In “Star Wars” (1977), Ben Kenobi tells Luke right off the bat about Darth Vader being a former pupil (note: none of this “padawan” nonsense – I get so sick of that word in the new trilogy). This means that Obi Wan knows who Darth is behind the mask.
How?
This came up in a typical office discussion about how George Lucas didn’t even bother to reacquaint himself with what he wrote in the first trilogy before writing the prequels. At the end of “Sith”, Obi Wan leaves his pupil burning to death and legless on a lava planet. How the heck does he know who Darth Vader is?
I’m going to have to rewatch it tonight. Perhaps there’s something I’m missing. (Jeez, how bad was that movie that this doesn’t even strike me as a pleasant assignment? I guarantee you, if I had to rewatch “Empire” I wouldn’t complain.)
17 responses to “How did Obi Wan Kenobi know who Darth Vader was?”
It’s the force, he can sense him! That may be cobblers but at least you don’t have to watch that %%%% again.
It’s entirely plausible Obi-wan discovered this info in between Episode 3 and Episode 4. There’s a good 18 years between the two movies and so there’s a huge gap that can be filled in however you want it to be filled in. Lucas’ story is far from perfect and works much better if you just imagine your own stories in lieu of story gaps.
Please go read the “Star Wars” novelization.
I’ve known this since the 70’s and no one will believe me.
He put it in the freaking book 30 years ago. Let’s try to get with the program, people.
Can’t Jedis sense each others individual power or something with the force e.g. the force is strong with this one…this doesnt however explain why the sith didnt hunt down Yoda, Kenobi and Luke if this is true.
I’d have to rewatch Episode 3 to check this for sure, but Palpatine might have called Anakin “Lord Vader” during the part where Obi-wan is watching the security recordings at the Jedi temple that showed him Anakin had turned.
Well, I haven’t read the novelizations, but didn’t the Emperor give him the title ‘Darth Vader’ in the middle of the last movie, before he fought Obi? So Obi could have already known him by that name.
Another theory: jedi’s do seem to sense each other over distance, and Obi did sense large scale death over great distance in the first movie. So he might have expected to feel Anakin’s final ‘death’ through the force. When he never felt this death, he realized Anakin didn’t die.
Didn’t Obi-Wan and Yoda watch the security video in the Jedi Temple that showed Anakin killing the kids and what-not? It seems like when they watched the video, there was also a scene of Anakin kneeling before Palpatine. Maybe he called him Vader then? (He definitely called him that in his office, right after Mace bit the dust, before the temple killings.)
In Episode III Obi-Wan watches the Jedi Temple security video of Anakin going on a rampage. The last little bit of video he sees is of Palpatine dubbing Anakin “Darth Vader”.
Palpatine called him Lord Vader to at least Yoda for sure, so he could have told Obi Wan when they were having the post-beating-vader/birth party.
Right — and after viewing the security hologram of Sidious calling his apprentice “Lord Vader”, Obi-Wan pleads with Yoda not to send him to kill Anakin: “He’s like my brother,” says Master Kenobi. Yoda replies, “Gone is the boy you trained; consumed he is, by Darth Vader”.
Which is why, in the original movie from the original trilogy, Obi-Wan tells Luke that “Vader betrayed, murdered, and ate your father”. Or something like that.
As stated above the book Rise of the Dark Lord illustrates the moment that Obi-Wan learns Vader is alive when he sees a news report about the new Emperor’s right hand man, Lord Vader. Obi Wan knows (as seen in the film) that Anakin received the title Darth Vader and when he sees Vader (complete with life support armor consistent with the wounds Obi Wan witnessed) he knows Anakin survived and is active. In what is actually a pretty cool scene he starts freaking out because he has brought Luke to his evil father’s home planet, thinking that since Anakin was dead, no one would look for him there. Now that Vader is alive, its only a matter of time before he discovers Luke. The force ghost of Qui Gon calms Obi Wan, explaining that Tatooine holds too many painful memories for Anakin to return. At the same time, Vader himself comes to terms with that fact that Anakin is, for all intents and purposes, dead. He decides to embrace Vader and leave behind all that meant anything to Anakin, including his homeworld (so that also answers the question of why Obi Wan hid Anakin’s son with Anakin’s family and kept his last name). Check out the book; as Star Wars books go it’s pretty good.
you guys have really opened my eyes to the star wars books thanks.
on a humourus note for the eternal question who would win ..Terminator vs General Grevious?
please view what i think:-
http://www.cooltopten-fantasybattles.blogspot.com/
Posthaste, what was the explanation given in the novelisation? I’m curious to know.
Of course a Stars Wars debate would spark the most comments I’ve ever seen for an article.
Crutey, The Shark and Gary are right.
To answer your questions:
They actually do give a in-universe explaination in the Star Wars Expanded Universe as to why Obi-Wan knows that this half-machine/half-man creature before him is Darth Vader.
It happens in the novel Dark Lord – The Rise of Darth Vader, at the very end.
*Spoilers Ahead*
At the every end, during a visit to one of those cities on Tatooine that name currently slips my mind, on a trip to restock or whatever, Obi-Wan finds out via a holonet news report while visiting a bar to grab something to drink.
*Spoilers End*
If that doesn’t work for you, then just factor into the equation that between Sith and Hope, there’s been plenty of years for Obi-Wan to hear something. I mean, he can’t survive in the desert without bare essentials that’ll keep a human alive and that means he’s gonna have to make a visit somewhere to get supplies. That gives him plenty of opportunities to hear the not-so-latest news or rumors (once you factor in how far away that desert ball of a planet is).
Now your second question…
Why wouldn’t he just call him Anakin? Because Obi-Wan considers ‘Anakin’ dead. His friend, his apprentice, in his eyes, ‘died’ and all that remains is the monster that’s Vader.
By the time of the original trilogy, he feels that what was good in Anakin is entirely gone and what remains needs to be destroyed.
Hell, if I raised someone from a wee age up until an adult and he ends up turning on me and destroying everything that’s important in my life, not to mention forcing me to run away and hide somewhere for over 18 years because I’m watching one of his two children in the hopes of training him to defeat him and his master, I don’t think it’d be too far off for me to consider the little bastard dead to me.
He’s in hermitage, but he’s not totally disconnected. Word of the empire got to him, blue ghosts (of Qui-Gon at least) spoke to him, and just as someone living under a rock (assuming they cared to know) would know that Dick Cheney is VP, he probably heard about the enormous battlesuited Sithlord named Vader. Given that Vader is an epithet given by his master, not a title, it would make sense to make the connection and say to himself “Whoop, he survived.”