![George Lucas Reveals the Original Backstory for Darth Vader [Not Luke’s Father]](https://may4bewithyou.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Vader-and-Anakin.jpg)
Most fans know Darth Vader as Luke Skywalker’s father. But that wasn’t the plan when George Lucas first started writing.
In the early versions of Star Wars, Vader and Anakin were two different characters. Luke’s father was a fallen Jedi. Vader was just the enemy. The twist didn’t exist yet—and the backstory looked very different from the one we know now.
Darth Vader Before the Father Twist
When George Lucas wrote the first version of Star Wars, Darth Vader wasn’t related to Luke at all. He was a villain—powerful, masked, and tied to the fall of the Jedi—but not part of the Skywalker family.
In those early drafts, Luke’s father was still alive, named Annikin Skywalker, and written as a completely separate character. Later versions had him already dead, remembered as a noble Jedi killed during the Clone Wars. Either way, he wasn’t Vader.
None of the earliest drafts of A New Hope treat Vader and Anakin Skywalker as the same person. In fact, some early story material shows them existing at the same time, even in conflict with one another. Obi‑Wan’s line about Vader “betraying and murdering your father” wasn’t written as misdirection—it reflected the story as it existed then.
You can see this most clearly in the way Lucas talked about Vader in 1977, right after Star Wars was released. During that period, he recorded a number of in‑character audio segments meant to flesh out the universe. They aren’t considered canon today, but they’re important because they show what Lucas was thinking before the sequel was written.
In those explanations, Lucas describes Darth Vader as a former Jedi who turned on the Order and helped wipe it out—but not as Luke’s father. Instead, Anakin Skywalker is described as one of the last surviving Jedi, separate from Vader, and eventually hunted down by him. At one point, Lucas even says that Obi‑Wan and Luke’s father were among the few Jedi who initially survived Vader’s purge.
Anakin Skywalker Was a Separate Character
When The Empire Strikes Back entered development, George Lucas still hadn’t made Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker the same person. In Leigh Brackett’s first draft of the script—written from Lucas’s story notes—Anakin is very much alive, or at least present, as a separate character.
In that version, Luke meets the spirit of his father on a swamp planet called Bog World (the early name for Dagobah). Anakin appears alongside Obi-Wan and speaks to Luke as a mentor. He talks about hiding Luke and his sister when the Empire closed in, and urges his son to take the oath of a Jedi Knight. There’s no hint that he and Vader are the same person—just the opposite.
That version didn’t last long. But it confirms that Lucas was still rethinking the story during development—not revisiting a twist he had already planned.
