Fortnite will finally let Darth Vader kill Anakin Skywalker

When Obi-Wan Kenobi told Anakin Skywalker that he would bring balance to the force, I don’t think he imagined anything along the lines of Fortnite.

And yet here we are. The developers of the popular battle royale teased a new visual on Thursday that suggests that a young Anakin will be joining the roster of playable characters in the game. Now, Darth Vader won’t just be able to shoot and kill Anakin, he will also be able to hit The Griddy on his alter ego’s limping body on the battlefield — if the opportunity arises.

Fortnite is a battle royale game with a absolutely enormous cast of characters that brings together characters from several franchise across the Marvel, DC, and Star Wars universes. Last summer, the developers introduced Darth Vader as a playable skin to the game so now if you play as Anakin, and someone else picks the Darth Vader skin, you’ll be able to kill Darth Vader as Anakin (or vice versa). We don’t know when precisely the Anakin skin will land, but we got teaser art for him showing him walking onto the scene.

This particular skin appears to based on the likeness of a long-haired Hayden Christensen we see in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and/or the cartoony version of Anakin from the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. In the visuals, we see him walk with a lightsaber in hand and starships loom overhead.

I’d like to think that Darth Vader murdering Anakin in Fortnite still brings us to the logical end point of the original batch of Star Wars movies. In Star Wars: A New Hope, Obi Wan Kenobi tells Luke Skywalker about the origin story of the Darth Vader for the first time, as if Darth Vader and Luke’s father are separate people (rather than one in the same).

“A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.”

Obviously this was early in the production of the future franchise, so all the details weren’t fully worked out yet. But now we can play through that original scenario as if they are separate people, and Darth Vader can down Luke’s father and himself for real.