Star Wars
Many fans hated the moment in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi when Luke removes Darth Vader’s helmet to reveal the sad and lonely man inside the suit. Not because it’s a bad scene, it’s pretty great, but because it really shows a man who has been lost in his emotions for too long.
Darth Vader, who we learned so much about in the previous films, died very young indeed. According to this Reddit post, he was only 45 years old when he died on the second Death Star.
Of course he looks much older, but as one Redditor says: “To be fair, when he turned to the Sith, he was just burned flesh and given a suit that kept him in constant pain. 23 years of constant pain ages anyone.“
This is how old Darth Vader was when he died
We know how the dark side ages the Guardians because it has done so much to those who have fallen from the light. However, knowing that he was still quite young makes his death even more haunting. His age is explained in detail by uk_uk: “[Mit] In 22 he became a Sith/father of Luke and Leia. 19 years later his son destroyed the first Death Star. 4 years later he died while saving his son from Darth Sidious.“
You might think he’s older thanks to the death scene because they cast a much older actor, Sebastian Shaw, to play Anakin. Shaw was 78 when he played the dying Sith Lord in Star Wars. The makeup effects gave him his decaying look. It wasn’t just his injuries that aged him, but the dark side itself. As roto-disc says, “Sith is a hellish drug“.
Knowing that he wasn’t that old and that he had “wasted” his life on anger and lost touch with his children changes an already emotional scene even more. George Lucas really did write a remarkably great villain in Darth Vader.
Here you can see the Reddit post
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