Hayden Christensen is about to return to a galaxy far, far away in style. The prequel trilogy star only had a very brief moment as Darth Vader at the end of Revenge of the Sith, but he’s making an enormously anticipated comeback in Obi-Wan Kenobi. That premieres on Friday, and while we don’t know if Vader will appear in the debut episode, we should at least get a tease of his presence.
But, with Christensen back in action and apparently delivering a great Vader performance, why stop with just one show? Lucasfilm is currently hard at work on Ahsoka, the spinoff that will continue the story teased in the excellent The Mandalorian episode “The Jedi”. Ahsoka was Anakin’s padawan, so it makes sense for the pair to reunite here.
While nothing has been officially confirmed, The Hollywood Reporter said back in October that it was a done deal. Christensen was asked what the status is in an interview on Capital FM, and responded about as vaguely as you’d imagine.
“I don’t know, I can’t really speak to the Ahsoka series. I don’t know about that one.”
Optimists can point out this isn’t strictly a denial, but it may be that Christensen doesn’t know what’s going on in Ahsoka because he isn’t in it. Perhaps the most obvious reason is that by the time Ahsoka is set, Vader is being swept into an Ewok ash pile, so him appearing here wouldn’t make much sense. But then again, this is Star Wars, and we know that Anakin can appear as a Force Ghost – so why not pop in to spectrally check up on his former friend?
The problem with that is that the relationship between Anakin and Ahsoka is so important that any new interaction between them needs to be handled very carefully. Dave Filoni knocked it out of the park in Rebels, with a scene in which Ahsoka recognizes that Vader had completely replaced Anakin, and vows to avenge his death. Going back to that well runs the risk of diluting previous scenes, so fingers crossed it adds to their legacy.
Ahsoka is expected to release in early 2023, while Obi-Wan Kenobi premieres this Friday, 27 May on Disney Plus.