Darth Vader is About to Become Star Wars’ Darkest Villain for a Whole New Reason
Star Wars: Dark Droids has made Darth Vader dangerous for a whole new reason, and it could have major implications for the franchise’s future.
Throughout the entirety of the Star Wars franchise, no villain has reached anywhere near the iconic status that Darth Vader has achieved. Unfortunately for him, that hasn’t kept Vader from being targeted by enemies of every ilk. Now, Star Wars: Dark Droids has set a new nemesis upon Vader that he wasn’t aware of to begin with. And, even if Vader escapes the clutches of the Scourge, the precedent set by their encounter could still cast a dark shadow over the Galaxy Far, Far Away for years to come.
Star Wars: Darth Vader #38 (by Greg Pak, Raffaele Ienco, Federico Blee, and VC’s Joe Caramagna) finds the titular Sith caught in the midst of an onslaught of Scourge possessed droids. Though Vader doesn’t understand why the droids have turned on him and the rest of the living Imperial forces, he doesn’t need to in order to unleash his wrath upon them. That being said, not understanding the threat at hand could be more grave than Vader realizes. Apart from the general threat posed by the Scourge possessed droids, the reason for their attack on Vader isn’t necessarily unique to him, even if he is the most prime example of a cybernetic being having a direct connection to the Force.
Darth Vader may be the Scourge’s best possible target now, but the reasons for that go all the way back to the character’s beginnings as the young Anakin Skywalker. The rise and fall of Anakin is easily among the best known stories that the Star Wars franchise has to offer, starting with his liberation from slavery into the arms of Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and the then Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi. Despite Anakin’s exceptional connection to the Force, his age gave Jedi Masters such as Yoda great concern regarding the boy’s trajectory in their ranks. While Anakin flourished as those closest to him expected, so too did he fall to the Dark Side as others had worried.
This eventually led to the fateful encounter between Anakin and Obi-Wan on Mustafar where, deep within a section of its volcanic landscape, the latter left the former for dead after a grueling battle. Instead of losing his life, Anakin was remade using the best cybernetics the then budding Galactic Empire had to offer, emerging from the process as the iconic armored cyborg known as Darth Vader. Surprisingly, these cybernetic enhancements increased Vader’s connection to the Force rather than detracting from it due to the loss of living tissue. Vader explained away this phenomenon himself as being attributed to the increase in personal pain and suffering heightening his connection to the Dark Side specifically.
Whatever the reason for Darth Vader’s heightened Force sensitivity after his transformation, it is the key reason why he has been targeted by the Scourge in Star Wars: Dark Droids. As an artificial intelligence, the Scourge has been unsuccessful in transferring itself to any organic beings. This wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that, so far, no droid has ever officially made a connection to the Force, which the Scourge is desperate to connect to and effectively consume. Darth Vader, on the other hand, exists at a unique intersection between man and machine, and so far neither has caused the other any noticeable detriment.
As such, Darth Vader is the perfect target for the Scourge. Assuming the Scourge can infiltrate Vader’s mind as it has the programming of so many other mechanical beings, there is no reason to think it couldn’t then use that control to directly tap into the Force for itself. Of course, doing so would mean getting into Vader’s cybernetic systems in the first place, not to mention overpowering his impossibly strong will. At the same time, Darth Vader being the prime target for the Scourge doesn’t mean that the Fist of the Emperor is the only viable path to attaining a connection to the force for the malicious AI, and even if there aren’t many other options as of now, that isn’t stopping the Scourge from building them for itself.
Like Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker is at least partially cybernetic due to his prosthetic hand, which similarly hasn’t caused him any problems in connecting to the Force. Whether they know it or not, both Vader and Luke stand in stark contrast with much of what was previously understood about the Force, opening the door for the Scourge’s onslaught to continue in a whole new way. The Scourge simply doesn’t need to bring Vader or Luke to heel when it could use its army of droids to transform another Force sensitive being into the kind of cyborg it can exert control over. That itself isn’t any easy feat, as it would mean successfully capturing another Sith or Jedi to use as the basis for its experiment.
This still gives the Scourge another avenue by which it can continue on in its crusade. Presumably, this isn’t going to happen anytime soon, especially not after considering where Dark Droids takes place within the wider Star Wars timeline. All the same, it doesn’t have to fall on Dark Droids alone to push this concept to the next level by giving the Scourge or some other artificial entity the chance to craft an easily programmable cybernetic Force user in the future. Should the Scourge return or be replaced, the precedents that have been set by Dark Droids are more than enough to give it a clear direction when it comes to picking up where it left off and finally claiming the power of the Force for itself.
