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What Happens To Darth Vader After Obi-Wan Kenobi (Before A New Hope)
Darth Vader is guaranteed to survive Obi-Wan Kenobi, and this is everything he does between then and his first appearance in A New Hope.

What Happens To Darth Vader After Obi-Wan Kenobi (Before A New Hope)

Warning: Contains spoilers for Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Darth Vader acts as the overarching threat of Obi-Wan Kenobi, but what happens to him after the Dinsey+ series and before A New Hope? While Obi-Wan Kenobi is set very close in time to A New Hope, with the two canon installments just nine years apart, chronologically, Vader still manages to pack a lot of action into this period. There have been several stories to feature Vader between Obi-Wan Kenobi and A New Hope – all of which warrant discussion thanks to the Sith Lord’s actions.

By being a prequel series, Darth Vader is guaranteed to survive the events of Obi-Wan Kenobi and make his first official appearance in the franchise in A New Hope. However, just because Vader has defined appearances in George Lucas’ original movies, that doesn’t mean that he does nothing between them. Over the years, many comics, books, and TV shows have been set between Vader’s sporadic appearances in the original trilogy as a means of fleshing out his character and his involvement with the Empire beyond his fights with Luke and the Rebellion. Thanks to that, modern Star Wars has clearly established just how much Vader has been doing in Star Wars from the moment he started working with the Empire.

Naturally, Darth Vader was also active during the nine years between Disney+’s Obi-Wan Kenobi and A New Hope, with several events happening to him during that time. From battling his former padawan Ahsoka in Star Wars Rebels to making his menacing cameo in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Vader saw no shortage of action in the nine years prior to taking Princess Leia captive. Here’s everything that happens to Darth Vader after Obi-Wan Kenobi and before A New Hope.

Star Wars Rebels

Darth Vader’s first significant story post-Obi-Wan Kenobi is his involvement in Star Wars Rebels season 2. In 3 BBY, following the death of the Grand Inquisitor, Vader is tasked with going to Lothal to crush the ongoing rebellion. Vader succeeded in his mission, but after learning that the crew of the Ghost was involved with Ahsoka Tano, he sent the Seventh Sister and the Fifth Brother of the Empire’s Inquisitorius to hunt them down in the hopes that Ahsoka could lead them to more Jedi.

Vader was largely uninvolved with Rebels after that until the season 2 finale when he appeared on Malachor to take possession of a Sith holocron that could power a powerful Sith superweapon, only to be stopped as Ahsoka engaged him in a duel. The two kept fighting as the temple collapsed around them, and Ezra and his friends escaped. After surviving the collapse of the temple, Vader returned to his duties under the assumption that Ahsoka had died. However, Rebels season 4 would reveal that Ezra used the World Between Worlds to bring Ahsoka into the future before the temple collapsed on her, which would lead to her appearances in The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and the upcoming Disney+ Ahsoka series.

Thrawn: Alliances

Darth Vader’s next notable appearance was alongside Grand Admiral Thrawn in the novel Thrawn: Alliances. Set in approximately 1 BBY, Vader was assigned to work with Thrawn to investigate a disturbance in the Force on the planet Batuu. There, the two of them come into conflict with a warrior race known as the Grysk, who were kidnapping Force-sensitive Chiss children—the same race as Thrawn—to use their powers to navigate the Unknown Regions and wage war against the Chiss Ascendancy. Vader and Thrawn managed to defeat the Grysk and return the children to the Chiss Ascendancy, although the threat of the Grysk Hegemony persisted.

Star Wars Vader: Dark Visions

Following Thrawn: Alliances, Darth Vader’s next chronological appearance was in Star Wars Vader: Dark Visions. Dark Visions is an anthology series set shortly before the destruction of the Death Star that focuses on Vader from the perspective of others. The stories in Dark Visions feature a boy who mistakes Vader for a hero after he inadvertently saves his people from a giant monster, a Star Destroyer commander who goes to great lengths not to disappoint Vader, a nurse who develops an obsessive love for Vader and is ultimately killed over it, an X-Wing pilot who gets into a fight with Vader, and a bartender who serves drinks to the Rebel Alliance and gets chased through a jungle filled with hallucinogenic plants after he accidentally gets ahold of stolen Imperial data.

Battle Against The Benathy

Before A New Hope, Darth Vader and his men fought against the Benathy in Wild Space, as detailed in the anthology series Star Wars: Age of Resistance. Thousands died on both sides, and while Vader managed to kill the Benathy king, his assault was stopped by a Zillo Beast the Benathy worshipped as a god. Eventually, however, Vader did manage to succeed in subduing the Benathy. The story of Vader’s conflict with the Benathy was contrasted with Kylo Ren’s own conflict with the Benathy during the era of the sequel trilogy, but unlike Vader, Kylo managed to kill the Benathy’s Zillo Beast and force them to submit to the First Order.

Rogue One

Darth Vader’s final appearance between Obi-Wan Kenobi and A New Hope is in 2016’s Rogue One. After learning that the Death Star’s chief engineer, Galen Erso, was secretly a traitor, Vader ordered Director Krennic to ensure that the Death Star wasn’t compromised and then choked him with the Force as he asked for confirmation that he was still in charge. Later, after Rogue One managed to steal the plans for the Death Star and send them to one of the Rebel ships, Vader invaded the ship to take the plans back, killing every Rebel in his path. Vader failed to retrieve the plans before they were passed to Leia, however, leading to the events of A New Hope and the beginning of the Star Wars franchise as a whole.