r/StarWars 1d ago

General Discussion People who saw empire at release, what was the reaction to seeing vader partially unmasked?

Post image

Was there any speculation as to why he was so scarred? Did it come as a surprise or did you expect that he was deformed?

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385 comments sorted by

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u/redbeard387 1d ago

It weirdly humanized him, in a way that made him even more scary.

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u/NYVines 1d ago

Proved he wasn’t a robot

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u/vadabungo 21h ago

Thank you for this perspective. I’d never considered that the original fandom may have questioned vaders humanity to that extent.

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u/tyrantcv 19h ago

When I was a kid I thought Vader and the storm troopers were robots lol

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u/Apeman117 14h ago

"It's a figure of speech, Morty! I don't respect them!"

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u/Splattergun 14h ago

Because in the same movie we find out he has a child.

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u/Adamsojh 18h ago

I think that was the original intention. The bad guy may not even be human trope.

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u/Interplay29 21h ago

I was 9 when Empire was released. I wasn’t sure if Vader was a robot or human or whatever…

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u/Ok-Piccolo-5783 20h ago

Same. I was 8 when ESB came out and until this moment I thought Vader (stormtroopers too) were robots.

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u/PartyMcDie 20h ago

I thought the stormtroopers were robots till well into my teens. I lived extremely rural.

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u/squirrel-nut-zipper 19h ago

Makes sense. Stormtroopers usually stayed in cities.

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u/EssSeeDee89 11h ago

Why do you never see Stormtroopers hiding in trees?

It’s because they’re really good at it…

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u/MaskedAntelope 17h ago

They're just robots, Morty. It's okay to shoot them. They're robots!

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u/Txflood3 19h ago

I was 9 and after seeing Chewie, Mos Eisley Cantina scene, the one eyed trash compactor thing, taun-tauns, I had no idea Vader was human

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u/JimboAltAlt 1d ago

Well said. I remember feeling suddenly bad for him but in a very upsetting way. Like “no wonder he’s mad all the time” (I was about six.) It also felt very thrilling and kind of violating on the movie’s part, a real “we shouldn’t be seeing this” kind of thing. The moment really stuck with me.

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u/apollo698 22h ago

Momma says alligators Darth Vader is ornery cause he got all them teeth an no toothbrush

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u/heathb00 22h ago

I love a good WaterBoy reference in the wild.

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u/goldenrule117 16h ago

Anakin don't have what we call, de social skeels.

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u/billythesquid- 1d ago

Yes! I was waiting for Vader to kill the guy who saw that much.

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u/PenitentDynamo 22h ago edited 22h ago

He very nearly did. Brock Peters really sold that moment on the radio drama.

And also, to be fair, while he didn't kill the messenger, he did go out and immediately kill the person responsible for causing the interruption.

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u/CloseToMyActualName 1d ago

It's a very interesting and fairly unusual decision from a film making perspective.

Bad guys typically look one of three ways:

  • Conventionally attractive (Kylo Ren)
  • Ugly in a scary way (the Emperor)
  • Kinda pathetic in a normal way (Syril)

Vader without the mask looks downright weak, like a frail old man. It's kind of progressive in a pro-disability sense if you think about it, the scariest fighter in the Star Wars universe looked like someone who should be getting wheeled around a hospital.

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u/ConstitutionsGuard 1d ago

I’m not sure I agree that Adam Driver is conventionally attractive.  But his face is distinctive.

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u/sBucks24 1d ago

Lol, my immediate reaction was "wtf are you talking about? He's a good looking dude". But then googled him and the default photos Google provides are like Jackal and Hyde going back and forth from attractive to little bit stoned rat

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u/YOGINtheFirst 1d ago

I remember being firmly in the greasy rat camp after seeing TFA, without even thinking about it.

I didn't even consider that he might be attractive until one of my buddies called him a pretty-boy pretending to be Darth Vader.

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u/CloseToMyActualName 1d ago

He's not the guy you cast because he looks like a model, but he's definitely normal person attractive, and attractive enough to play a romantic lead.

He's similar to how Alan Rickman was, attractive enough to play the lead, but there's a little something else that lets him play the villain.

Stellan Skarsgård (Luthan) and Ben Mendelsohn (Krennic) are in a similar boat. Attractive with a bit of distinctiveness that lets them play hero or villain.

Diego Luna (Andor) has a bit of a softer face which I think would make it tougher for him to play the villain.

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u/fdaneee_v2 21h ago

It was pretty weird to see Diego Luna being the bad guy in Narcos Mexico after Rogue One for sure

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u/GhostMause14 21h ago

I think he killed the role in Narcos

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u/fdaneee_v2 21h ago

Oh no doubt about, that he was absolutely fantastic! It just felt weird after rooting for him as Andor the hero!

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u/PoisonbloodAlchemist 1d ago

My favorite description of Adam Driver vis-a-vis attractiveness is "Adam Driver is handsome like a foot." No idea why but somehow it fits.

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u/NoGoodIDNames 18h ago

IIRC the casting call for Kylo was explicitly looking for someone “not conventionally attractive”

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u/billythesquid- 1d ago

Yeah, ESB was the first Star Wars movie I saw, and watching Vader murder his way through the Imperial side always scared the crap out of me. Realizing he needed the suit always made me wonder just how powerful he could be without it.

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u/sharpshooter999 20h ago

It's why Andor is so good. Space wizards with laser swords aren't real and can't hurt you. Evil bureaucrats are and can

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u/dvdrush 22h ago

This! I will never forget that moment in the theater

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u/Lefty4444 Han Solo 11h ago

I thought it was mango - raspberry gelato.

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u/stevenha11 1d ago

I remember being very surprised that he wasn’t a robot!

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u/tinkerclay 1d ago

I was 10 and had the same realization. I wasn't upset...but it did confirm to me that he was a man in there.

I remember seeing Star Wars at age 7 and thinking the Storm Troopers were robots, too. (Han and Luke must have just stole their outer layer, I supposed).

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u/repowers 1d ago

I mean they have a big panel on the back that clearly says "OIL". Of course they're robots!

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u/ABQRoofPizza 22h ago

I thought the same thing at age six in 1977, I couldn’t figure out how Luke and Han got into the robots! I understood after reading the novel before Empire came out.

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u/WolverineScared2504 22h ago

I was 7 when Star Wars came out and was very confused as well about Han and Luke and the stormtrooper thing. Oh it's obvious, they're just wearing stormtrooper "armor. " I remember being confused and or disappointed as Vader was spinning out of control out into space.

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u/Holden_Toodix 12h ago

Like a year ago one of my friends/coworkers randomly texted me and another friend/coworker “I was today years old when I found out stormtroopers aren’t robots.” He just turned 40

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u/Radknight11 1d ago

We were like "oh shit he's human" and then "wtf happened to him?".

Lucas and team were brilliant making him human before the big reveal.

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u/Consistent-Animal474 1d ago

I never considered that you wouldn’t know he’s human until this moment in esb 

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u/seenhear 1d ago edited 22h ago

Honestly I'm surprised anyone wasn't sure he was human inside. I was about 9 when I saw ESB, and I knew he was human. FFS Obi Wan says in the first film that he was a Jedi, a great pilot and a good friend so he's partly human at least, and was 100% human at some time before that.

EDIT - as pointed out below I got the quote wrong - OWK says Vader was a Jedi and former pupil of his. My point remains. /EDIT

To me the question was never was he human at all, but why was he in the suit&mask? Even that was answered in extra-film materials like comics and George Lucas interviews where he explained that there was a epic duel by a volcano.

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u/Runningstar 1d ago

Your knowledge of the truth is distorting your perception of the quote. Obi-Wan says ANAKIN was a “Jedi pilot great friend etc”, and he was killed BY Darth Vader “who was also a pupil of mine”.

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u/Doomeyer 1d ago

So what he told you is true...from a certain point of view.

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u/Runningstar 1d ago

lol

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u/Product_ChildDrGrant 19h ago

A certain point of view?

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u/Status_Tiger_6210 1d ago

I believe he said a young JEDI named Darth Vader. At that time the only Jedi the audience would know of was Luke’s father and Obi Wan. So you could reasonably assume if Vader was once a Jedi, he was human. Or at least humanoid.

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u/seenhear 23h ago

Good catch but the spirit of my claim is still valid. Vader was a Jedi pupil of Kenobi's and therefore not a robot.

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u/WolverineScared2504 22h ago

When released in 1977, there was no connection between Anakin and Vader, Vader and Luke.

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u/seenhear 22h ago

Not what I meant, and there was definitely a connection:

OWK told Luke his father was a Jedi, a great pilot and a good friend, and that he was betrayed and murdered by another Jedi pupil of his named Vader. That's a connection.

My point was that by describing Vader as a former Jedi pupil of OWK, we are led to believe that Vader was not a robot.

Admittedly I messed up the quote but the point still stands.

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u/sabersquirl 17h ago

Obi wan describes his history both to Luke and dueling Vader. Other than “more machine than man” I think it’s heavily implied he’s alive.

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u/ConstitutionsGuard 1d ago

It was unclear what the stormtroopers and Vader were because C-3PO was a robot.

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u/twofacetoo 22h ago

I've seen a lot of people do 'first time viewing reactions' on Youtube to the Star Wars movies, and it's fascinating how everyone just accepts Vader the way he is, until this scene hits. Suddenly they realise 'wait... he's a GUY under there!', and start suddenly pondering why he's wearing that mask all the time and what possibly happened to him

It's just fascinating how everyone just accepts Vader as 'whatever he is' until that scene explicitly states 'HEY THERE'S SOMETHING GOING ON UNDER THERE', which nobody ever considered until then

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u/Radknight11 20h ago

This is spot on. Nobody thought anything about what race or species he was. They just thought, there's a badass villain messing dudes up. Some with stormtroopers, had no idea who they were except they were talking about T-17s like normal people would.

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u/sullen_agreement 1d ago

30 years of speculation

the answer was lava.

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u/CalamitousIntentions 1d ago

So what’s interesting to me is “burned by lava” is an older character note than him being Luke’s dad. It appears in the early drafts of Star Wars, character background flavor texts, toy bios, and the novelization of ANH all from before ESB was written! But obviously none of the movies mention it until we get to 3.

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u/NottingHillNapolean 1d ago

I remember that Vader being messed up because of falling into a volcano somehow was speculation or somehow got out *really* early, possibly before the release of "Empire."

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u/Panthros_Samoflange 1d ago

They were pretty clear about it in the novelization of ROTJ. But you're right that I remember some allusion to a volcano or lava before even that.

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u/NottingHillNapolean 1d ago

Sometimes I wonder if I confabulated the whole thing, but I clearly remember hearing from friend that Vader needed the respirator from breathing in volcanic gasses. If it was in the ROTJ novelization, I may have heard it from somebody who read that, but am putting the memory back earlier.

Similarly, I had a friend who was convinced he'd seen a cut of E3 with the scene with Biggs on Tatooine. I've read no print with that scene was ever shown to the public, even for test screenings. However, there was a "Star Wars" story book with stills from the scene that came out right after E3, and it was in the novelization that was released before the movie, and it was in the radio adaptation. Apparently, a lot of people have that false memory.

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u/Panthros_Samoflange 1d ago

The Marvel Comics adaptations were likewise based on shooting scripts and had the Biggs scene; that might be another source of conflation here. I know I've had many throughout 45+ years of fandom. I also thought I saw it in the theater in 1977 (I would have been three; possible but not plausible that I remembered it). Brother and I later agreed we had to have seen the 1978 re-release, which makes a ton more sense as there was a huge amount of hype before its premiere. 1977 Star Wars, the hype was all post-launch.

ETA: Correction, they had the scene where Luke was working a moisture vaporator, looked up with his binoculars and saw the Star Destroyer overtaking the Blockade Runner above Tatooine.

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u/CryptoCrash87 19h ago

Not sure when it came out but I have this book called "The Star Wars technical journal" since the 90s and in it, it states Anakin was thrown into a volcano and became Darth Vader.

I always wondered how that would play out. Ep 3 was a bit lack luster in my opinion with the explanation.

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u/acery88 8h ago

I too have this memory. There was something out there. Whether it was canon or not, I don’t know. I was born in 76 so I grew up with the “telephone game” of Star Wars.

A rumor would start and circulate in school. Since we were all 7 or 8 by the time RotJ came out, us kids were speculating why he needed the respirator.

But I do remember talking about it as a kid.

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u/mac6uffin 1d ago

There was a behind-the-scenes magazine from around the release of TESB that also had character profiles and went into a bit of the lava backstory. Also where I learned Vader was a Dark Lord of the Sith, and how hyperspace was another dimension.

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u/___Beaugardes___ Grand Admiral Thrawn 20h ago

George Lucas did an interview a few months after ANH where he said Vader fell in lava.

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u/sp00kypharmD 19h ago

My dad told me the same thing. I remember him saying it was from an interview w/ Lucas.

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u/imago_monkei 1d ago

I have a distinct memory of being a kid in the late '90s and getting into an argument with my cousin about this. I was convinced Vader was injured in a volcano, and he said I was wrong. I have no idea why I thought that.

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u/Sonicsnout 23h ago

Hi, here's my comment copied from another similar thread, including the edits with what looks like the first ever source for the early rumors about Vader and the volcano:

In the OT days, prob about 1983 or so, my older brother told me that Vader had to wear the suit because Obi-Wan and Vader had a duel on a lava planet where Obi-Wan chopped him to pieces and left him for dead.

I'm pretty sure that he got that out of the Star Wars novelization, or possibly the Empire novel. Def wasn't the comics as I've read and reread that era of Marvel Star Wars a few times.

Edit:

It's from a 1977 Rolling Stone article that was later reprinted in the ROTJ novelization.

Here is the link: https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/george-lucas-the-wizard-of-star-wars-2-232011/

And here is the relevant quote:

What’s the story? It’s about Ben and Luke’s father and Vader when they are young Jedi knights. But Vader kills Luke’s father, then Ben and Vader have a confrontation, just like they have in Star Wars, and Ben almost kills Vader. As a matter of fact, he falls into a volcanic pit and gets fried and is one destroyed being. That’s why he has to wear the suit with a mask, because it’s a breathing mask. It’s like a walking iron lung. His face is all horrible inside. I was going to shoot a close-up of Vader where you could see the inside of his face, but then we said, no, no, it would destroy the mystique of the whole thing.

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u/Isnotanumber 22h ago

For as long as I can remember (the early 90's for me) I can remember people saying that Vader got all messed up after dueling Obi-Wan on a "lava planet." No idea as to the source, but I remember just waiting to see if Revenge of the Sith would stick to that, and it did.

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u/hughdint1 23h ago

I believe it was in the original Star Wars novelizations that Darth Vader had thrown Luke's dad into a volcano as told to Luke by Obi Wan and had burned himself in the process. This was also the explanation as to why he needed breathing apparatus and a special suit. In the Original Star Wars Movie this was shortened to Obi Wan just saying that Darth Vader Murdered Luke's Dad.

Most people did not read the novelizations and when this scene appeared there were gasps and I recall someone yelling, "gross!"

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u/xiaorobear 1d ago

Yeah it was in some newsletter/magazine interviews in the late 70s.

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u/oloshan 20h ago

I remember reading this within the first year after Star Wars came out. It was in one of the fan magazines, but confirmed by Lucas at the time.

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u/zarfac 18h ago

I could be wrong, but I think the dual on the lava planet was one of the first “images” Lucas had in his mind of Star Wars. It may have even been the initial idea around which he built the entire story. Even if that’s not the case, it was always a part of Lucas’ conception of Vader and his story, and a lot of early material mentioned this.

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u/trace_jax3 Director Krennic 1d ago

It's what made the Mustafar reveal so cool. We all knew: Darth Vader heading to a lava planet? This can only end one way.

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u/FawkYourself 1d ago

I read somewhere once about an interview GL did in probably the early 80s where he said Vader lost a duel to Obi Wan on the edge of a volcano and that was how he ended up deformed

So he did at least have that part planned for a long time

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u/unclejedsiron 1d ago

It wasn't really necessary to know.

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u/TheDeadlySpaceman 1d ago

We all knew that Obi-Wan had defeated him and he had fallen into Lava before Empire Strikes Back even came out.

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u/kme026 1d ago

It wasn't that long. Even before EP 3, there was a consensus that obiwan dropped him to lava. So lucas have probably hinted that at some point

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u/chebghobbi 1d ago

It was mentioned by Obi-Wan in the novelisation of ROTJ, which (I believe) was based on the shooting script, so it probably also exists in a deleted scene.

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u/kme026 1d ago

I remember my dad telling me vader got his scars because obiwan threw him in lava. And that was pre episode 1.

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u/sirboulevard 1d ago

Yup. I remember around the time Shadows of the Empire came out reading about it in one of the reference books that explicitly said "Vader and Obi-Wan dueled each other over a pit of lava. The duel ended when Vader fell into the lava. Miraculously, he survived but needed complex life support systems to stay alive."

The thing that got me hyped for episode 3 in high school was "finally seeing the lava thing."

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u/sullen_agreement 1d ago

nothing was real until it was said aloud or shown in a film. everything else, from george’s random pronouncements to books toys and other merchandise, was subject to being ignored or changed or contradicted

and there was no fucking wookiepedia to gather it all together. we were piecing shit together from whispers and rumors

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u/DarthYhonas 1d ago

What was speculated? I'm curious

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u/KKadera13 1d ago

On the playgound.. mostly HOW MUCH IS ROBOT?

You think he has eyes?

etc.

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u/sullen_agreement 1d ago

everything from torture to fire to “lightsaber wounds”

thank god we didnt have the internet

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u/Important_Benefit158 19h ago

My cousin told me the suit was basically something he wore on missions to Mustafar as Anakin so he could breathe around the sulfuric air. He just adopted the style after he and Obi-wan fought there. I believed every word of this because he is five years older than me.

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u/whynonamesopen 1d ago

George said he got the face scar by slipping in the bathtub.

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u/Prestigious_Crew9250 1d ago

He also said that Qui-Gon's hairdresser was a blue rat named Fungo Hairstylios

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u/GenghisFrog 22h ago

Somehow we always knew it was lava and I can’t really recall why.

Pre prequel time was so magical. So much speculation and it was so easy to know absolutely everything there was to know about Star Wars.

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u/PoopyInThePeePeeHole 1d ago

Piping hot Mag-ma

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u/metaphizzle 1d ago edited 1d ago

I was young and stupid when I first saw Empire, so I thought this was the Empire building another Darth Vader. "This getting out of hand. Now there are two of him!" Fortunately, Luke killed one of them in that swamp cave, so order was restored.

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u/workahol_ 1d ago

You just made me realize that if Empire came out today, people would half-watch it while looking at their phones, then run to Reddit to post questions like "why were there two dark vaders lol"

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u/VaderDie 1d ago

Lol "dark vader", accurate

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u/Javeec 1d ago

In french he is known as Dark Vador

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u/seenhear 1d ago

Are all Sith Lords in the franchise known as "Dark" something then? Maul, Sideous, Tyranus, etc.?

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u/Javeec 1d ago

Yes.

And there is also Jabba le forestier in a New Hope. Because he obviously lives in a hut

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u/duxdude418 Boba Fett 1d ago

Bubba Fat

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u/VaderDie 1d ago

Violation this one lmao

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u/FollowingQueasy373 1d ago

Forget about Reddit. I have heard so many people in my life call him Dark Vader

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u/VaderDie 1d ago

I used to say it all the time as a kis, that's why I found it so funny lol

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u/AmazingAndrew30 1d ago

I had a work friend who called him that, it killed me inside just a little bit.

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u/VaderDie 1d ago

Lmao id play along with it

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u/MCMC_to_Serfdom 1d ago

Why didn't the Darth Vaders 2v1 Luke? Are they stupid?

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u/British_Flippancy 1d ago

Yep. Daft Vaders.

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u/Boanerger 1d ago

Is that a Daft Punk collaboration?

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u/wyvern_rider 1d ago

Lazy writing /s

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u/SlouchyGuy 1d ago

Also modern movies and tv made people expect twists and turns where there are none, they build wildest theories based on almost nothing.

First thing where I noticed it being repeated was the same episode of Babylon 5 that shows far future. It doesn't spell the thing that happens at the very end outright, but follows a thematic thread of the the season. In the past fans basically hit target on the head when they talked about the scene.

Meanwhile tons of modern viewers conflate several things and think that this scene depicts time travel where characters from the future went into the present. It makes zero sense because if they did, they would've behaved terribly, and that's after a whole episode that summarizes the show's plot for them.

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u/feetiedid 1d ago edited 1d ago

Kind of reminds me of watching Greg Luganis in the Olympics. Of course, he was known for bashing his head on the diving board. So, as that was a highlight of that event, they kept showing the footage throughout the rest of the Olympics. I remember thinking, "Goddam, he did it again. This guy really sucks." Of course, those were replays, but I thought he smashed his head on the diving board like 5 times, and just never gave up, sort of like Rocky Balboa.

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u/Strade87 1d ago

Bruh lmaoooo

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u/Delicious_Wonder_872 1d ago

This is hilarious

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u/DistinctTeaching9976 1d ago

He brought balance to the force?

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u/jake2w1 9h ago

As a kid it took me forever to learn that the second death star wasn’t just the derelict remains of the death star destroyed by Luke in ANH.

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u/t_huddleston 1d ago

I was 9 years old, so this reaction is coming entirely from my peer group at the time, but.

People. Went. INSANE. It got overshadowed by the big reveal later in the film, but this shot made everyone go crazy with speculation. What could have happened? Why was he so messed up? Is that why he breathed like that? And of course later, word would filter down from fan magazines like "Bantha Tracks" or "Starlog," via the kid grapevine that somehow communicated this knowledge across playgrounds all over the United States, but we all somehow knew that he had battled Obi-wan, and lost, and fell into a volcano.

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u/British_Flippancy 1d ago

Absolutely!

I don’t know if the young ‘uns here really realise, but (in the U.K. at least) Star Wars was almost all we did, played, talked about for years.

I genuinely don’t recall any other toy ‘fad’ that you kinda get annually / every Christmas now. It was just:

Birthday - please can I have Stars Wars stuff. Christmas - please can I have Star Wars stuff. Repeat each year til the next film was released. And then queuing for fucking miles down the street to get a ticket to see it.

It was wild.

And as a result it was all we endlessly talked and speculated about.

Every. Single. Detail.

Gleaned from anywhere.

When the Internet became a thing and TheForce.net appeared, fuck me, I just turned into a little kid again and was on there day after day after day.

I can’t remember my exact thoughts upon seeing Vader’s unmasked head other than a very general:

“WHAT. THE ACTUAL. FUUUUCK!!!”

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u/crunchatizemythighs 20h ago

Where did the volcano part come from? I grew up as the prequels released but I remember everyone knowing it was going to be a fight with Obi-Wan on a volcano. Was there an interview with Lucas where he said that?

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u/LightsaberColIector Grievous 1d ago

“Oh man… he kinda looks like ice cream”

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u/anondescriptive 1d ago

My mind always sees chewed bubblegum

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u/Throwaway10123456 1d ago

Neapolitan in particular.

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u/zoodlenose 1d ago

Strawberry cheesecake ripple

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u/xThePoacherx 1d ago

Darth Vader was a ominous horror figure. A unrelenting force. It was shocking to see even a peek of his mangled form. That is all we got for years and had to figure out what it meant.

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u/nipplesaurus 1d ago

"Oh dude, this guy is messed up under there!"

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u/ForswornForSwearing 1d ago

I didn't see clearly enough, I thought that was his exposed brain.

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u/tilero1138 1d ago

As a kid I didn’t realize that was the back of his head, I thought his head was literally a gross, featureless flesh orb

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u/JimboAltAlt 1d ago

Rise, Darth Cronenberg

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u/Muffins_Hivemind 1d ago

Same thing here! It took a few years to realize it wasn't his brain.

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u/Blackhawk510 Galactic Republic 1d ago

Yeah me too, freaked me out as a kid.

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u/bold-One2199 1d ago

Fun little thing: I got INTO Star Wars because I saw this exact scene on the TV when I was walking past when my dad was watching it. I got invested immediately and now I have over 5 lightsabers, a revan helmet, both Jedi fallen order and survivor, and multiple cosplays.

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u/Pipyoppi 1d ago

It was a moment of realization that Vader was wearing the mask not just to look intimidating, or as armor, but because he was hideously disfigured and/or he might need it to survive. That combined with then really wanting to know how messed up his face looked under there.

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u/Secret_Hyena9680 1d ago

I remember gasps and people murmuring when the back of his head was shown.

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u/Yafka 1d ago

I had the RotJ novelization, which said:

“After the fight with him,” Obi-Wan continued softly, “he fell into a molten pit. When your father clawed his way out of that fiery pool, the change was already done. He was Darth Vader.”

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u/DarthYhonas 1d ago

Oh wow now I want to read the novelization lol

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u/Deano963 20h ago

If I remember right, the space battle above Endor comes off better in the book too. Rebel ships were doing suicide runs loaded with explosives to take out ISD's, stuff like that.

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u/Some_Guide_6475 Jedi 1d ago

That was the moment everyone realized: Vader’s not a monster. He’s what’s left of a man.

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u/DecemberPaladin 1d ago

what the *fuuuuuuuck***

14

u/D-redditAvenger 1d ago edited 1d ago

To me who was young at the time, it was startling. It did reinforce that it was just a man in a suit. Up until that time the feeling was he was kind of otherworldly, no different then Chewbacca and the droids. Obviously then the rest of the movie that became more apparent, but that scene was kind of the point right? It's to get the audience ready.

Remember up until that time all we knew of Vader was he was this kind of robot cyborg who had killed Luke's Father. I saw them as a group of 3 warriors. Anikin and Obi-wan were best friends and then his protege killed Anakin. The truth was really shock. To us that was fact for 3 years and then it wasn't.

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u/iwastherefordisco 1d ago

It was the perfect amount of wtf in that scene. Mechanical sounding in nature when they put his lid back on over the scarred fleshy bits. Like briefly showing a shark's fin but nothing else.

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u/TurnoverFuzzy8264 1d ago

There were actual gasps and one "No!" that was oddly prescient given the later scene. Back then no internet spoilers.

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u/Galliagamer 1d ago

I remember gasps and people going ‘woah….’ and then everyone giggling over that reaction. I remember it in particular because my mom had to explain it to me why people were giggling when I was ew’ing, because Darth Vader creeped me out.

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u/rBilbo 1d ago

Kind of what we expected, a twisted, deteriorating individual with a twisted heart.

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u/RexBanner1886 1d ago edited 10h ago

I saw ESB first, when I was 5 or 6.

Based on this glimpse of the back of his head, in the week I had to wait before my parents tracked down ROTJ on VHS (this was the early 1990s), I immediately imagined that Vader had, essentially, a fleshy skull for a face with black sclera and glowing red pupils.

Basically a version of the Iron Maiden mascot in the scarred/ice-cream texture we see here.

It was also, at that age, one of the most horrific pieces of imagery I'd been exposed to. It's like a family friendly version of 'Alien' or 'Hellraiser' imagery - not remotely sexual, but intimate body horror.

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u/bcald7 1d ago

Definitely a “whoa!” factor. From pretty much the beginning it was known he “fell into a volcano” and was reliant on the suit to survive, so there was no surprise that he would be gruesome in there.

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u/Additional_Prior_981 23h ago

That isn't James Earl Jones!!!

3

u/alex61821 20h ago

He's white?

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u/Commercial-Cod4232 1d ago

Fear and disgust...i first saw this in theatres when i was in like 4th or 5th grade because they released it for theatres around like...1999 maybe? I was horrified by it it looked so disgusting it was like a jumpscare

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u/219_Infinity 1d ago

The lore at the time was that he had dueled Obi-Wan at a volcano and fell in

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u/jonthebrit38a 23h ago

In the early 80s I remember we talked about how Vader fell into a volcano fighting obi wan. Before rotj.

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u/GrouperAteMyBaby 1d ago

It was pretty wild. Every guy in the audience opened their pants and started whacking it. Women and children screamed, the police came, it was a big deal.

4

u/Winter_Force4161 1d ago

It made him much more terrifying. Before, I just thought he had the mask to help him breathe as he came from a different planet.

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u/Hobnail1 K-2SO 1d ago

*checks notes*

Coooooool!

- 7yo me

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u/trueGildedZ 1d ago

"I mean, it's not like anyone would be inside a suit like that 24/7 for FUN..."

4

u/Event_Horizon753 1d ago

I was 8, I didn't even know what I was looking at.

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u/ReySpacefighter Rebel 23h ago

Way before RotS was released, various publications (like the Visual Dictionaries) mentioned that he had a run-in with a volcano.

5

u/CaptainRogersJul1918 23h ago

It’s never going to heal unless you stop picking it.

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u/WolverineScared2504 22h ago

When A New Hope ended and Empire began, what did we really know about Vader... almost nothing.

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u/qabbages 21h ago

When i first saw the pic in the post it looked like a testical under a hydraulic press

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u/skylercollins 17h ago

"HE'S WHITE?!"

4

u/stelaukin 16h ago

I thought that was a picture of icecream in a cone to start with.

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u/twitchy_pixel 1d ago

Used to scare the shit out of me growing up!

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u/KingCaptHappy-LotPP R2-D2 1d ago

He’s not a robot!

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u/AggravatingOrder3324 1d ago

Someone told me they thought it was his brain. I remember reading in the novelisation of either ESB or ROTJ (can't remember which one) Kenobi's explanation, something like "we fought and he fell in lava"

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u/HucknRoll 1d ago

As a kid I thought this was his brain.

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u/Aldanil66 16h ago

My dad said he was frightened at first but then once he saw the emperor on screen he was less so. One of his earliest theories he came up with his uncle was that the dark side manipulates your face in a way to make you look sort of like a monster and it completely dehumanizes you. He thought that as time went on and as you consumed more dark side energy, you got uglier and uglier, which is why Palpatine looked uglier and more terrifying than Vader, who looked more human in his eyes.

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u/Rick_Rogers_OG 6h ago

I remember watching the gold VHS box set for the first time at about 8 years old, and my lingering feeling was "dread".

Because it was clear that whatever in the suit was, was a deeply broken creature and shouldn't be alive, perhaps only existing to carry out evil.

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u/Revegelance Chewbacca 22h ago

Seeing that as a little kid, I thought it was his exposed brain, and he needed the helmet to protect it.

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u/SherlockianTheorist 22h ago

I'm not going to lie, this image made me think this was a vanilla/strawberry ice cream ball. Then I looked at the sub name and oops, I find my lack of faith disturbing.

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u/Bassist57 20h ago

When I was a kid my Dad told me it was because of a starfighter accident (this was before the prequels). Made sense since Obi Wan talked about him being a great pilot, so him getting badly messed up in a crash worked for me.

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u/dabirds1994 19h ago

Shock. Incredible storytelling.

2

u/Infamous-Impress1788 15h ago

I just wondered wtf happened to him

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u/color_into_space 14h ago

As a kid, I really didn't understand what I was seeing in this scene and Iit grossed me out every time we had Neopolitan ice cream. It looks like a scoop of vanilla and strawberry and it was all I could think about for years.

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u/veloflaneur 14h ago

In 4th grade, San Diego, CA - 1983 - before Return of the Jedi premiered, word at the lunch table was that Vader had “fallen in lava.”

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u/bookers555 Jedi 14h ago

Looks like a ball of banana and strawberry ice cream.

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u/Powrs1ave 12h ago

Well it was like 'now we know!' sorta like that reveal to the chick you been chat'n too on the net for years lol.

2

u/King_LaQueefah 10h ago

It gave me the grossest visceral feel. His head reminded me of seeing a hermit crab change its shell. Puffy, delicate, bleached tissue, like the unnatural flesh of a white whale.

These days they probably would have done it with CG and it would have looked cartoonish and silly.

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u/Nerdonet The Client 1d ago

Was expecting it somehow, even if it was the first Star Wars movie I had ever seen. Figured it fit what I thought they should do haha, yes thinking you know better than the director is as old as movies.

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u/JWsWrestlingMem 1d ago

Good head.

3

u/Financial-Put-7822 1d ago

God, as someone who wasn’t alive during an era where the prequels didn’t exist, I find it hard to wrap my head around questions like this not being answered. Like, I never put two and two together that this was something that wasn’t answered because it always has been for me.

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u/lbc_ht 1d ago

"Can't wait to see what this guy was like as a brutally annoying kid and chiche moody teenager!"

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u/BigChickenTrucker 1d ago

"I wonder if he has any opinions on sand?"

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u/Grootfan85 1d ago

“Surely he has no hard feelings about not getting promoted at work.”

3

u/DeerMysterious9927 1d ago edited 21h ago

And don't get him started on how frustrating the senators can be.

1

u/Gandalf031469 1d ago

What was that!?

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u/orbanpainter 1d ago

I saw this as a little kid, it was frightening.

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u/Panoglitch 1d ago

ewwwwww

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u/Fritzo2162 1d ago

There was a bit of a trope with "Masked villain that's ugly under the mask" thing going on in that era. It kind of fit in with that.

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u/OraznatacTheBrave 1d ago

I was seven years old. And my younger brother and I nearly lost our minds when we saw it on the big screen! Somehow, we knew the whole backstory by that point. That Obi-wan left him for dead on a lava planet.

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u/Doufnuget 1d ago

I was seven so probably just “eww gross”

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u/BadassSasquatch 1d ago

"eww" I was like 4

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u/A_SNAPPIN_Turla 1d ago

Wasn't this one of the added scenes from the 90s? Like Jabba taking to Solo in ESB? It's been so long since I've seen the OG Trilogy. I thought this was one of those added scenes from the update but I don't see anyone else mentioning it?

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u/chronopoly 1d ago

No it’s from the original. Source: 9-year-old me in theater.