Hayden Christensen Reacts to Wearing the Darth Vader Suit Again in Obi-Wan Kenobi

Warning: this story contains spoilers for Wednesday’s “Part III” episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi. “I am what you made me.” So says the Sith Lord Darth Vader (Hayden Christensen) in Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi Episode 3, reuniting Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) a decade after their fateful duel in Revenge of the Sith. What has the fallen Jedi become? More machine now than man, twisted and evil, wearing the black suit of armor that saved Skywalker’s life after his body was burned and mutilated on Mustafar. In a new interview with RadioTimes.com, Christensen detailed his experience wearing the Darth Vader suit again nearly two decades after Revenge of the Sith: 

“Being in the costume again was incredible. It’s an amazing, iconic costume, and it imparts a lot of feeling when you put it on,” Christensen said. “For me, it was a very emotional experience and very sort of cathartic, in a lot of ways.”

Christensen first appeared inside Vader’s healing bacta tank to end Obi-Wan “Part II,” awaking after the Inquisitor Reva (Moses Ingram) revealed to Obi-Wan that his former friend and student survived their battle on Mustafar. In “Part III,” the Empire tracks Obi-Wan to the mining system Mapuzo, where master and padawan meet for the first time in ten years. 

“There was a lot of physical prep” suiting up as Darth Vader, Christensen said, “just trying to put on some size so that I could fill out the suit a little bit more. Most of my time on [Obi-Wan] was actually spent in preparation.”  

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Christensen revealed he worked with a “Vader movement specialist” who “made sure that we were always in the right ballpark.” 

Choreographer Olga Sokolova and Christensen “wanted to make sure that we were staying true to how Vader moves and how we perceive him, and wanting to keep all that relatively consistent” with how the cybernetically-enhanced Dark Lord carries himself in the original Star Wars trilogy. 

“It’s challenging,” Christensen continued, recalling wearing the suit for the first time at the end of Sith. “I was really having a tough time moving around in it, and it was all extremely rigid. And I said that to George [Lucas], and he said, ‘It’s okay. This is your first time in this suit. So it should feel very mechanical and maybe not very natural.’ Now, [Obi-Wan] is 10 years after that. So he’s had a lot of time to acclimate. But again, it’s a full-on challenge, just trying to get to set in that suit.”

Starring Ewan McGregor, Moses Ingram, Rupert Friend, Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Indira Varma, Sung Kang, Grant Feely as young Luke Skywalker, Vivien Lyra Blair as young Leia Organa, and Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader, new episodes of Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi are streaming Wednesdays on Disney+.