Anakin Skywalker falls to the dark side, loses to Obi-Wan on Mustafar, becomes trapped inside the black armor, serves Palpatine for decades, and finally turns back to save Luke in Return of the Jedi.
But across comics, games, early drafts, visions, and LEGO stories, Star Wars has shown several other versions of Vader. Some are full alternate timelines. Some are visions. Some come from George Lucas’s earliest version of the story, before Vader was even Luke’s father.
Here are the major alternate versions of Darth Vader explained.
Table of Contents
Redeemed Vader
One of the most striking alternate versions appears in Star Wars Infinities: Return of the Jedi.
This story changes the events at Jabba’s Palace. Leia’s plan to rescue Han goes wrong when C-3PO is destroyed, Boba Fett escapes with Han still frozen in carbonite, and Jabba’s palace is destroyed by the thermal detonator. From there, the whole Return of the Jedi timeline begins to fall apart.
Luke eventually learns from Yoda and Obi-Wan that Vader is his father and Leia is his sister, but Yoda dies before Luke can return to Dagobah. Palpatine senses Yoda’s death too, and the path leads Luke back toward the second Death Star.
The biggest change comes during the final confrontation. Palpatine orders Vader to kill Leia, but Luke steps in and fights his father. Vader overpowers him, and Palpatine tries to force Luke into joining the Sith. When Leia is struck by Force lightning, Luke tells Vader the truth: Leia is also his child.
That revelation breaks through Vader in a way the main timeline only reaches at the very end. Luke eventually refuses to keep fighting, telling Vader that if he means to kill both him and Leia, he should do it. Instead, Vader falls to his knees and begs for forgiveness.
In this version, Anakin survives the second Death Star.
Luke and Leia carry their redeemed father to the Millennium Falcon before the station is destroyed. Later, Anakin appears in a white version of the Vader life-support suit, now fighting beside the Rebel heroes as they prepare to hunt down the escaped Emperor.
It is not just Vader redeemed at the moment of death. It is Vader redeemed and forced to live with what he has done.
Vader’s Vision
Another alternate Vader appears inside the 2017 Darth Vader comic, during the moment when Vader bleeds his kyber crystal.
Palpatine sends Vader to a dark side cave and orders him to corrupt a Jedi’s green kyber crystal. The process is meant to force the crystal to bend to Vader’s pain, rage, and hatred until it turns red.
But when Vader pulls the green crystal from the lightsaber, it hits him with a vision.
In that vision, Vader does not finish the bleeding. He returns to Coruscant with the green lightsaber and faces Palpatine. Because he has not fully given himself to the dark side, the Emperor attacks him. Vader defeats him, then leaves to find Obi-Wan Kenobi.
The vision takes Vader to his old master. Vader kneels before Obi-Wan, trying to make up for the crimes he has committed. Obi-Wan raises his lightsaber, hesitates, turns it off, and calls him by his old name: Anakin.
Then Vader wakes up.
The vision shows a path where Anakin could have turned back almost immediately after becoming Vader. But the real Vader rejects it. He decides there is no return for him, recommits to the Sith path, and forces the kyber crystal to bleed red.
This version matters because it shows the door was not fully closed. Vader saw a possible return to the light, and he chose not to take it.
Unburned Emperor Vader
The 2005 Revenge of the Sith video game included one of the most famous alternate endings for Anakin Skywalker.
In the film, Obi-Wan defeats Anakin on Mustafar after taking the high ground. Anakin tries to leap over him, fails, loses his limbs, burns near the lava, and becomes the armored Darth Vader.
The game’s alternate ending changes that final moment.
Instead of failing the jump, Anakin succeeds. He clears Obi-Wan’s position, strikes him down from behind, and kicks his body toward the lava. Because Anakin is never maimed or burned, he never needs the full life-support suit that defines Vader in the main timeline.
Then Palpatine arrives.
At first, it looks like the Sith have won together. Palpatine tells his apprentice that all their enemies are gone and gives him a new lightsaber. But Anakin immediately turns on him. He kills Palpatine and declares himself the ruler of the galaxy.
This version is not the broken enforcer trapped under the Emperor. This is Vader without the suit, without the Mustafar defeat, and without decades of being chained to Palpatine’s command.
The dark side still owns him, but his ambition is no longer buried under obedience. He kills both Obi-Wan and Sidious in the same ending, leaving the galaxy under a version of Vader who has Anakin’s full body and none of Palpatine’s restraint.
General Darth Vader
Before Darth Vader became Luke’s father, he began as something very different in George Lucas’s early drafts.
Dark Horse’s The Star Wars adapted Lucas’s 1974 rough draft, and in that version, Darth Vader is not a fallen Jedi, not Anakin Skywalker, and not a Sith Lord in the familiar sense. He is General Darth Vader.
This Vader is a human Imperial military commander serving under Emperor Cos Dashit. He has facial scars, a red cybernetic left eye, and authority over Imperial forces. He also commands the massive Space Fortress, an early version of the Death Star concept.
His role is closer to a brutal Imperial officer than a tragic dark side figure. He is ambitious, politically dangerous, and involved in a plot against the Emperor with Governor Crispin Hoedaack and allies inside the Supreme Tribunal.
This version of Vader leads the attack on Aquilae, a planet that has resisted Imperial control. The Empire wants its royal family as a puppet line and wants access to the planet’s advanced biotic technology, including genetics and cloning research.
General Vader eventually dies when the Space Fortress is destroyed.
This is one of the strangest alternate Vaders because it comes from before the character became what fans know now. There is no Anakin tragedy, no Luke connection, no redemption arc, and no mask hiding a ruined Jedi. He is a scarred Imperial general with power, ambition, and command over the Empire’s war machine.
Yoda Killer Vader
Star Wars Infinities: The Empire Strikes Back creates a much darker version of Vader by killing Luke at the very start.
In this timeline, Han finds Luke on Hoth too late. Luke dies in his arms, but before he passes, he tells Han to train as a Jedi. Han believes he is supposed to go to Dagobah, but Yoda reveals the truth when the group arrives: Leia is the one who must be trained.
Leia stays with Yoda for months and grows stronger in the Force, while Vader continues searching for Luke, refusing to believe his son is dead. That search eventually leads him to C-3PO. Vader recognizes the droid as his own creation and tortures him until he learns the location of Dagobah.
When Vader arrives, he demands that Yoda hand over Luke.
Yoda and Vader clash through the Force. During their mental battle, Vader is confronted by spirits from his past, including Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, and Mace Windu. He also finally learns the truth that Luke is already dead.
Leia senses Yoda in danger and races back, but she arrives too late. Through the mental link, Vader lands a killing blow against Yoda and breaks the Jedi Master’s hold on him.
Leia then duels Vader herself and cuts off his right arm. Vader offers her a place at his side, but she refuses. Before Vader can kill her, Han and Chewbacca arrive, and Han shoots Vader with a blaster.
In his final moments, Anakin turns away from the dark side. Leia removes his mask, and his last words are about realizing he had a daughter.
This version of Vader is brutal enough to kill Yoda, but still not beyond a final moment of humanity.
Leia’s Sith Master
The Infinities version of A New Hope creates another major alternate Vader by changing the Battle of Yavin.
In this timeline, Luke’s torpedoes fail to destroy the Death Star. The Rebels escape the first attack, but the Empire later destroys Yavin 4. Leia is captured and taken to Coruscant, where she is placed under house arrest inside the Emperor’s Palace.
That is where Vader begins pushing her toward the dark side.
Years pass. Leia becomes a Sith, while Luke trains with Yoda on Dagobah. The Death Star is renamed the Justice Star, and the Empire uses it as a symbol of permanent order over Coruscant.
When Luke, Han, Chewbacca, Yoda, and R2-D2 eventually strike back, Luke reaches the Emperor’s Palace and confronts Vader, Palpatine, and Leia. Palpatine orders Vader to hand Leia his lightsaber so she can duel Luke.
Luke refuses to kill her. Instead, he reaches her by revealing that they are brother and sister.
Leia turns back, and Palpatine attacks the twins with Force lightning. Vader then turns on the Emperor to save both of his children. Luke and Leia escape, but Palpatine kills Anakin.
This version of Vader spends years as Leia’s dark side master, but his final choice still mirrors the main timeline. When Palpatine tries to kill his children, Vader turns on him.
The difference is that in this timeline, both twins are there when Anakin makes that choice.
Dark Dimension Vader
The 2017 Darth Vader comic also gives readers one of Vader’s strangest forms during the Fortress Vader storyline.
Vader builds his castle on Mustafar over a dark side locus with help from the mask of Lord Momin. The fortress is designed to open a doorway into the afterlife, because Vader wants to reach Padmé.
When the portal opens, Vader enters a spiritual realm. His body becomes a strange, otherworldly version often called Dark Dimension Vader.
Inside this realm, Vader passes through visions from his past, including Shmi Skywalker, Darth Sidious, his childhood, his first meeting with Padmé, his Jedi training, Obi-Wan, and even a future confrontation with Ahsoka Tano on Malachor.
He eventually reaches Padmé, but she rejects him. She tells him the man she loved is gone, then falls away as dark side energy tears through the vision.
Vader is then confronted by an apparition of Luke, who blasts him with Force energy. Vader wakes back on Mustafar and drives his lightsaber into the dark side locus, unleashing a storm across the landscape.
This version is not a separate timeline like the Infinities stories. It is a symbolic, spiritual form of Vader inside a dark side realm.
But it still shows a different side of him: Vader stripped down to obsession, grief, power, and denial. He enters the portal trying to recover Padmé, and he leaves accepting that the dark side cannot give her back.
LEGO Jedi Vader
The most comedic alternate version is LEGO Jedi Vader from LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy.
In that story, Sig Greebling discovers an ancient relic called the Cornerstone. When it is activated, the galaxy is rebuilt into strange alternate versions of familiar characters, factions, and places.
One of the results is a Jedi version of Darth Vader.
Instead of being the Emperor’s dark enforcer, this Vader serves on a weakened Jedi Council. The whole setting is intentionally absurd, with the galaxy’s familiar pieces rearranged into a completely different shape.
The sequel, Pieces of the Past, continues that idea and places Jedi Vader among other alternate heroes. It also delivers something the main saga never showed in the same way: the Skywalker family united together.
LEGO Jedi Vader is not meant to be tragic in the same way as the main version. He is part of a remix universe where Star Wars characters are rebuilt into the opposite of what fans expect.
But that is exactly why he stands out. After so many versions of Vader built around failure, guilt, ambition, or darkness, LEGO gives the galaxy a Vader who can stand with the Jedi instead of hunting them.