Once Luke saved his father, Anakin became one with the Force. After Return of the Jedi, we assumed Anakin shed his Darth Vader evil side. Yet, was Anakin entirely free from the dark side, or did he still have a part of Vader in himself? Read on to find out more.
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When Did Anakin Reveal Vader Was Still Part of Him?
In the Ahsoka series, audiences saw Anakin and Ahsoka meet. In Episode 4: Fallen Jedi, they met in the World Between Worlds after Ahsoka fell from a cliff while battling Baylan Skoll.
Instead of landing in the ocean, she found herself on a platform in this in-between world face-to-face with Anakin.
This video shows Ahsoka falling off and the return of Anakin. This friendly reunion conjures up Clone Wars connections and may have concluded on that note. However, in Episode 5: Shadow Warrior, Anakin and Ahsoka battle.
At first, when they were talking, Ahsoka commented on how Anakin looked the same as his youthful self. Yet, this meeting was about teaching Ahsoka a lesson.
In this scene, we see Anakin approach and tell “Snips” that it’s never too late to learn about living or dying. Then, he drew his lightsaber and the duel commenced.
This third video explores how that fight conjures up their dual past, and how that means drawing Vader back out within Anakin.
The scene focuses on reawakening Ahsoka, but it also may reveal how the dark side and Vader were still inside Anakin.
We also potentially saw Vader in Anakin in the recent canon novel Shadow of the Sith where Luke witnesses his father fluctuate between an unmasked Vader and a younger Anakin.
We can read the excerpt here, which reveals Luke meeting “a glowing blue form of Anakin” who was “two decades younger than Luke himself.” Yet, Anakin’s “spirit flickered, faded,” and “another man seemed to appear…the face revealed beneath Vader’s mask by Luke.”
As with Ahsoka, Anakin was presumably beyond these dark side connections since he had become one with the Force. But was he actually free?
Was Anakin Entirely Free From the Dark Side?
Most fans here think that Anakin could never be completely free from Vader. Comments include “while Anakin did forsake the dark side before passing, he is not completely free from it,” how there will “always be some dark side in Anakin,” and how there is “no becoming entirely free of the darkside.”
However, others indicate that since Anakin became “one with the force,” he was “no longer bound” by moral concepts and became “light-sided for all intents and purposes.”
Or, how there was “no ‘Vader’ inside him” any longer. A slightly different view contends that Anakin “acknowledges the Dark Side in him and can freely bring it out,” as with teaching Ahsoka her lesson.
These interpretations run alongside debates over whether Anakin and Vader were really the same person all along or whether Vader emerged from Anakin.
Responding to the Obi-Wan Kenobi series finale, fans here tend to think that the two were always combined with the darker side taking over. It’s more about the “two sides” being “in conflict” that makes it seem like “two separate entities.”
By drawing on The Revenge of the Sith novel, this video dives into Anakin’s character and argues along the same line.
While Anakin and Vader appear to be distinct, Anakin’s “heroism and Vader’s ruthlessness ultimately came from the same place.” These “different personalities” arose from “the same core essence.”
If you agree with this line of reasoning, we can conclude that Anakin indeed did still have Vader in him because Vader was always part of him.
However, along with the comment about bringing out that dark side on occasion, Anakin seems to have control over that Vader inside him after becoming one with the Force.
Similar to how this article posits that Vader was not Anakin’s destiny, Anakin reclaimed his light side over the dark.
Vader Inside Anakin
While we may argue that Vader truly was a separate identity from Anakin, it seems more likely that Vader arose from within Anakin.
On that same basis, we could say that Anakin still had a part of Vader in himself, albeit a more tamed version.