Duel on Mustafar

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Previous: Operation: Knightfall Order 66 Concurrent: Duel in the Senate Next: Battle of New Plympto Duel on Mustafar Conflict: Great Jedi Purge Date: 19 BBY Place: Klegger Corp Mining Facility, Mustafar Outcome: Pyrrhic Jedi victory; Darth Vader severely injured Combatants Order of the Sith Lords Jedi Order Strength Sith apprentice Darth Vader Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi Casualties Darth Vader severely injured; power diminished Padmé Amidala suffers physical and psychological trauma that result in her death soon after.

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The Duel on Mustafar was an event in the Great Jedi Purge where new Sith apprentice Darth Vader was severely injured by Obi-Wan Kenobi on Mustafar, and would later be entombed in his cybernetic form.

Contents 1 Prelude 1.1 The Duel 1.2 Fall of Vader 1.3 Aftermath 2 Behind the scenes 3 Appearances 4 Sources 5 See also

[edit] Prelude

The duel occurred in the aftermath of the Mission to Mustafar, in which Darth Vader slaughtered the Separatist Council and ended the Clone Wars. His wife, Padmé Amidala, came to him with Obi-Wan Kenobi hiding in the cargo hold of her Naboo Skiff. Vader misunderstood Kenobi's presence, thinking Padmé had brought him to kill Vader. In his rage, Vader strangled his wife to near death, rendering her unconscious. The former best friends could not see eye-to-eye, and were forced to confront each other in battle.

[edit] The Duel

As the two dueled, Vader drove Kenobi back with his vicious offense, but the Jedi Master dueled with his Form III training: constantly giving the aggressor ground, and was driven back into the Klegger Corp Mining Facility. As they entered the control room, Kenobi attempted to take advantage of an opening in Vader's offense, seizing the Sith Lord's left hand, pulling him into an arm-lock and striking at the back of his neck. He was unsuccessful, as Vader managed to bring his blade up to defend himself. Quickly wrestling himself free, Vader attacked, and Kenobi retreated through the control room to the conference room.

When Kenobi attempted to use his lightsaber against an unarmed Vader, Vader took hold of Kenobi's wrist with one hand and his neck with the other, bending him back. Kenobi managed to kick Vader off him and stood up. Vader kicked Kenobi, who dropped his lightsaber. As Vader stood and charged him, Kenobi responded by 'clothes-lining' him. As Vader flipped over and landed on his back, Kenobi called his lightsaber to his hand and attempted to put Anakin at blade-point. He was too late, as Vader retrieved his own weapon and parried the blow.

When a combined Force push sent both duelists against opposite walls, Anakin/Vader charged Kenobi, who drove the attack away. The misdirected blades accidentally destroyed the power controls for the facility's shields, allowing heat and flying lava to weaken the collection arm systems outside the complex.

As the two dueled on, Kenobi continued to give ground, backing onto the balcony outside the control room. Driven to the edge of the balcony, Kenobi leaped backward onto a steam pipe and retreated along it as Vader pursued. Leaping off it onto one of the collection arms, the two battled their way along its length. When they reached the end, a massive spurt of lava erupted onto the collection arm. Without the shield to protect it, the heat and weight of the lava proved too much for the superstructure, bringing it down. It smashed into the molten river below, with both contestants holding on. As the river dragged the collection arm toward a lava fall, both Vader and Kenobi managed to leap off the arm, landing on a droid lava collector and a repulsorlift platform, respectively.

[edit] Fall of Vader

As Kenobi attempted to make it to shore, he was easily cut off by the nimble lava collector droid Vader was perched on. Slashing at Vader, who defended himself, the two dueled until Kenobi broke off. Attempting to reason with the Sith Lord, he only received more pro-dark side rhetoric and a threat. With that, Vader leaped above Kenobi onto the platform, landing awkwardly and almost losing balance. Kenobi tried to take advantage of this and attacked, but Vader defended himself and counter-attacked. While they locked blades, the platform neared the shore, allowing Kenobi to disengage and leap for it.

Perched on a rise above the lava river, Kenobi warned Vader not to attack, but the Sith Lord, in his arrogance and rage, ignored him. Leaping at Kenobi, blade angled for the kill, Kenobi executed a move from his youth: it was the same maneuver Darth Maul could have used against Kenobi in the Battle for Naboo. Vader lost his left arm and both his legs. Dropping his lightsaber, Vader rolled to the brink of the lava. Attempting to scramble up the shore with his remaining arm, Vader only slid closer to the lava.

Kenobi took Anakin's lightsaber while expressing his regrets, shame, and disappointment. Vader's clothing ignited from the lava at Mustafar's hot shore, burning him horribly. Kenobi refused to kill the Sith Lord, believing that his ultimate fate would be decided by the Force, and doing so would cause him to start down the path of the Dark Side.^[1] So he left Vader to whatever end as the flames slowly calmed down from the immolation.

[edit] Aftermath

Palpatine, sensing that his new apprentice was in danger, left Coruscant after his duel with Yoda, and, accompanied by a squad of shock troopers, journeyed to Mustafar in a Theta shuttle. They landed in the Klegger Corp Mining Facility and recovered the injured Sith apprentice. Darth Vader's maimed, crippled body was taken to the Emperor Palpatine Surgical Reconstruction Center on Coruscant for treatment. Darth Vader would wear a respirator and full body suit for the rest of his life.

Padmé Amidala knew Anakin Skywalker had turned to the dark side, and, even though she believed there was still good in him, her heart was too badly broken, and she died shortly after giving birth to Luke and Leia—on Polis Massa. Kenobi went into exile after helping to deliver Padmé's children. He took Anakin's son Luke to Tatooine to be raised by Anakin's stepbrother and his wife, while his twin sister, Leia, went to Alderaan to be raised by Bail Organa and Queen Breha. Kenobi hid on Tatooine, and waited for the day when Luke would be trained as a Jedi.

Obi-Wan, who had assumed Vader was dead for good, was shocked to learn that he was still alive after watching a HoloNet news report in a cantina on Tatooine about Vader's victory at Kashyyyk. Qui-Gon's Force ghost, however, told Obi-Wan that Vader would never return to Tatooine, as the planet held the remnants of his former persona of Anakin Skywalker, which would be too painful for Vader to face.

23 years later, Darth Vader confronted Luke Skywalker onboard the second Death Star. The young Skywalker tried to use high ground to his advantage. Apparently, Vader had learned from his mistake at Mustafar and did not leap up after his son, instead opting to dislodge him from his perch using a throw of his lightsaber and shifting the advantage to himself.

[edit] Behind the scenes

• During the animatics stage, Steven Spielberg participated in the production of this duel.
• In the video game version, an alternate ending would have Obi-Wan getting impaled through the torso, and Vader getting his new red lightsaber from Darth Sidious, which he would then plunge into Sidious's chest, declaring that he now ruled the Empire. In addition, Padmé was not even present in the duel of the video game and a number of lines were not there.
• This battle is the second of only two times in the whole Star Wars series that the same colored lightsabers fight each other. The first is Obi-Wan's fight with General Grievous.
• Star Wars: Complete Locations appears to map the battle incorrectly, showing the combatants abandoning the arm almost immediately, never even making it to the falls, and traveling downriver on the droid and repulsor platform.
• It was already established in Lucas' notes and canon that Master and Apprentice had a (semi-)final duel, and Vader owed his injuries to lava. Mentions of that duel and Vader's fall had been mentioned in EU sources years before the movie, and the duel was a highly anticipated event in the Star Wars fandom.
• Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen practiced the duel constantly for several months. As a result of their practice, the speed in which Obi-Wan and Vader engage the duel (in the completed film) is the speed in which it was filmed, and was not digitally accelerated.
• The Duel on Mustafar is the longest fight scene between two people in Star Wars movie history. The duel went for approx. 12 minutes.
• In other media and the novel Anakin's line I hate you! was reversed after Obi-Wan says You were my brother Anakin! I loved you!

[edit] Appearances

• Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of Darth Vader
• LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game (Non-canonical appearance)
• LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Non-canonical appearance)
• Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith novel (First appearance)
• Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
• Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith comic
• Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith game
• Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader (Mentioned only)
• The Last of the Jedi: Against the Empire (Mentioned only)
• The Farlander Papers (Mentioned only)
• LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (Non-canonical appearance) (PSP version)
• Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption (mentioned in historical referance)
• Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi novel (First indirect mention)
• Dark Nest III: The Swarm War (Appears in hologram)

[edit] Sources

•  "Star Wars Kids Answer Quest" - Star Wars Kids 6

[edit] See also

• Battle of the Heroes