As we know, the upcoming “Obi-Wan Kenobi” limited series on the Disney+ service features the return of Darth Vader in events set ten years after the prequels and twenty years before the original trilogy.
Because of that, we’ll see a version of the character we haven’t really seen before which is one reason that filmmaker Deborah Chow, who directed the entire series run, wanted Hayden Christensen to return to the role.
Christensen only played Vader in the final moments of the last of the prequel films, and so hasn’t really strutted his stuff as the Vader incarnation of his Anakin Skywalker character. Chow tells EW that the series being very character-focused and being in the point in the timeline it is naturally led to the inclusion of Vader:
“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. 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.’
[So] it came out of an evolution of the character for me. It wasn’t just to sort of bring him back. It was really like, who means something and where are we at this point in the timeline with Vader?
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 adds that Ewan McGregor and Christensen have been their characters for so long and lived with them in their lives for so long that “it makes it so helpful in terms of the creative”.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi” is set to debut May 25th on the Disney+ service.
Source: EW