Star Wars Finally Answers Darth Vader Mystery
The Star Wars sequel trilogy left us with many unanswered questions, including big stuff like how the hell Maz Kanata ended up with Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber. But one of the biggest mysteries has been staring both us and Adam Driver in the face from the very beginning: the question of how Sith wannabe Kylo Ren ended up with the charred remains of Darth Vader’s helmet.
Now, as Yahoo! reports, the upcoming anthology book From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi introduces us to the story of an Imperial soldier who ends up on Endor and may well find the helmet.
The Star Wars anthology book From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi will detail how Kylo Ren obtained Darth Vader’s helmet
As you’ll recall, the end of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi showed us how Darth Vader died from his injuries, but only after Luke Skywalker helped to bring him back to the Light Side of The Force. Afterward, Luke Skywalker sets Vader’s body on fire on the surface of Endor, which helps to explain why the helmet looks so charred and nasty when we see it in The Force Awakens. But one question that none of the Sequel Trilogy films ever got around to answering is how Kylo Ren retrieved it.
That could all be changing soon: in the anthology book From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi, one short story introduces us to an early misadventure of the Imperial Officer Enric Pryde. In Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, this character had attained the rank of Allegiant General, but in this short story, we see him as a much younger officer.
There, he’s dealing with the fact that, against all odds, the Rebels (with some help from the Ewoks) ended up destroying the second Death Star and with it (or so everyone assumed at the time) Emperor Palpatine.
While the excerpt from this Star Wars anthology doesn’t explicitly mention Darth Vader, it does reference Pryde waking up on Endor, something we can deduce thanks to the mention of “the dawn.”
The Star Wars story will focus on Imperial Officer Enric Pryde
This excerpt doesn’t really detail how he ended up on the forest moon in the first place, but the smart money is that he either fled from the Death Star and hid his ship on Endor or that it was shot down by Rebel forces.
The important thing, though, is that we now canonically have a loyal soldier of the Empire on Endor immediately following the end of The Return of the Jedi.
It’s possible, then, that this Star Wars short story will reveal Pryde discovering the dead body of Darth Vader and deciding to bring it back, either out of loyalty to his former leader or because he doesn’t want to leave Vader’s corpse surrounded by enemies.
While that’s admittedly a stretch, it’s worth remembering that this isn’t just any officer: Pryde was trusted by Emperor Palpatine so much that he was in charge of commanding the Sith Fleet that Palpatine had hidden deep within Exogol. If there’s anybody who might rip the smoking helmet off a charred corpse to win favor with Kylo Ren or other powerful baddies, it’s probably this guy.
