Hayden Christensen will return to Star Wars in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney+, giving him the chance to redeem Darth Vader's worst prequel moment. Though fans have been looking forward to the Kenobi series for more than a year, a new announcement regarding the Obi-Wan Kenobi series has Star Wars fans buzzing with fresh excitement: Hayden Christensen will join the cast as Darth Vader. Christensen played Anakin Skywalker (later known as Darth Vader) in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. At the time, the character of Anakin (and Christensen’s portrayal) were both widely criticized by Star Wars fans. This was partly because Anakin had so many awkward lines in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith that it was hard to take the character seriously.
Anakin’s cringeworthy and melodramatic lines are prime meme fodder, but the character is still often cited as one of the trilogy’s biggest weaknesses. Anakin isn’t a very likable character, the way he pursues Padme is incredibly unsettling, and his angsty bickering with Obi-Wan comes off as immature rather than tortured. But Anakin/Vader's most embarrassing prequel moment of all was Vader’s final line in the prequel trilogy (which wasn’t even spoken by Christensen): “Noooooooooo!” The line was a homage to Luke and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s iconic delivery of the same line in Star Wars: A New Hope and Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, respectively. But the line just didn’t work coming from Vader.
Even though the line was spoken by James Earl Jones, Christensen wore the iconic black armor and appeared on camera as Vader. Christensen has made a few Star Wars appearances since then, but Vader's final scenes in Revenge of the Sith are also Christensen’s final scenes in the Skywalker saga — and it was a pretty bad note to end on. Vader's "Noooooooooo!" was weird and out-of-character — comical, even. But in the years since the films originally released, the Star Wars prequels and Hayden Christensen have both garnered massive, loyal, and (mostly) unironic cult followings. Many fans of the prequels praise Christensen’s work and are thrilled to see him return to the franchise, hoping that Christensen's role as Vader in the Kenobi series will redeem his personal reputation as well as his portrayal of the infamous villain.
In retrospect, Anakin’s dialogue in the Star Wars prequels was poorly written from the beginning. The Star Wars prequel films succeeded in many aspects — the special effects, music, fight choreography, and cinematography were all incredible — but failed at times when it came to story, dialogue, and characters, particularly Anakin. The prequel trilogy was supposed to be a Darth Vader origin story with Christensen as the star, but the young actor ultimately had to work with the lines he was given and, to put it bluntly, a lot of those lines were bad. Even for a more experienced actor than Christensen, it would have been difficult to deliver many of Anakin’s lines convincingly.
Regardless of his performance in the prequels or his return to the Star Wars franchise, Christensen doesn't deserve the vitriol that has been directed at him personally for the last twenty years. But, with any luck, Christensen’s role as Vader in the Kenobi series will redeem the prequel trilogy’s Darth Vader. Now that he is a more seasoned actor, Christensen should be able to imbue his performance with menace and complexity. Hopefully, the Obi-Wan Kenobi series will take a few lessons from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which did not bring Christensen back as Vader, but still succeeded in showing audiences a truly terrifying and powerful Vader — the Vader that Christensen deserves to portray.
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