Deleted Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker Darth Vader Connection Revealed
The film’s novelization confirms the would-be role of the franchise’s most iconic baddie.
Are you ready for Star Wars canon to be messed around with again? Rae Carson’s upcoming novel adaptation of Star Wars: The
Rise of Skywalker contains an interesting detail cut from the film. A sample excerpt
from the beginning of the novel bridges Kylo Ren’s hunt for the Sith Wayfinder
with the legacy of his grandfather, Darth Vader.
The scene was shared on StarWars.com as part of the novel's marketing and is actually a new version of one which viewers will recognize from the film. It sees the young Supreme Leader desperately searching for the mysterious artifact, the key to locating Palpatine, which brings him to the lava moon Mustafar.
But to do so, he and his horde of Stormtroopers must combat the planet’s belligerent, yet technologically inferior colonists. In the film, we see Ren cut them down in a heavily stylised action sequence. This was of course the iconic location from earlier in the saga, where Obi Wan Kenobi bested Vader – then Anakin Skywalker – resulting in his dark side transformation. In the Expanded Universe lore, this was also where the newly-ordained Sith established his headquarters.
But the novel changes the scene, despite both it and the films being canon, supposedly. After eliminating these guardians, Kylo encounters the Eye of the Webbish Bog, a lake-dwelling gatekeeper, who rewards him with the Wayfinder. Supposedly, the Eye and his warriors were designated to protect Vader’s old fortress by Vader himself.
This excerpt comes just a few weeks after the released concept art from Colin Trevorrow’s hypothetical Episode IX, among which include Kylo confronting a mysterious, multi-armed Sith lord named Tor Valum.
The appearance of the Eye as a “creature with long spidery tentacles” bears some resemblance to Valum, but it remains unclear whether this similarity is coincidental. Given that Trevorrow’s initial script was also set to contain appearances from old Jedi masters in ghost form (Anakin Skywalker included), perhaps J.J. Abrams implemented a few ideas for the original director’s handbook.
This scene, signifying the importance of Vader to Kylo’s character journey, unfortunately didn’t make it in the final cut of the film. Carson’s novelized version will be published on 17 March 2020.