A Longtime Explanation For Anakin Skywalker’s Creation Was Just Debunked

Star Wars is full of far-fetched and out-of-this-world ideas. It is a franchise literally based on space knights that fight with laser beam swords, after all. But that makes it all the more fascinating and just adds to why fans love it so much. However, some of the biggest mysteries in that galaxy have yet to be answered, so it’s always a relief when a new story or tidbit does give some enlightenment. When it comes to how Anakin Skywalker was created, though, you’re going to be thinking on that one much longer. Because a longtime explanation has been debunked, and it’s back to the drawing board we go. 

It was long-believed that Anakin was created by Palpatine 

First, let’s look at what the theory was originally. In the final issue of the Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith comics, as reported by Fansided, Darth Vader enters the World Between Worlds. This is the exact same plane that Ezra went into in Star Wars Rebels, which allowed him to save Ahsoka. It’s also where they went up against Palpatine, leading many to believe it would play a role in The Rise of Skywalker. 

It’s a realm that connects all of time and space and looks different for each person that walks through it. For Ezra, it brought him to Ahsoka, for Darth Vader, it haunted him with visions of his fears and his past intertwined. One of those visions implies that Palpatine manifested the Midichlorians in Shmi Skywalker to create Anakin. Remember, in The Phantom Menace, Shmi tells Qui-Gon Jinn that Ani doesn’t have a father because one day she just woke up pregnant. 

Because of Shmi’s explanation that Anakin just sprung into creation, and his high Midichlorian count, Qui-Gon fervently believed he was The Chosen One. However, despite what the comic implied, and what many accepted as his origin, Palpatine did not create Anakin Skywalker. 

Lucasfilm Story Group confirms that Palpatine did NOT have anything to do with Anakin’s birth 

The Twitter account @CultureCrave wrote on Dec. 22 that according to Lucasfilm creative Matt Martin, “Palpatine didn’t create Anakin Skywalker with the Force.” They reported that Martin said, “This is all in Anakin’s head … I can tell you definitively, as someone who worked on the comic, that is 100% not the intended implication.”

Martin, who is the Lucasfilm Story Group Creative Executive in charge of how the Star Wars narrative and lore works, followed up with his own tweet. “It’s part of my job to ensure the stories are aligned with the overall vision of Star Wars,” he wrote. “If the intention was to make a direct connection between Palps and Anakin’s birth, I would have had it removed.”

George Lucas wanted Anakin’s birth to be as mysterious as possible

Martin also shared that George Lucas purposely never explained Anakin’s birth and creation because he wanted that ambiguity there. “George planned a lot of things that didn’t make it in the film,” Martin tweeted about a deleted scene from Revenge of the Sith that could have made this canon in 2005. “He chose not to go that direction for a reason. Old versions of scripts are not statements of fact. They’re riddled with abandoned ideas. That’s the nature of writing.”

Charles Soule, the co-writer for the comics, followed up in this thread too and confirmed what Martin said. “… You need to understand the scenario happening here. The Dark Side is not a reliable narrator.” He’s referring to the fact that, in this scene, Vader is having a lot of visions and it’s brought on by the Dark Side. As opposed to Ezra, who is able to see the true events of Ahsoka’s past, and intervene in her death. These Dark Side hallucinations are similar to how Anakin was tricked by the Son on Mortis in The Clone Wars. 

So there you have it. Despite having a pretty plausible explanation to his creation, Anakin’s birth still remains a mystery. And it’s likely to stay that way forever, if Lucas has any say in it (which he does).

Written by: Cheat