Many comics, series, books, or games expand the world of Star Wars that originated from the films. To this day, works are being released that deal with the time between certain films. In the comics, Darth Vader, in particular, gets a lot of screen time. Just before Episode 6, he attempted multiple times to go against his master.
What is it about? In the films, one sees the transformation of Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader in Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith. In the first three films, the Sith Lord does not appear that often. Various comics, however, show some of what happens between certain films.
As submissive as Darth Vader appears up until the betrayal of the Emperor in Episode 6, he was not that way at all. He attempted multiple times to rebel against the Emperor. For this, he wanted to build an army that resembled Anakin Skywalker more than the Empire.
Darth Vader built a robot army – a total of 3 times
What kind of robot army was that? In the nature of the Sith, betrayal is an important point. The Rule of Two shows: A student betrays his master and then becomes a master himself. With Palpatine and Vader, this only happened at the end in Episode 6 in the films. However, in various comics, it looked different. Vader planned betrayal but did not rely on living allies.
As Screen Rant shows, this happens, for example, in the comic Darth Vader #44: Soldiers for the Schism, which was released in March 2024. There, an organization of traitors helps him who are for the Galactic Empire but against the Emperor.
With the help of the organization, Darth Vader builds a droid army that only listens to him. This was not the only time Vader built such an army. In the 2015 comic series of Vader, he built an army of Separatist droids after the events of Episode 4.
He built them with a droid factory from Geonosis. The third attempt occurred during Marvel’s Dark Droid comic series, which ran from August to December 2023.
A group of droids gathered to take revenge on Darth Vader. However, this did not work, as Vader reprogrammed the droids and intended to use them as his own army.
Was the rebellion successful? As one knows from the films, Palpatine was only stopped by the hands of the rebels in Episode 6. Thus, Vader never managed to defeat or overthrow the Emperor. It should also be noted that Vader was always in conflict before Episode 6. There was probably never a completely thought-out plan against his master.
These attempts probably never greatly disturbed the Emperor either. After all, betrayal is in the nature of the Sith. What is fascinating about the droid armies is that it fits into the past of Darth Vader, who seemingly wants to rely only on lifeless allies.
As a child, Anakin tinkered a lot with broken droids and turned them into friends, just like with C3PO. In an alternate story, Darth Vader even had his own apprentice: One of the best games about Star Wars introduced a powerful character who could even defeat Darth Vader
