As Darth Vader #25 hits shelves today, writer Charles Soule catches up with the StarWars.com team to discuss his run on the book and the incendiary ending of the second modern Marvel volume.
With a storyline that feels like an in inverse of the Mortis arc from The Clone Wars, where Anakin Skywalker was faced with a vision of his dark future, the final issue in the series invites us into Vader’s meditative mindscape on Mustafar as he travels among the ghosts of his past, a deeply moving journey woven with familiar images and dialogue clipped right from the Star Wars films and other stories. Vader confronts the looming shadow of his present form as it casts a pall over his childhood. Ultimately, he finds a twisted and evil version of Padmé and makes one last attempt to save her before accepting his fate, a pale vision of a single Jedi warrior seen just on the horizon. “He goes from no to yes in the series,” Soule says, literally bookending the first panel of the first issue and the last panel of the final issue with these simple words that denote a complete shift in the character’s thinking. “What he realizes in 25, and it was a very pointed choice to not show possibilities, everything he’s seen is stuff that’s already happened… What’s the point of doing anything other than this? This is all there is for me.
