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Weird Idea but maybe it will work - Anakin and Darth were two separate people

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 (Edited)

Maybe Anakin and Darth were two separate people but one of them dies in the course of the Prequels and either by being a clone or being disfigured the other one is asked/forced to assume their identity in a sort of Kagemusha gambit. I don’t know who would die though.

Everything after Empire Strikes Back is shit.

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This reminds me of a theory I read about people having that Darth Vader might have been a clone of Anakin Skywalker, so Darth Vader was technically his father, biologically speaking. I like the idea of taking inspiration from another Kurosawa film.

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This is an idea that has worked in other fiction. In ‘Gundam: The Origin’, Char Aznable and Casval Deikun were two separate (and similar-looking) soldiers in the Zeon army, but Casval took Char’s name as his own early in the war after a failed coup.

I recall that one early fan rewrite actually used this twist to some effectiveness. I would like to see another version of the story which includes this idea.

I’m just here because I’m driving tonight.

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I went this direction in my previous rewrite. The goal was for Darth to become Anakin’s Sith apprentice in the final episode, have them confront Ben together on Mustafar, then end with Darth turning against Anakin and the both of them falling into a magma pit. Anakin would’ve survived with near-total amnesia, with Palpatine altering his remaining memories to make him believe he was Darth all along.

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If I really wanted to be clever I could have Luke be the son of Anakin and either Leia or Mara Jade be the daughter of the original Darth. That would mean rewriting Return of the Jedi but I always considered it the worst OT film so I probably will

Everything after Empire Strikes Back is shit.

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Space Medievalist said:

If I really wanted to be clever I could have Luke be the son of Anakin and either Leia or Mara Jade be the daughter of the original Darth. That would mean rewriting Return of the Jedi but I always considered it the worst OT film so I probably will

Dewit.

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I do like the idea, but I’d give it a bit of a twist. The Anakin and Darth Vader (both apprentices of Obi-Wan, with Vader having fallen in Episode II) characters fight each other in the third prequel and we don’t see the outcome. Obi-Wan would fight who we think is Vader, not knowing that it’s a fallen Anakin posing as Vader (perhaps to avoid detection by Palpatine). The duel takes place as normal, with Anakin-as-Vader sustaining critical injuries and Palpatine manipulating his memories to remember Anakin as “another person.”

However, the events of Star Wars trigger memories within Anakin-as-Vader and Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan would sense something of Anakin within Vader when he says “you should not have come back” (look at the expression on Sir Alec’s face), while Anakin-as-Vader would feel the “Skywalker connection” during the tench run. This eliminates Obi-Wan lying to Luke (as he didn’t know Vader’s true identity - Yoda did, but Yoda’s abilities are more fine-tuned than Obi-Wan’s) while giving Anakin-as-Vader a revelation that might steer him towards the light.