What Happened When Darth Vader Found A Picture Of Jar Jar Binks, Kenobi And Padme?

He smashed it. Lured into an underwater Gungan monument to Naboo's victory over the Trade Federation, Vader found a painting of Palpatine, Jar Jar Binks, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Padme Amidala and the nine year old boy who had helped win the battle. He broke through it to reach the recordings hidden there, and a former handmaiden then told him her people wanted revenge for that boy as well as for their queen. (Darth Vader (2020) 3)

Why he was on Naboo at all#

This happens shortly after Bespin. Darth Vader has told Luke Skywalker the truth, watched his son throw himself down a reactor shaft rather than accept it, and lost the Millennium Falcon. What he wants now is not the boy. It is the name of whoever kept the boy from him for twenty-two years. (The Empire Strikes Back; Darth Vader (2020) 1)

The investigation is methodical and it is bleak. Vader takes a shuttle with a detachment of death troopers and a forensics droid called ZED-6-7 and starts working backwards. First stop is Tatooine and the Lars moisture farm, where he pulls what he can from the place his son grew up and finds himself remembering the failed rescue of his mother and the funeral that followed. Then Coruscant, and Padme's old apartment, where ZED-6-7 finds a scout transmitter someone had planted. That leads to Vendaxa. Vendaxa leads to Naboo. (Darth Vader (2020) 1; Darth Vader (2020) 2)

Somewhere in the middle of it, in a cantina, a man claiming to be Luke Skywalker tried to sell him information. Vader killed him and told the room that anyone claiming the name would inherit the crimes attached to it. (Star Wars (2020) 5)

Standing in the fields#

Naboo is the worst possible place for him to be, and he goes anyway. (Darth Vader (2020) 3)

He married her here in secret. Here they visited her family home and he watched her among the flower garden her father kept. Here the Republic he grew up believing in had its last uncomplicated victory. Vader stands in those fields, and the video's word for the state he is in is remorse, which is not a word that usually attaches to him. (Darth Vader (2020) 3)

The monument#

The sequence that gives this story its title was a trap. Sabe, with Padme's old security captain Gregar Typho and the Gungan Tonra, led Vader down to an underwater Gungan dome where, they said, the security recordings stolen from Padme's apartment were hidden. (Darth Vader (2020) 3)

The building turned out to be a commemoration. The Gungans had raised it to mark the defeat of the Trade Federation, the moment their people and the humans of Naboo stood together and won. On the wall was a large painting of the figures who made it happen: Palpatine, still the newly appointed Chancellor. Jar Jar Binks. Obi-Wan Kenobi. Padme Amidala. And a nine year old boy from Tatooine who had flown a starfighter into an orbital control ship because nobody stopped him. (Darth Vader (2020) 3)

Vader is standing in front of a picture of his wife, his master, his mentor and himself, painted by people who thought they were commemorating a happy ending. (Darth Vader (2020) 3)

Vader smashed through the mural to get at the recordings, and the former handmaiden of Padme Amidala put the last piece in place. Her Amidalans wanted revenge for Padme, but also for the Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, who had guarded their queen so faithfully. The boy in the painting had never been forgotten here. They believed the man in front of them had killed them both. (Darth Vader (2020) 3)

Vader had no way to hold that. When Sabe accused him of murdering Padme, he said he had, and drew his lightsaber. The Amidalans were ready for it: a beast caller summoned a sando aqua monster, which drove Vader out of the dome and into its jaws. (Darth Vader (2020) 3; Darth Vader (2020) 4)

What happened next#

The rest of the visit is a massacre. Vader killed the creature, and Padme's loyalists, the Amidalans, had been waiting for him, and they came at him in the jungles under Ric Olie. Vader and his death troopers went through most of them and put Olie down. (Darth Vader (2020) 4)

At the tomb itself he was surrounded by Sabe and the surviving handmaidens, Eirtae, Rabe, Sache and Dorme, the women who had spent their lives protecting Padme and who had a fairly good idea of who was standing in front of them. They fought hard. Vader beat all of them without much difficulty and opened the door to his wife's tomb. (Darth Vader (2020) 4)

The trail ran on from the tomb to Polis Massa, where Vader watched Padme's last recorded words. Then the Emperor noticed. When Palpatine learned about the personal mission his apprentice was running, he summoned Vader to the Imperial Palace and sensed something wrong immediately: the man in front of him was full of mourning rather than hate. His solution was Force lightning, applied until Vader remembered how the dark side is supposed to feel. (Darth Vader (2020) 5)

Why the painting matters more than the fight#

Everything Vader does on Naboo is an attempt to find information, and every step of it forces him to look at his own past instead. (Darth Vader (2020) 1; Darth Vader (2020) 3; Darth Vader (2020) 4)

He wanted a name. What he got was the moisture farm where his son was raised, the apartment where his wife lived, a monument to the day he was a hero, and a tomb. The mission is nominally about hunting down whoever hid Luke. In practice it is Anakin Skywalker walking backwards through his own life with a helmet on. (Darth Vader (2020) 1; Darth Vader (2020) 3; Darth Vader (2020) 4)

The painting is the moment the two men inside the suit collide directly. Anakin is in the picture. Vader is holding the lightsaber. Vader smashes the picture of the boy he used to be to get what he wants, and the people who loved that boy are standing right there, blaming him for his death. It tells you how close the other one still was to the surface. (Darth Vader (2020) 3)

A year later, on the second Death Star, the other one won. (Return of the Jedi)