Fun fact: Anakin Skywalker is the Chosen one. The novel “Darth Plagueis” revealed that the Sith actually physically unbalanced the Force, setting it towards the Dark Side. So, the Force responded by making Anakin. The prequel trilogy does a valiant effort of showing his decent towards the Dark Side, but there’s a fair bit that they leave out or glance over. This article’s going to fill in the blanks left by the movies.
To understand all of this, we need to understand the position of the Jedi in the prequel movies. Remember, Palpatine has been manipulating this Galaxy to the point of playing everyone like a fiddle. Palpatine and the Sith before him have all been working on destroying the Jedi for generations. The Jedi are, above everything else, peacekeepers. They need to avoid things such as aggression and anger. We see Palpatine use the Clone Wars to draw the Jedi into aggression. It’s a process that started long before Palpatine. Yoda reveals that this is a process that has started prior to Episode II. He states that “More sure of themselves, they [the Jedi] are…even the older, more experienced ones.” Going into the prequel trilogy, the Jedi have become cocky. They trust in their power. Power leads directly to the Dark Side. Jedi have to know and understand their limits. Testing their limits makes them Sith. Now, the Jedi aren’t actually falling to the dark side. It’s more like their devotion to the light side has been shaken. That’s one reason why they’re too distracted to notice that Palpatine is a Sith Lord.
Enter Anakin. He wasn’t raised by Jedi, so he doesn’t understand how to contain his emotions. He’s also married. That alone doesn’t doom him. While the Jedi as we know them consider attachments to be evil, Jedi have had attachments and stayed good.
Case in point? Luke. He had attachments to Han, Leia, even Chewie and probably several other members of the Rebel alliance. Vader goaded him into attacking out of rage by threatening to bring Leia to the Dark Side. For about a minute of fighting, Luke attacks out of anger. He comes dangerously close to the Dark Side. The difference between Luke and his father is that Luke is able to resist the dark side. He makes a choice. While attachments do make the choice harder, it’s certainly not impossible. What really dooms Anakin isn’t his love for Padme, it’s the Jedi Council.
We have to delve into the Animated Series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Which had an admittedly weak start, but got good enough in the later seasons that all of you should stop reading this article right now and go Netflix all of it if you haven’t seen it already. Seriously. It’s amazing. If you for some reason don’t want to watch it, skip ahead 2 paragraphs if you don’t want to read the spoilers.
It all starts with the “Deception” arc. The arc involved Obi-Wan going undercover to take out a separatist conspiracy to kidnap Palpatine. Obi-wan faked his death to get his plan to work. The Jedi Council didn’t tell Anakin that Obi-Wan was dead. Anakin felt betrayed by the council for leaving him out of such a crucial plan. Palpatine tried to turn Anakin to the dark side using this incident, but it didn’t drive Anakin far enough away from the Jedi. What alienated Anakin from the Jedi was Ahsoka Tano.
Ahsoka (the orange girl in the center of the picture) was Anakin’s padawan learner between “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith.” She and Anakin grew very close. She was framed for a crime she didn’t commit, and expelled from the Jedi order. Normally, Ahsoka’s trial would have been an internal affair-the crime Ahsoka was framed for was committed against the Jedi order. However, the general populace wasn’t very content with the Jedi by this point. Palpatine had been spreading propaganda against the Jedi, so that his story that the Jedi attacked him would make more sense. So, the senate demanded that Ahsoka be tried by a non-Jedi court. Anakin felt betrayed by the council for not standing by Ahsoka. That’s why he got so angry against them in Revenge of the Sith, and that’s why he considered trusting Palpatine’s teachings over Yoda’s instructions to let Padme go.
Something that you don’t quite get in the movies is that Anakin was sick of the Clone Wars. In “Revenge of the Sith,”he mentions that he was deployed in the Outer Rims for months-he didn’t even know that Padme was pregnant, so he’d been gone for like nine months of solid fighting. Anakin saw firsthand all of the worlds that were torn apart by the warfare. Seeing how much pain came from the Jedi fighting would explain why he was willing to believe that they were the problem. The darkness that comes out in him in “Revenge of the Sith”has been building over the course of the whole war.
Now, we’re dealing with Darth Vader. He knows that he’s killing younglings, he knows that he’s betraying his friends, but in his mind, he’s doing what he has to do. Like most villains, he thinks that he’s a good guy.
Part of the reason he attacks Padme and Obi-Wan is he knows they’re right. But before they can turn him, he’s got all of his limbs burned off and has to live with a robot suit for the rest of his life. See, the horrific injuries Vader received burned away some of his midi-chlorians. Vader was never able to use Force Lightning because had robot limbs. These injuries meant that Vader could never kill Palpatine and become the main Sith, as he’s supposed to do. Palpatine wasn’t pleased with this. A big part of his plan for the Prequel trilogies was about getting Anakin as his apprentice, because he wanted Anakin’s power as his own. To have a damaged apprentice meant that Palpatine was bitter towards Vader.
The years made Vader bitter. We don’t get a good clue as to what’s going on inside of his head, but that speaks for itself. Most of Vader’s characterization focuses on showing him as inhuman and angry. At this point, Anakin has been burned away, and all that’s left is Vader. The only thing that makes Anakin come back is his son, and we all saw how that went down.
