Costume design: Anakin Redeemed

@dfwaffles I want your alternate costume design for: Darth Vader survives ROTJ and needs good guy armor

— Chris Dewey (@CDooey) July 29, 2016

Don't mind if I do! A few basic problems:

• How to deal with the limbs? Vader has maybe half of his left arm left, and that's it.
• How to deal with breathing?
• Jedi robes, or what?

Thinking about this, I kept coming back to one key question: how would post-redemption Anakin think of himself? The appearance of Anakin's Force ghost implies that he was suddenly turned into a high-level Jedi Knight, but I find that a little implausible.

I think Anakin's recovery might go in three stages:

1. Very damaged

No limbs, maybe gets around in a power chair. At this stage, Anakin is resistant to the idea of ever getting robot limbs again, since he wants to be as far from Vader as he can be. He still needs a breathing mask all the time. He's going to need a caretaker -- probably C-3PO and a couple Alliance personnel.

2. Recovering

Anakin is now feeling secure enough to get robot limbs again, but not the Luke-V human-looking ones -- he doesn't want to forget that Darth Vader is still in him, and seeing the robot limbs helps with that. I don't think he's even comfortable being a Jedi yet -- I'd guess that he's wearing basic Tatooine clothing at this stage. He still needs a breather mask sometimes (like Han and Chewie's from when they're on the asteroid in V), but it turns out that Force healing plus bacta have mostly repaired his lungs and other health problems -- the Emperor was keeping him sick and dependent on his armor on purpose. He's decidedly not military, but reluctantly advises Luke on Force-related stuff, especially Dark Side things.

3. Jedi Master Anakin

Anakin now wears Jedi robes again -- I think he'd take after Qui-Gon, having gotten in touch with the living Force. He also has Luke-V human-looking limbs now -- he's embracing being a human, but the machine is always under the surface.

I'm most excited to tell stories about the middle one -- not totally down-and-out, but not back to being a Jedi again. Here's how I think he'd look:




Definitely no helmet; "Let me look on you with my own eyes." He only needs the breathing mask sometimes, when his concentration is broken, but he carries it everywhere. The breathing mask unit could be mounted in the middle of his chest as a nod to Vader's chestplate.

As long as I'm retconning, Anakin is now played by James Earl Jones, as it always should have been.

Another thought on this premise: Darth Vader is like a huge war criminal, right?! Luke can probably protect him, but they might keep him secret -- maybe claim that Anakin (Luke's dad) was a prisoner of the Empire, or something.

Killian's conspiracy theory is that Vader actually did live through RoTJ, and Luke just burned his armor and claimed he was dead to keep him secret. I asked about the Force ghost, and she said something about astral projection :)

Anything but this