We’ve known for a long while at this point in the modern Star Wars canon how would-be-Sith get their crimson lightsaber blades: the unnatural “bleeding” of a kyber crystal. We’ve even seen how Darth Vader acquired a crystal to make his own. But the next major Star Wars novel will re-explore that same moment… and as always with the galaxy far, far away, it’s interesting to see how things shift with a certain point of view.
This week Entertainment Weekly released an excerpt from Adam Christopher’s upcoming novel Master of Evil, which will follow the early days of the fallen Anakin Skywalker’s days as Darth Vader as he explores his apprenticeship to Palpatine and the potential power of the darkness he has succumbed to and embraced in equal measure. That’s ground that’s been well trod in contemporary canon already, thanks to Charles Soule and Giuseppe Camuncoli’s volume of Marvel’s Darth Vader comic series, and Master of Evil certainly understands that (no confusion like there has been between some ancillary Star Wars media and the film/TV universe here), especially as the scene released today recreates a key moment from those comics: the first steps Vader takes to crafting his own Sith lightsaber.
The events in Master of Evil play out much the same as they did in those comics: Vader kills a reclusive Jedi, Kirak Infil’a, secures his lightsaber, and at Palpatine’s guidance, takes the weapon to Mustafar, where he begins the process of corrupting its kyber crystal to claim it as his own. We even still get the very compelling push-and-pull resistance of the crystal in the excerpt that we got there too (one of our favorite comics moments of 2017), where the kyber crystal, in an attempt to resist Vader’s will, blasts him with visions of a potential future where he realizes the horror of what he’s done, kills Palpatine, and finds himself kneeling before Obi-Wan pleading for forgiveness. But a defiant Vader renews his effort, facing a surge of his actual memories: the death of his mother, his defeat on Mustafar at Obi-Wan’s hands, and, of course, memories of his dead wife, Padmé.
It’s neat to see Master of Evil offer its own interpretation of this scene, especially in the context of getting to have it play out in the medium of a novel rather than a comic book. But that doesn’t mean it’s just a straight retelling of those exact events, with the same framing. There are some subtle differences in the translation from the comic series to Master of Evil.
One particularly striking difference between the excerpt and how it plays out in Darth Vader #5 is a piece of punctuation. In both instances of the scene, after Vader has seen this vision of him seeking redemption and returning to the light, he groggily picks himself up, forcefully slams the crystal back down under his clenched fist, and says, “No. I refuse. This is all there is.” That’s how it is in the comic, but fascinatingly, in Master of Evil, it becomes a question:
He sees a man sitting. A man he knew, once, a long time ago, but when he approaches, the Jedi’s blue blade is already alive and ready to strike. “No.” In the cave on Mustafar, the apprentice reaches out. “I refuse.” His fist closes around the crystal as it hangs in the air. “This is all there is?”
It’s subtle, but it creates a really interesting point of contrast. The way it appears in Darth Vader #5 suggests anger and defiance—Vader rejects the potential of the crystal’s vision and subjects it to his will, the darkness he has accepted within. There’s even a sense of tragedy to it, that, so broken as he has become, Vader can only accept that this is his way forward and overwhelms the crystal with that pathos.
Master of Evil making “This is all there is” a question, rather than a statement of fact, opens up interpretation—an element of potential doubt that even in this moment of embrace, the future we know is coming one day, where Anakin really is redeemed in his sacrifice on the second Death Star, is already there somewhere deep down in his mind. It could even be read as inverse, that the question Vader poses is of the crystal itself, that this is all it can do to try and sway him, or that this path of redemption is not worth what he has already endured in his suffering to get here.
It’s such a tiny moment, but the fact that it exists and can create all these potential interpretations of the same scene, the same line of dialogue, is really an example of Star Wars at its very best, when it does not give us one definitive vision of what its story is but invites discussion and interpretation from multiple sources and perspectives—playing up that mythopoetic, historical aspect of the series that has made it endure as a modern cultural myth. It’s also a very cool way of showing how two different yet similar mediums, like books and comics, can play with this in ways that a purely visual medium like film and TV would have to use different techniques for.
The more Star Wars treats itself as less of a series of immutable facts and moments and more as something that can be remixed and revisited and reinterpreted, the better. That’s what Star Wars should feel like if it’s going to be the transmedia behemoth it’s become, after all!
Master of Evil will release on November 11.