Director Of OBI-WAN KENOBI Explains How Darth Vader Will Be Different in The STAR WARS Series

Lucasfilm’s Obi-Wan Kenobi series is based in between the events of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: A New Hope. It’s a time that hasn’t really been worked on before in live-action and it’s going to be exciting to see what these characters were like between the two movies. Darth Vader was one of the villains in Star Wars Rebels.

While fans of the franchise are excited to see the comeback of Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, it’s going to be amazing to see Hayden Christensen back as the Sith Lord, Darth Vader. Director Deborah Chow, recently revealed that this is going to be a different version of the Vader. While talking to Entertainment Weekly, she said:

“For us, it’s very similar [to Obi-Wan] in the sense that he’s in between these two trilogies. So he isn’t the New Hope Vader quite yet, you know what I mean? So we are with the character sort of in the middle of this period. It is still Vader obviously, but it’s a Vader that isn’t quite as fully formed as A New Hope.”

Chow went on to explain why she wanted to bring Vader back for this series, saying:

“Honestly, for me the starting place was that I really wanted to do something that was character-based and character-driven, because that is the benefit of the limited series, is that you have more time to sort of tell a real character story. And so for me, the starting place of character is you just start and you look at who has been important to him in his life. And it’s quite hard to avoid Anakin/Vader in that scenario, especially coming out of Revenge of the Sith.”

The story starts 10 years after the dramatic events of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith where Obi-Wan Kenobi faced his biggest defeat—the downfall and deterioration of his best friend and Jedi apprentice, Anakin Skywalker, who went to the dark side as evil Sith Lord Darth Vader.

The series also stars Moses Ingram, Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Kumail Nanjiani, Indira Varma, Rupert Friend, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Sung Kang, Simone Kessell, and Benny Safdie.

Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi will be released on Disney+ on May 25th.