Pretty much every single time he appears, from the climactic scenes of Revenge of the Sith on down to his duel with Luke aboard the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi, there are two universal truths about Darth Vader, to wit:

1) He is always the coolest, baddest-ass guy in the room, just an absolute force (as it were) of nature, utterly terrifying and implacable; and

2) He fails. Even when he appears to succeed, he's in the process of failing at whatever his actual goal is. He can even cause someone else to succeed (usually the Emperor) while simultaneously failing at his own personal goal.

The very first job he pulls under the name "Darth Vader" goes exactly like that. He succeeds in his stated mission goals (exterminate the younglings, wipe out the Separatist Council, et al.), but completely blows his actual mission (save Padmé), so spectacularly that he more or less kills her himself.

Fast-forward to the original Star Wars, in which his plan to lead the Death Star to the Rebel base works perfectly! So perfectly that the Rebels blow it up. Empire? Track down the Rebel base on Hoth on the Empire's behalf: success. (But most of them get away.) Capture someone who can lure Luke into his trap on Cloud City? Check! Convince Luke to join him or, failing that, kill him: ... ah.

And then there's his (continuity-wise) final appearance, in which he manages to lure Luke into a trap again, and then loses another lightsaber duel to him. At which point young master Anakin finally catches half a clue, realizes that nothing he has ever done for the Emperor has done him the slightest bit of good, and throws the old fucker down the nearest bottomless pit. Fortunately, Imperial architecture has a lot of those, so he didn't have to lug him very far with all the lightning and everything popping off.

His appearances in recent supporting media all seem to follow the same basic pattern, which pleases me, because it shows that the people responsible still understand the fundamental nature of Anakin Skywalker: he is an incredibly impressive... fuckup. Nothing he does will ever turn out the way he wants, but man, is he gonna look cool not accomplishing it.

I'm not even throwing shade, I genuinely think this is the best thing about his character. It almost makes me regret taking him (them?) in (a) different direction(s) in UF.

--G.
For bonus points, I'm not sure this was even intentional. It might have just sorta... happened. :)
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.