Darth Vader's armor

The construction of Darth Vader's armor involved materials like obsidian, plasteel, durasteel, and plastoid. While its design evoked fear and symbolized the might of the Galactic Empire, it was also indispensable for Vader's survival after his defeat on the planet Mustafar.

The belt and chest plate of the armor housed the controls for the life support system. This system was responsible for ensuring Vader's body received adequate oxygen, nutrients, and medications. Through this system, Vader was able to survive in almost any environment, including the vacuum of space and the depths of the ocean. However, the suit's internal oxygen supply was limited, and the suit was susceptible to damage if subjected to excessively high external pressure. Vader could, however, use the Force to manipulate the environment around him, creating conditions suitable for his survival, and even temporarily disable his breathing apparatus to approach targets undetected, although this significantly weakened him if prolonged. The suit was also resistant to technopathy from entities like Eternal Rur. In addition to its life-sustaining capabilities, the helmet of the Sith Lord played a role in creating his intimidating appearance. It could be removed to allow him to use a feeding tube within his private chamber due to his inability to eat in a conventional manner. The high pressure and hyper-oxygen environment within the closed private chamber allowed Vader to exist safely without his armor.

The helmet, crafted from an alloy of durasteel, plasteel, and obsidian, featured a sloping design on its sides and back, reminiscent of ancient Sith armor helmets. The helmet generated Vader's menacing growl because his natural voice was weakened from vocal-cord damage. It incorporated neural needles that connected painfully to the top of Vader's skull and spine, forming a unified system. Without these connections, Vader's cybernetics would be unusable. The suit's functions were linked to a personal controller maintained by Doctor Cylo as a fail-safe; with a single button press, all of the armor's cybernetic functions could be deactivated, causing Vader to collapse under their weight. However, Vader could use the Force to overcome this limitation. The armor consisted of ten protective layers, each made from a high-strength alloy capable of shielding Vader from certain explosions and weapons. Vader possessed four artificial limbs as a consequence of the injuries he sustained on Mustafar and at the hands of Dooku on Geonosis.

The boots of the armor were equipped with magnetic clamps, enabling the suit to magnetically attach to metallic surfaces. The legs were heavily armored and capable of deflecting glancing blows from a lightsaber. When wearing the armor, Vader weighed 120 kilograms, leaving deep impressions in soft ground, and stood at a height of 2.03 meters. The armor also included a remote control to prepare Vader's interceptor for combat. In the event of damage to his primary suit, Vader maintained a backup suit in his quarters on whatever vessel he was traveling on. This proved useful when he was attacked by unusual insects on Batuu, which encased a significant portion of his armor in stone.

Initially, Vader found the armor acceptable, but he later modified it to suit his preferences after it sustained initial damage. The leader of the Droid Crush Pirates of Bestoon described the suit as "junk," having been promised advanced technology by Ochi of Bestoon. Despite Vader's reputation as the Galactic Empire's most formidable weapon, a scan of his armor revealed to the droid captain that it was constructed from standard components, including life support, a fusion furnace, and a respirator. Further analysis revealed that the suit's components were no more advanced than the droids' own parts. The suit was also susceptible to hacking, allowing a skilled operator to interface with Vader's central computer and send a holomessage on his behalf, manipulating his vocabulator and mechanical limbs.

During the Clone Wars, while responding to an ancient Jedi distress code, Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Ahsoka Tano inadvertently discovered the Mortis monolith, a portal to another planet. The trio then entered the realm of Mortis, where they encountered a family of Force wielders: the Father, the Daughter, and the Son. The Father had summoned Skywalker to the planet, believing him to be the foretold Chosen One. The family subjected Skywalker to a series of tests to determine if he was indeed the Chosen One.

During a confrontation between Skywalker and the Son, the Son offered to show Skywalker a vision of the future. Through the Force, Skywalker witnessed his wife in distress, the deaths of many Jedi, the elusive Darth Sidious unleashing his full power, his duel with Kenobi, and the destruction of Alderaan. The vision concluded with a spectral image of Skywalker's future cybernetic helmet. Although the Father later erased Skywalker's memory of these future events, each of the visions would eventually come to pass.

Following his descent to the dark side of the Force and his transformation into Darth Vader, Skywalker was dispatched to Mustafar, where he assassinated the entire Executive Separatist Council, effectively ending the Clone Wars. In the wake of the massacre, Vader dueled his former Jedi Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Vader was defeated, losing both legs and his left arm to Kenobi's lightsaber. Vader then fell down the volcanic planet's surface, near a river of lava, where his clothing ignited, engulfing his body in flames. Kenobi left his former apprentice to die.

Unbeknownst to Kenobi, Vader's new Sith Master, Darth Sidious, would soon arrive to assist his Sith apprentice. Sidious instructed the scientist Cylo to create Vader's armor, which he dutifully did during an extended period of reconstructive surgery. Vader was shuttled to the Grand Republic Medical Facility on Coruscant, the capital of the newly formed Galactic Empire. A DD-13 medical assistant droid installed cybernetic implants, while a 2-1B surgical droid removed the remaining charred pieces of clothing from the Dark Lord's body. An FX-9 medical droid provided Vader with blood transfusions during the procedure. Vader required a permanent breathing apparatus as a result of his exposure to the flames, and the vocabulator altered his voice into a deep, raspy sound.

After being fitted with the suit, Vader described the armor as acceptable when his master inquired about it. Darth Vader wore the armor for more than two decades, until his redemption and death. Initially, he detested the armor, but after living with it for five years, he came to embrace how it isolated him from the rest of the galaxy, allowing him to focus on becoming a pure instrument of the dark side. Almost immediately after recovering from his operation, Vader was tasked by Sidious with acquiring a lightsaber. To accomplish this, Vader sought out individuals who had taken the Barash Vow and, having voluntarily isolated themselves from the Jedi Order, were more likely to have survived the Great Jedi Purge. Vader eventually located and confronted Master Kirak Infil'a, a Jedi dedicated solely to combat training, on the moon of Al'doleem. During their battle, Vader's armor sustained significant damage, leaving him crippled without his left leg and without his central computer.

To repair himself, Vader repurposed components from Infil'a's droid Arex to cover the gaps in his armor, successfully enhancing it to defeat the Jedi by endangering Al'doleem civilians. After killing Infil'a and bleeding his lightsaber's kyber crystal on Mustafar, Vader returned to Coruscant, where Sidious allowed him to repair his armor as he saw fit, upgrading the unit to his liking. As a test of his new armor systems, Vader engaged the Grand Inquisitor in a duel Sidious manipulated into being, temporarily allowing himself to be challenged until he was certain all the suit's mechanic components worked as expected; he then swiftly disarmed the Inquisitor. At least one of Arex's parts, a knee piece, would continue to be part of Vader's armor for years to come.

Nine years before the Battle of Yavin, Vader engaged in a duel against his former master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, on a small, rocky moon. At the end of the duel, Obi-Wan damaged Vader's chest plate and partially severed his helmet, revealing the left side of his scarred face. Kenobi recognized him as he had last seen him after their duel on Mustafar, and addressed him as "Anakin," but Vader told him that he killed Anakin and he was all who remained. Kenobi accepted him no longer taking that name, and referred to him as "Darth" before leaving him. They would not see each other again until their final rematch on the Death Star, right before the Battle of Yavin. Vader later returned to his castle on Mustafar. After his armor was repaired, he spoke to his master, Sidious, whom he vowed to remain as his Sith apprentice, and never Kenobi's Jedi apprentice again.

Three years prior to the Battle of Yavin, Vader engaged in a duel against his former apprentice, Ahsoka Tano, inside the Malachor Sith temple. During the duel, Vader's helmet sustained considerable damage, disabling his vocal modulator and exposing his right eye. Vader eventually emerged from the temple alive, though exhausted and short of breath.

Vader had at least one backup suit of armor, which was onboard the Chimaera when Vader and Grand Admiral Thrawn went on a mission to Batuu.

Prior to the Battle of Scarif, he spent some time in a bacta tank in his castle on Mustafar before donning the suit again to meet Director Orson Krennic.

Shortly after the Battle of Hoth, Vader dueled his son, Luke Skywalker, aboard Cloud City, a mining city suspended within the clouds of Bespin. Skywalker inflicted minor damage to his father's suit by slashing him on the shoulder. Vader retaliated by severing his son's right hand.

Vader's encounter with his son spurred his investigation into Luke Skywalker's early life, which in turn led him to uncover details about the death of Padmé Amidala. Aware of Vader's actions and the grief that he experienced due to the memory of his late wife, Darth Sidious re-trained his apprentice in the ways of the Sith by inflicting pain on him. Through the Force the Emperor destroyed Vader's cybernetics and caused extensive damage to his armor, returning Vader to the limbless state that he was in after his duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi on Mustafar. Sidious then left Vader on Mustafar and ordered him to survive on his own, but without the use of the Force.

Hunted by the Emperor's assassin, Ochi and a group of droid pirates, Vader crawled to the abandoned facility where he executed the members of the Separatist Council. There he scavenged various battle droid parts to use as replacements for the cybernetic limbs that his master destroyed. The droids that aided Ochi did so for the opportunity to scavenge Vader's artificial components, believing that the cyborg Sith possessed advanced technology by virtue of his reputation as the Emperor's enforcer. However, a scan of the Sith Lord revealed to the droid captain that Vader's cybernetics were obsolete and not state of the art as he had been led to believe.

Following his journey to Exegol, Vader regained his place at Sidious' side and the two Sith Lords returned to Coruscant. Vader was then rebuilt at the same facility where he was first reconstructed as an armored cyborg. As a result, Vader gained new cybernetics and his armor was fully repaired. He allowed himself to experience the physical pain of undergoing surgical reconstruction, having elected to remain conscious throughout the procedure. After his restoration, Vader undertook a mission to hunt and kill his son in order to keep his place at Sidious' side.

After an encounter with the Handmaidens, Vader was unable to control the Force as the Force Wave returned, resulting in his out of control powers beginning to tear apart the Executor, thereby presenting another threat to the Empire: himself. Sabé, who quickly understood something had gone wrong with Vader's Force powers, took him to an astronomical object as it would give the Sith Lord a place to practice and rediscover control over his powers. However Vader threw her out into the sea in his next blast of power. Vader then lifted the wreckage of his Lambda-class T-4a shuttle and made repairs to his armor. Shortly after, Vader was attacked by a group of rebels. Using his modified suit Vader used a staff and personal energy shield to defeat them.

Aboard the second Death Star, Vader engaged Skywalker in their final duel in the presence of the Galactic Emperor, Darth Sidious. As the duel neared its end, Skywalker retreated and refused to continue fighting. To provoke Skywalker, Vader threatened to corrupt Skywalker's sister, Leia Organa. Overcome by rage, Skywalker emerged from his hiding place and violently attacked Vader, ultimately severing Vader's right hand in the final blow. Pleased, the Emperor urged Luke to fully embrace the dark side by killing the helpless Darth Vader and taking his place, thus betraying his apprentice. Despite his fury, Skywalker experienced an epiphany upon seeing the damaged stump of Vader's right forearm, which reminded him of his own mechanical right hand. Realizing that he had already begun his descent to the dark side, Skywalker chose to resist his rage and showed Darth Vader mercy.

Enraged by the loss of a potential Sith, the Emperor tortured Skywalker with Force lightning, ultimately deciding to kill him. Unable to witness his son's suffering, Vader returned to the light side and turned against his master, throwing him down a reactor shaft, effectively killing Sidious. During the conflict, the suit sustained critical damage from the lightning. No longer Darth Vader, the redeemed Jedi embraced his former identity, Anakin Skywalker. Realizing that his life was ending, Anakin asked Luke to remove his helmet so that he could see his face one last time, which the young Jedi Knight did. A content Anakin acknowledged to his son that he was right about him, before peacefully dying and his body disappeared into the light side of the Force.

Luke escaped the destruction of the second Death Star with his father's empty armor. Upon landing on the forest moon of Endor, Luke burned the armor in a funeral pyre. Shortly before her wedding ceremony on Endor, Leia Organa came across Vader's funeral pyre. Realizing what it was, Leia started to become emotional but resolved not to cry for him. After gently tapping his helmet with her toe, Leia picked up the helmet, recalling the torture she had been forced to face at his hands on the Death Star. Leia then made her feelings known, angered at Vader's pride and letting him know that she was glad he was dead. She then hurled the helmet back into the ash of his funeral pyre, screaming that Vader would never be her father.

The ravaged helmet, once part of the infamous suit, was recovered from the funeral flames. It eventually came into the possession of Kylo Ren, Vader's grandson, a Force-sensitive user of the dark side aligned with the First Order. Aboard the Resurgent-class Star Destroyer Finalizer, Ren kept the helmet in his personal chambers. He would converse with it whenever he felt the "pull to the light." Although the helmet itself offered no auditory response, Ren experienced a voice during meditation near it. The being he contacted was not Vader, but the resurrected Sith Lord Darth Sidious. Following the Battle of Starkiller Base in 34 ABY, the mask stayed on the Finalizer. Ren hesitated to interact with it until he felt worthy of Vader, a consequence of Snoke's rebuke shortly after the destruction of Starkiller Base.

By 35 ABY, the helmet had been moved to the Star Destroyer Steadfast. While searching for the belongings of the Wookiee Chewbacca, which had been confiscated by First Order stormtroopers, the Jedi Rey discovered it. On board the vessel in orbit around Kijimi, Vader's scorched helmet sat atop an obsidian pillar within Ren's quarters. During her duel with Ren, Rey's lightsaber shattered the pillar, disturbing the helmet. Their bond as a dyad in the Force caused it to be transported from the Steadfast to Ren's location in Kijimi City, revealing Rey's whereabouts to Ren.

Initially, George Lucas's early scripts for Star Wars lacked a mask for Vader. Ralph McQuarrie designed Vader's armor, considering a breathing mask essential after reading the script's depiction of Vader traversing space between ships. Lucas then developed the backstory, stating Vader required the suit and mask after falling into a volcanic pit during his battle against Kenobi. McQuarrie deliberately designed Vader's mask to resemble a human skull.

Costume designer John Mollo created a single suit for actor David Prowse, produced with a budget of $1,173. Brian Muir sculpted the mask. Mollo drew inspiration from McQuarrie's artwork, as well as samurai armor, World War I trench armor, and the Stahlhelm helmet. James Earl Jones provided the suit's voice, while Ben Burtt created its iconic breathing sound by recording himself using scuba-diving equipment. Burtt also worked to make Jones's voice sound like it was reverberating out of a helmet.

For The Empire Strikes Back, the suit underwent a redesign for improved comfort, including spares for looser parts. The helmet received minor adjustments to secure the domed top, and the triangular chin vent was enlarged to facilitate Prowse's breathing and vision. A tinted acrylic helmet was created for Prowse's stunt double Bob Anderson to allow better visibility than the eyepieces provided. The costume saw minimal changes for Return of the Jedi, although Fred Hole and Brian Archer designed and constructed a new helmet for the unmasking scene. Return of the Jedi introduced a new costume for Luke Skywalker, whose black attire was intentionally designed to echo Vader's aesthetic.

Hayden Christensen, who played Anakin Skywalker, donned the suit for the conclusion of Revenge of the Sith. Don Bies and his team used molds of Christensen to create the latest iteration of the armor. Ryan Church designed the interior of Vader's helmet, which was depicted in the film for the first time. The mask was digitally printed, making it the first symmetrical version.

For Vader's appearance in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the production design team, led by Doug Chiang, examined each version of Vader's costume from the original trilogy. They ensured the Rogue One appearance was a hybrid, yet still recognizable from previous depictions. Costume designers studied the cape of the original Vader suit at the Lucasfilm Archives. Their goal was to ensure Vader's struts in Rogue One caused the cape to move identically to the original films.

Kilian Plunkett, art director for Star Wars Rebels, explained that they had limited freedom to experiment with Darth Vader's appearance, with the helmet specifically referencing McQuarrie's design. Dave Filoni stated that Vader "has to have the cape," a costly requirement that necessitated redesigning other characters with form-fitting outfits.

In the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, Vader was once more portrayed by Hayden Christensen, Dmitrious Bistrevsky, and Tom O'Connell. Christensen wore a particularly hot and heavy Vader costume that included an under-layer with cooling liquid. Between takes, Christensen was connected to a device that circulated the liquid, aiding in cooling him down. Christensen noted that the mechanical aspect enhanced his feeling of embodying Vader. The costume also featured tinted helmet lenses. Olga Sokolova, a choreographer and "Vader movement specialist," ensured Christensen's movements and gait were accurate in the suit. This was done to maintain faithfulness to Vader's movements and fan perception. Christensen spent nine months gaining 25-30 pounds to properly fit into the suit. Bistrevsky wore the suit for full body shots with the helmet on, while O'Connell wore it during fight scenes. Bistrevsky described the suit as dark and heavy. Some scenes necessitated switching between multiple actors.

Despite being established within Star Wars Legends continuity, Emily Shkoukani of the Lucasfilm Story Group stated in 2021, via an Inside Intel article on StarWars.com, that the precise functions of Vader's suit's buttons remained unknown.