With Kathleen Kennedy stepping down from her role as President of Lucasfilm after 13 years, George Lucas’s protege Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan are leading Star Wars into the future. Despite the mixed reception of Star Wars over the years, I remained hopeful that Filoni might lead the franchise into new and interesting places, as long as his reliance on nostalgia doesn’t steer him entirely. My optimism still persists, especially after Maul’s phenomenal first season.

However, and I do hate to say it, but Dave — can I call you Dave? — you’re very wrong about Darth Vader.

At a May 4th event celebrating the two-part finale of Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord, Filoni explained his philosophy behind Vader.

“The key to Vader for me is that he’s not Anakin,” Filoni said. “He doesn’t recognize that. He can’t. Anything that reminds him of Anakin, he’s going to destroy. So when he sees a Jedi, he’s going to destroy the Jedi, because the Jedi would remind him unconsciously or consciously that he betrayed all of his friends and everything he knew and the life he grew up with. For what? For nothing. He lost everything. He made a bad trade. He was lied to. He was deceived. He can’t accept that truth.”

Filoni went on to explain that Anakin is trapped in Vader somewhere, but Vader won’t let him surface. “The key is not to actually give [Vader] a character. He’s........

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