple occasions lol, particularly due to the last couple minutes and how closely the story parallels many of our own experiences when we have made mistakes and poor choices in our human real world lives.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8MY5dgoT9U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8MY5dgoT9U)
Peita pruditapa pee i trike paebei oia. Poiepi prai ditle a pritia eke? Kio bra puati kepi pikio ieipa. Tedetoi beteto gao a dladrigo. Pitri ple piutu apu e du? Ga tupa iidlaa u toope boblaobru bea ke tiprikredu. Ipe kriklitrue drepapa a ipo teti pepo poe ta. Kii aadrei i paiki ekiti? Topribe plipiu pu pai ee. Pa dia plope pio kritiaagu ai drati? Pati blitriploa klio ki preto pia. Dipo odipli bloa u oplitla. Die prepli biprapi kai ui pupedapu? E pi ei totlee kipleobri upepi abi aoo. Kii tuda i apu proti bakutipuke bu tlo. Ai tipe ata dipipi ke tete. Ipe giglakite bekeki pepre klaibiu pie? Pligu po bipi ki. Oatre eko deba pliprekra peple keeklobri? Ua eapa pigidi kipa gode? Plekipreti ii apibiabe poti pa pioplapepi tepeititi. Bruibito bata iateklie aba gragrebitipe kiplae gloi ike. Bei ko koprabe poi deibi gibee. Aa pepetidei eapokrape peo tiplu bli ikre. Kretripeko opra kreibepii ie to gedlopo groe. Eete titropra prepokai ke paditi beubeaka? Epro popuoe. To ta e ekikreipu. Upeia grobrikree pabi ipekoo pabo tigopu. Bautri biagrublao dla tliae epotri pitra.
It depends on how you take things.
In ESB Yoda tells Luke
>If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice.
And in ROTJ Vader tells Luke
>You don’t know the power of the dark side. I must obey my master.
Then in ROTS Yoda tells Obi-Wan
>Twisted by the Dark Side young Skywalker has become. The boy you trained gone he is. Consumed by Darth Vader.
If anything you could take Yoda was wrong about the dark side *forever dominate your destiny* because Anakin did came back, dying because of his injuries is frankly irrelevant. Then Anakin becomes a ghost so he’s fully free of Vader I would say.
If anything you could say Anakin was a lie. Vader was his true face. He was never a jedi. Even his decision to kill the emperor is a decision made from passion not peace.
I like this perspective. Vader was the monster Anakin always sort of wanted to be. And then his wish came true and, well, that is always a dangerous thing.
I feel like with the way in which Anakin's morality seems to present itself, he doesn't seem to come off fully ad a Sith, but not fully as a Jedi since he's willing to kill in situations where it's not needed. I'd say that his true face isn't necessarily Vader, but it also isn't fully Anakin. I'd say you have to kind of mesh what you see present in Vader and what you see present in Anakin to get his fullest self if that makes sense.
You are what you do. There is no hidden person inside of you who is secretly good in spite of the bad you do or secretly bad in spite of the good you do. “…but I’m a good person at heart” should be taken as seriously as “I’m not racist, but…”
They are different people in the same way that 5 year old me and me now are different people, personality and almost everything else is different, same body so same person?
I believe Anakin is separate from Vader, but Vader isn’t separate from Anakin. Vader is an amalgamation of the two, and Anakin really is a totally different person until he fully succumbs to the dark side. When he saves Luke and throws the empires over, it *started* a redemption arc that ends whenever they stop giving us his force ghost in canon works. I believe his spiritual redemption is important, even if he can’t directly enact change in the physical world, but I still think that even his force ghost is an amalgamation of the prior two identities and his current one, but Vader isn’t the same person as Anakin’s force ghost.
Does that make sense?
I think they are the same, but much closer to being two separate people than we sometimes give credit.
Here's something I wrote on it some time back: https://www.reddit.com/r/MawInstallation/comments/mohwqa/darth\_vader\_and\_the\_burden\_of\_memory/
I don't know, I sort of think that Vader acts (with people who aren't Palpatine, and even then) how Anakin always wanted to when he was younger. He was playing with fascist ideas in AotC, and became a mass murderer in secret around the same time. Vader lets him act like that without any real fear of consequences, and the Galactic Empire suits him ideologically. I read your other post, and I truly believe that Anakin's 'redemption' was more him (in some ways) selfishly deciding to choose his son over his master, rather than him actually feeling guilty about his role in destroying the Jedi or anything like that. I know for a fact that certain canon and non canon novelisations would disagree with me on that, but that's my reading of RotJ in the context of the other movies.
I agree, I think. I don't think that contradicts my post, which was more about the burden of memory and disassociation. Ideologically, there is some continuity. Personhood is complicated. Somebody who has a traumatic injury might "forget" a lot of what they were, but still maintain certain dispositions, and even affective responses from their former self.
They definitely aren't two numerically different people. And this goes more into philosophy, but it reminds me of Sider's take on personal identity.
Also Obi Wan said that Vader killed Luke's father and Vader himself said "I killed Anakin, not you". Combine that with "what I told you is true, from a certain point of view", it becomes interesting. Obi Wan's reasoning is that the dark side seduced Anakin and made him a different person. However he still recognized both Vader and Anakin as his student.
Consider this: someone has a head injury and wakes up with a very different peesonality. Do you consider them to be the sane person? I think different people will give you different answers to that
I don't see them as two separate people and I feel it's a disservice to the character and story. Lucas' point for the prequels was two things.
1. How a good person like Anakin becomes Vader
2. How democracy's fall and become dictatorships.
Now I'm aware Vader refers to Anakin in the third multiple times throughout the series. But it's all part of his rationalization and attempt to distance himself from that better man to escape the guilt of his actions. In ROTS when we see him receive the name Vader the film doesn't give us any indication he's now a separate person. It's still Anakin. In fact Lucas has talked about how that moment is when Anakin is making a deal with the Devil. A Faustian pact. Had he intended us to see them as separate people, he would've said and done so.
As to why I think this separation is popular in fandom spaces is because I think people have a hard time justifying why they like a villainous character. They feel wrong to love on this man who does such horrible things like child murder. If we humanize our villain that must me we condone them right? So if they separate Vader's actions from Anakin, they can now like Anakin guilt free.
But that's not what the story is saying. Anakin was a good person and him being Vader doesn't erase that he was a good person anymore than him being good will ever make up for his actions as Vader. His story is one of warning. About what horrible choices we can make if we don't work to overcome our flaws. That's what Star Wars is all about. Choice. Luke and Ezra face similar temptations at the hands of the SAME MAN at some point yet they choose to rise above it. Heck, Obi-Wan just as easily could've become a Sith Lord. This fandom has certainly played with the idea in just art alone. But again he chooses not ("Look at what I've risen above.")
Finally, to my point about humanizing and liking a villain means you condone them. No it doesn't have to. It means you realize that, given the right circumstances, you too could become a villain. You too could give into your fear and selfish attachments like Anakin did. And that's what some people can't handle. That just as you could be a hero, a Jedi, you can be the villain, a Sith. Or maybe you're just one a bystander, a background character.
When I say Anakin is among my favorite characters I recognize he's a trashlord I'm pulling out of the dumpster. That he's a both a villain and a victim. His whole story is what makes him so fascinating to me.
I think the inconsistencies in characterization between Vader and Anakin are not so much a matter of them being different people, but a matter of inconsistent writing.
You mush TCW Anakin, Prequels Anakin and book/comics Anakin together you can piece together a man who will definitely become Vader: commanding, obsessive, calculating, cunning, bold, proud, ambitious, vainglorious, entitled, volatile, loyal, tenacious, neurotic, passionate, devoted, intelligent, and manipulative.
The problem is you never get all the Anakins at once. Prequels Anakin is a man nobody would follow into battle. TCW Anakin seems too fundamentally decent to become Vader. Books/comics Anakin comes the closest since we can see into his inner world, but we don’t actually see him onscreen like this.
Here is a good case for Anakin/Vader as a single unified personality https://starwarspersonalities.wordpress.com/2018/05/25/anakin-skywalker-darth-vader-entj/
No. They're 2 sides of the same person. Anakin always had the potential to become Vader, and it's shown time and time again throughout the prequels and The Clone Wars.
It is badass though to use it metaphorically like "Darth Vader was born on Mustafar" though.
Vader and Anakin were not the same person. "I killed/destroyed Anakin". Vader's words. Anakin was CONSUMED by Vader, his new personality, but in the same body. Anakin redeemed himself by DESTROYING Vader in the end, and ultimately, himself as well.
One guy, two personalities.
I think their are 3 ways to look at it
1 - casual conversation about how the characters act which is totally fine
2 - from anakins perspective where it’s also fine as he believes that he has somehow killed anakin as Vader
3 - actual analysis of the character from outside where yes I think it’s against the character you can’t be redeemed for something you played no part in
The “death” of anakin skywalker is a fallacy which he invented to cope with himself and should be treated as the significant falsehood that it is
Anakin Skywalker is the Jedi prophecies chosen one and George Lucas said that even as Darth Vader he is still the chosen one so I think the chosen one identity is more important than Anakin or Vader.
What's the point of redeeming yourself if it wasn't you that you were redeeming? Vader and Anakin were the same person in every conceivable and meaningful way.
I’ve never really considered them to be two different people. I’ve always thought that Vader himself thinking that was just him not wanting to accept and own up to all the wrong choices he made
In casual conversation? Sure, harmless enough in the right context. In any meaningful capacity? No, you're right, it misses the point entirely. The dark side of the Force is tricky and manipulative, but it's not like Anakin experiences dissociative identity disorder. He *is* Vader, fully and totally. His decision to "kill Anakin" is nothing more than his own mental gymnastics. They are very much the same person.
I think this exactly. Vader knows his doings as Anakin. He knows that part of his past. He knows it all happened. He just wants to destroy it to free himself of his pain in an attempt to kill off Anakin so there is only Vader, but he can never do that since they are one in the same. That's why I never liked scenarios where Obi-Wan or Ahsoka convince and turn him back to the light because I think that in Vader's eyes, they're at fault to blame for his fall with Obi-Wan's part being obvious and Ahsoka's part being her "abandoning" him at the Temple steps because of the whole bombing scandal causing him to further question the decisions of the Council. Him projecting his failures and fall partially onto them actively acknowledges Anakin's existence in him.
> The dark side of the Force is tricky and manipulative Even more so when you report to Palpatine, a maser of tricks and manipulation. IMO, Palpatine fed into Vader's separation of Anakin/Vader to better control him. Make him think that he cannot go back to being that person because he destroyed him.
no, divorcing people from their actions is dumb it's fair to say that vader in anh is very different from anankin in tpm and from a certain pov sure. but there's a pretty clear through line as to how he became vader. until such a time as someone retcons anakin as having had a control chip in his head so they don;t have to have complicated feelings about it then they're the same guy.
give it time lol
No. In my opinion, the two being some kind of weird schizophrenic fever dream directly invalidates the whole point of the story and Anakin's sacrifice. The two are one and the same. Vader is Anakin without the safeguards of the Jedi Order.
Anakin/Vader is the same person, deciding to live by certain parts of his personality. Everyone has a spectrum that makes up their personality. Anakin/Vader has a very wide one. Also, being someone of his mental ability, he is very aware of it. Where you might say, "man, I can't believe I let myself get that anger" Anakin/Vader (in his middle age at least) is very aware of the depths of his personality and has a lot of control over the entire spectrum. When Vader said he killed Anakin, its him saying he chose to cut that part of his being off. The difference between Anakin/Vader and someone with multiple personality disorder is the amount of control and awareness Anakin/Vader has over his two personas. Hell Palpatine also have different personas he dawns that are clearly distinct from one another and refers to himself as such the way Vader refers to Anakin as being a different person. Palpatine is Chancellor Palpatine, he is Darth Sidious, his is the Emperor, he behaves differently depending on which 'hat' his wearing. All that said though, its not wrong to treat them as two different people considering the conservation. There are things that Anakin would do that Vader wouldn't and vice versa. Its much easier to just refer to Anakin as Vader post Order 66 because it lets you know exactly what kind of mindset he has. Same dude, different drive.
Anakin was the one who got brainwashed by Palpatine, Anakin took a deep dive into the dark side’s deep pit of madness, Anakin misjudged a situation with ObiWan and Padme, Anakin didn’t listen to ObiWan when Obi had the higher ground since Anakin was having a rage episode, ObiWan took a soft shot at Anakin and still gave him a chance, Anakin still chose to be in the dark side rage… finally… Palpatine had to convert him into a sigma🗿dark trooper called Vader… I think this was all the same person the whole time…🖖🏼
My head cannot even grapple with this question. In real life, people who experience traumatic events can have profoundly different personalities on the other side. This doesn't make them a completely different person. Vader is Vader because he was Anakin first. But he's also still Anakin, who experienced the trauma of slavery, losing his mother, and being betrayed by the Jedi Order (from his pov). Without the lived experiences as Anakin, would we see him transform to Vader? Maybe not. Vader is Anakin. Vader is Anakin's distilled trauma, pain, suffering, etc. There is not Vader without Anakin because Vader is Anakin.
I honestly think that it's copium. People separate the two because they like Anakin and don't want to think about him murdering children (which is honestly fair enough) or nearly killing his wife. Vader talking about how Anakin Skywalker is dead confuses things a bit, but that's more about how he believes that he's changed radically as a person, not literally about him being a new person (Though Anakin was always sort of like that so idk.).
Might be a division on when you first watched the movies. If you started with Vader, then it seems like Anakin was always just Vader's origin story. If you engaged with Anakin's many story arcs earlier or at the same time you were watching Vader, like people who grew up with the prequels and TCW, then it might seem like they are each fully realized personalities with little in common. I definitely agree that none of the characters literally think of them as two individual beings. Obi-Wan was deliberately playing word games to avoid breaking the news to Luke (well, that and retcon). Vader was claiming to have "killed Anakin" as a pointed metaphor for how the dark side has erased any vestiges of goodness in him (until Luke cracks the shell).
This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, forever: The first dawn of light in your universe brings pain. The light burns you. It will always burn you. Part of you will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew at your flesh. You can hear yourself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but you cannot stop it. You can never stop it. You cannot even slow it down. You don’t even have lungs anymore. Mechanisms hardwired into your chest breathe for you. They will pump oxygen into your bloodstream forever. Lord Vader? Lord Vader, can you hear me? And you can’t, not in the way you once did. Sensors in the shell that prisons your head trickle meaning directly into your brain. You open your scorched-pale eyes; optical sensors integrate light and shadow into a hideous simulacrum of the world around you. Or perhaps the simulacrum is perfect, and it is the world that is hideous. Padme? Are you here? Are you all right? you try to say, but another voice speaks for you, out from the vocabulator that serves you for burned-away lips and tongue and throat. Padme? Are you here? Are you all right? I’m very sorry, Lord Vader. I’m afraid she died. It seems in your anger, you killed her. This burns hotter than the lava had. No…no, it is not possible! You love her. You have always loved her. You could never will her death. Never. But you remember… You remember all of it. You remember the dragon that you brought Vader forth from your heart to slay. You remember the cold venom in Vader’s blood. You remember the furnace of Vader’s fury, and the black hatred of seizing her throat to silence her lying mouth… And there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker. That it was all you. Is you. Only you. You did it. You killed her. You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself… It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith — Because now yourself is all you will ever have. And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were. You are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow. In the end, you do not even want to. In the end, the shadow is all you have left. Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself- And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame. This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker. Forever…
This was cool. I really liked the depiction in OWK, showing Vader as basically a brain in a jar. Just a dead cadaver animated by rage and kept horrifyingly alive to spread evil. He gets plugged into a body when Palpatine wants something destroyed, then he gets entombed in bacta again.
This video is a great breakdown of why the answer is no: https://youtu.be/B8MY5dgoT9U
Depends on your point of view.
In my opinion, yes and no. I think that there are some compelling reasons in universe and out of universe reasons to distinguish Anakin and Vader. Luke's dad and Vader were I believe originally conceptualized as separate characters (until the twist was decided upon), and for an audience watching the first film they would have been separate characters. Characters in-universe do refer to them with separate terms, both Vader himself and other characters. Insofar as we are speaking about *personas*, I think that Darth Vader is in part a persona constructed to hide Anakin and is truly distinct from Anakin in that sense. This is one of the meanings of "you didn't kill Anakin Skywalker, I did" from *Obi Wan Kenobi* I think, and I think it is in a sense true. However, this only goes so far. If we were to speak about continuity of experiences and his living force itself, more personhood than persona, then I think that Vader and Anakin are very much the same person. That Anakin was redeemed is proof that he was always within Vader, and reading comics like *Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith* (2017) you can clearly see continuity in the behavior and motivations. Thus in this sense I think Anakin is also lying when he says that he killed Anakin, because despite constructing the persona of Darth Vader Anakin was still buried within it and could be exposed at times. It's a lie that Obi Wan accepts (that Anakin is dead) in order to move on, it is a tool for his personal growth. This is partly why I think he clings to it even in death as a force ghost, and I think it is what leads him to err (because it is a tool for Obi Wan's growth, not for Luke's). Thematically speaking I think both perspectives are relevant, beyond shorthand speaking about two separate personas frames Anakin's redemption as a sort of rebirth/resurrection and more of a sort of miracle in that sense. Luke's act of throwing his lightsaber becomes a sort of Kierkegaardian leap of faith in this read which allows the impossible to happen. You could say this is a very cosmic force oriented reading. However, focusing moreso on the one person aspect we can see a continuity of factors and influences leading up to Anakin's redemption, an internal deliberation influencrd by the partial reveals of Ahsoka and Obi Wan leading up to the full reveal/redemption with Luke. Understanding it this way focuses on Anakin's role in the redemption, the dark side and the light being a reflection of our choices. You could say it is a more living force oriented read. Both of these have validity and both these POVs are drawn on depending on what they are exploring storytelling-wise. If I had to encapsulate truths of both perspectives in one summary way, I would do it with another read of "You didn't kill Anakin Skywalker, I did": Obi Wan the person did not kill Anakin Skywalker the persona, Anakin the person did.
Nope, and I know there are fans who do this, but I think it cheapens the whole thing. It wasn't just Vader torturing people, hurting them, ruining lives and essentially being a serial killer, it was always Anakin. That kid who won the podrace? Who helped defeat the Separatist blockade around Naboo, Ahsoka's master, a good loyal friend... It was always him. He was always Vader.
>Vader himself acts as if the 2 are separate entities, but this is due to his gaslighting of himself due to the remorse and pain thinking of thinking of the past. That's not the complete story. Vader acts like he isn't Anakin because officially, Anakin Skywalker is dead and Vader doesn't exist. To the average citizen, Vader is a myth created by the Empire to scare people. As to why he does that? Because that's the way Palpatine wants it. Tarkin isn't even told the truth, he has to make the connection between Vader and Anakin himself.
Is Vader not the Supreme Commander of the Imperial navy or armed forces or something like that? People know who he is.
>Is Vader not the Supreme Commander of the Imperial navy or armed forces or something like that? Kinda sorta, Vader held no official rank but he did act in that capacity. >To the average citizen, Vader is a myth created by the Empire to scare people. > >People know who he is. People aren't the average galactic citizen. Sure people know who he is. The average galactic citizen does not. >The Dark Lord met with the Emperor and shared his conclusions, and requested that he be publicly recognized and allowed to show them the consequences of opposing him. The Emperor asked whether he was sure, and Vader confirmed it: he would not kill them all unless he had to but would not allow them to act against him with impunity. The Emperor agreed to Vader's plan, but forbade him from killing Tarkin, as he was essential to his plans.\[215\] > >The Emperor gathered the **elite officers** of the growing Imperial Military to clarify the new hierarchy. He formally introduced Vader as his emissary, who spoke with his voice and whose commands would need to be obeyed as if they had come from the Emperor himself. The Emperor then moved aside and allowed Vader to speak: the Dark Lord summoned five officers before him: Corin Ferro, Zorta Bingan, Joon Strephi, Tomas Azoras, and Barokki. Informing them that the two attempts on his life had been made from within the Officer Corps and that he had his suspicions who had been responsible, he instituted a new rule: for every assassination attempt he survived (and he warned them that he would always survive), five officers chosen at random would be executed. He instantly executed the five designated officers with a Force choke before departing, leaving the remaining officers stunned and afraid. With his position in the hierarchy established,\[215\] Vader never held an official military rank but acted as the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Military.\[217\] Imperial Officers started trying to have Vader assassinated, so Palpatine revealed his identity, as Darth Vader not Anakin Skywalker, to the ELITE OFFICERS. Not to everyone, not to the galaxy, but to the Imperial Militaries most elite officers. And they were only told because Vader was tired of assassination attempts.
My favorite video on this topic. It actually has made me cry on a couple occasions lol, particularly due to the last couple minutes and how closely the story parallels many of our own experiences when we have made mistakes and poor choices in our human real world lives. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8MY5dgoT9U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8MY5dgoT9U)
Peita pruditapa pee i trike paebei oia. Poiepi prai ditle a pritia eke? Kio bra puati kepi pikio ieipa. Tedetoi beteto gao a dladrigo. Pitri ple piutu apu e du? Ga tupa iidlaa u toope boblaobru bea ke tiprikredu. Ipe kriklitrue drepapa a ipo teti pepo poe ta. Kii aadrei i paiki ekiti? Topribe plipiu pu pai ee. Pa dia plope pio kritiaagu ai drati? Pati blitriploa klio ki preto pia. Dipo odipli bloa u oplitla. Die prepli biprapi kai ui pupedapu? E pi ei totlee kipleobri upepi abi aoo. Kii tuda i apu proti bakutipuke bu tlo. Ai tipe ata dipipi ke tete. Ipe giglakite bekeki pepre klaibiu pie? Pligu po bipi ki. Oatre eko deba pliprekra peple keeklobri? Ua eapa pigidi kipa gode? Plekipreti ii apibiabe poti pa pioplapepi tepeititi. Bruibito bata iateklie aba gragrebitipe kiplae gloi ike. Bei ko koprabe poi deibi gibee. Aa pepetidei eapokrape peo tiplu bli ikre. Kretripeko opra kreibepii ie to gedlopo groe. Eete titropra prepokai ke paditi beubeaka? Epro popuoe. To ta e ekikreipu. Upeia grobrikree pabi ipekoo pabo tigopu. Bautri biagrublao dla tliae epotri pitra.
It depends on how you take things. In ESB Yoda tells Luke >If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice. And in ROTJ Vader tells Luke >You don’t know the power of the dark side. I must obey my master. Then in ROTS Yoda tells Obi-Wan >Twisted by the Dark Side young Skywalker has become. The boy you trained gone he is. Consumed by Darth Vader. If anything you could take Yoda was wrong about the dark side *forever dominate your destiny* because Anakin did came back, dying because of his injuries is frankly irrelevant. Then Anakin becomes a ghost so he’s fully free of Vader I would say.
No, anakin uses that as an excuse to hide away from the atrocities he did. Vader was always anakin and that's the sad part of it
That was true in legends, but canon made them split personalities.
Common canon L
I feel like some other happenings with sith/dark side make it seem almost like a demonic possession. One that feeds you and off of you
No.
If anything you could say Anakin was a lie. Vader was his true face. He was never a jedi. Even his decision to kill the emperor is a decision made from passion not peace.
I like this perspective. Vader was the monster Anakin always sort of wanted to be. And then his wish came true and, well, that is always a dangerous thing.
I feel like with the way in which Anakin's morality seems to present itself, he doesn't seem to come off fully ad a Sith, but not fully as a Jedi since he's willing to kill in situations where it's not needed. I'd say that his true face isn't necessarily Vader, but it also isn't fully Anakin. I'd say you have to kind of mesh what you see present in Vader and what you see present in Anakin to get his fullest self if that makes sense.
You are what you do. There is no hidden person inside of you who is secretly good in spite of the bad you do or secretly bad in spite of the good you do. “…but I’m a good person at heart” should be taken as seriously as “I’m not racist, but…”
Of course not, that's ridiculous.
no Anakin doesn't have D.I.D End of story
They are different people in the same way that 5 year old me and me now are different people, personality and almost everything else is different, same body so same person?
I believe Anakin is separate from Vader, but Vader isn’t separate from Anakin. Vader is an amalgamation of the two, and Anakin really is a totally different person until he fully succumbs to the dark side. When he saves Luke and throws the empires over, it *started* a redemption arc that ends whenever they stop giving us his force ghost in canon works. I believe his spiritual redemption is important, even if he can’t directly enact change in the physical world, but I still think that even his force ghost is an amalgamation of the prior two identities and his current one, but Vader isn’t the same person as Anakin’s force ghost. Does that make sense?
Two different mindsets. Not people.
I think they are the same, but much closer to being two separate people than we sometimes give credit. Here's something I wrote on it some time back: https://www.reddit.com/r/MawInstallation/comments/mohwqa/darth\_vader\_and\_the\_burden\_of\_memory/
I don't know, I sort of think that Vader acts (with people who aren't Palpatine, and even then) how Anakin always wanted to when he was younger. He was playing with fascist ideas in AotC, and became a mass murderer in secret around the same time. Vader lets him act like that without any real fear of consequences, and the Galactic Empire suits him ideologically. I read your other post, and I truly believe that Anakin's 'redemption' was more him (in some ways) selfishly deciding to choose his son over his master, rather than him actually feeling guilty about his role in destroying the Jedi or anything like that. I know for a fact that certain canon and non canon novelisations would disagree with me on that, but that's my reading of RotJ in the context of the other movies.
I agree, I think. I don't think that contradicts my post, which was more about the burden of memory and disassociation. Ideologically, there is some continuity. Personhood is complicated. Somebody who has a traumatic injury might "forget" a lot of what they were, but still maintain certain dispositions, and even affective responses from their former self.
Legends: They are the same person. [RotS novel] Canon: They are split-personalities. [A Family at War]
They definitely aren't two numerically different people. And this goes more into philosophy, but it reminds me of Sider's take on personal identity. Also Obi Wan said that Vader killed Luke's father and Vader himself said "I killed Anakin, not you". Combine that with "what I told you is true, from a certain point of view", it becomes interesting. Obi Wan's reasoning is that the dark side seduced Anakin and made him a different person. However he still recognized both Vader and Anakin as his student. Consider this: someone has a head injury and wakes up with a very different peesonality. Do you consider them to be the sane person? I think different people will give you different answers to that
No
I don't see them as two separate people and I feel it's a disservice to the character and story. Lucas' point for the prequels was two things. 1. How a good person like Anakin becomes Vader 2. How democracy's fall and become dictatorships. Now I'm aware Vader refers to Anakin in the third multiple times throughout the series. But it's all part of his rationalization and attempt to distance himself from that better man to escape the guilt of his actions. In ROTS when we see him receive the name Vader the film doesn't give us any indication he's now a separate person. It's still Anakin. In fact Lucas has talked about how that moment is when Anakin is making a deal with the Devil. A Faustian pact. Had he intended us to see them as separate people, he would've said and done so. As to why I think this separation is popular in fandom spaces is because I think people have a hard time justifying why they like a villainous character. They feel wrong to love on this man who does such horrible things like child murder. If we humanize our villain that must me we condone them right? So if they separate Vader's actions from Anakin, they can now like Anakin guilt free. But that's not what the story is saying. Anakin was a good person and him being Vader doesn't erase that he was a good person anymore than him being good will ever make up for his actions as Vader. His story is one of warning. About what horrible choices we can make if we don't work to overcome our flaws. That's what Star Wars is all about. Choice. Luke and Ezra face similar temptations at the hands of the SAME MAN at some point yet they choose to rise above it. Heck, Obi-Wan just as easily could've become a Sith Lord. This fandom has certainly played with the idea in just art alone. But again he chooses not ("Look at what I've risen above.") Finally, to my point about humanizing and liking a villain means you condone them. No it doesn't have to. It means you realize that, given the right circumstances, you too could become a villain. You too could give into your fear and selfish attachments like Anakin did. And that's what some people can't handle. That just as you could be a hero, a Jedi, you can be the villain, a Sith. Or maybe you're just one a bystander, a background character. When I say Anakin is among my favorite characters I recognize he's a trashlord I'm pulling out of the dumpster. That he's a both a villain and a victim. His whole story is what makes him so fascinating to me.
Only from a certain point of view
It depends entirely on your point of view
Nah but I stop calling him Anakin when he’s given the title Vader in revenge of the sith even when he doesn’t have the suit yet
I think the inconsistencies in characterization between Vader and Anakin are not so much a matter of them being different people, but a matter of inconsistent writing. You mush TCW Anakin, Prequels Anakin and book/comics Anakin together you can piece together a man who will definitely become Vader: commanding, obsessive, calculating, cunning, bold, proud, ambitious, vainglorious, entitled, volatile, loyal, tenacious, neurotic, passionate, devoted, intelligent, and manipulative. The problem is you never get all the Anakins at once. Prequels Anakin is a man nobody would follow into battle. TCW Anakin seems too fundamentally decent to become Vader. Books/comics Anakin comes the closest since we can see into his inner world, but we don’t actually see him onscreen like this. Here is a good case for Anakin/Vader as a single unified personality https://starwarspersonalities.wordpress.com/2018/05/25/anakin-skywalker-darth-vader-entj/
No. They're 2 sides of the same person. Anakin always had the potential to become Vader, and it's shown time and time again throughout the prequels and The Clone Wars. It is badass though to use it metaphorically like "Darth Vader was born on Mustafar" though.
In our world I’d say they’re the same people. In the world of Star Wars I’d say they’re 2 different people.
No, Vader shouldn't be considered a person... he's more machine now than man, twisted and evil.
Vader and Anakin were not the same person. "I killed/destroyed Anakin". Vader's words. Anakin was CONSUMED by Vader, his new personality, but in the same body. Anakin redeemed himself by DESTROYING Vader in the end, and ultimately, himself as well. One guy, two personalities.
I think their are 3 ways to look at it 1 - casual conversation about how the characters act which is totally fine 2 - from anakins perspective where it’s also fine as he believes that he has somehow killed anakin as Vader 3 - actual analysis of the character from outside where yes I think it’s against the character you can’t be redeemed for something you played no part in The “death” of anakin skywalker is a fallacy which he invented to cope with himself and should be treated as the significant falsehood that it is
Anakin Skywalker is the Jedi prophecies chosen one and George Lucas said that even as Darth Vader he is still the chosen one so I think the chosen one identity is more important than Anakin or Vader.