There’s a moment in Vader’s story that doesn’t show up in the movies, but it hits harder than almost anything he does on screen. The brief story is about the one thing he swore he’d buried for good: Anakin Skywalker. In one trial, Vader came face to face with the Jedi he used to be, and for a brief moment, it looked like things could have turned out very differently.
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The Test On Mustafar
Right after taking Jedi Master Kirak Infil’a’s lightsaber, Vader was sent on what Palpatine called his true trial in Darth Vader (2017) #5. If he wanted to become a real Sith, he had to bleed the kyber crystal. That meant bending the crystal to the dark side, making it turn red, and showing he had buried Anakin Skywalker for good.
Palpatine sent him to Mustafar, right back to the place of his greatest defeat. In the caves there, Vader laid the lightsaber on an ancient Sith altar, pulled out the green crystal, and tried to dominate it with his rage. But the crystal didn’t just give in. It fought back. Energy blasted him against the cave wall, and when he woke up, something had changed.
The Vision Of Anakin
When Vader opened his eyes, they weren’t Sith yellow anymore. They were blue, the eyes of Anakin Skywalker. In that moment, he felt like he had stepped back into the path of a Jedi.
He reassembled the green lightsaber and carried it straight to Coruscant, where Palpatine was waiting. Sidious wanted proof his apprentice had embraced the dark side. Instead, Vader showed him the green blade.
Palpatine didn’t waste a second. He called Vader weak and attacked, igniting his red saber. But this time, Vader was different. He fought as Anakin Skywalker, not as a servant of the dark side.
The duel didn’t drag on. With one swift strike, Anakin disarmed the Emperor and cut him down. Sidious was dead, and with him, the entire dream of the Sith Empire. For the first time, freedom didn’t come decades later — it came right then, because Vader chose the light.
After the duel, Anakin didn’t sit on the throne or claim the galaxy. Instead, he went looking for Obi-Wan.
When he finally found him, Obi-Wan knew who it was before the helmet even came off. Anakin didn’t attack. He dropped to his knees, begged for forgiveness, and asked for his old Master to see him not as Darth Vader, but as the friend he once was. Obi-Wan raised his blade, ready to end it, but couldn’t. He turned it off and called him “Anakin” again. That reunion was everything the Clone Wars left unfinished.
The Reality Behind It
And then it was gone. The whole thing had been a vision created by the crystal itself. Back in the cave, Vader stood over the crystal again. This time, he made a different choice. He crushed it with all his anger and forced it to bleed.
When he returned to Coruscant, Palpatine smiled at the sight of the crimson blade. Vader was his true apprentice now.
The vision mattered because it pulled back the mask, even if only for a heartbeat. It proved Anakin Skywalker was still alive inside Vader. The light hadn’t completely died, even though he told himself it had.
Years later, on the Death Star and then on the second Death Star, we’d see that part of him again. But this was the first glimpse — Anakin choosing to be a Jedi, striking down the Emperor, and turning back to his Master.
