Kenobi: Skywalker’s Only Hope
Let’s talk about Anakin’s final “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope” as seen (as I will argue) in the final episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi (Part VI) [spoiler warning!]
During their final duel of Kenobi (Pt VI), Obi-Wan is able to (literally) crack Vader’s facade. Behind the helmet, he sees Anakin. He calls his name, too stunned to do anything else.
Vader looks at him and tells him that “Anakin is gone.”
Yet as Obi-Wan cries and apologizes to Anakin, we see the facade crack more as we catch a glimpse of Anakin, tortured emotions across his face.
Vader then says something very surprising. He says “I am not your failure, Obi-Wan. You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker. I did.”
This is significant for two reasons. 1) it’s a callback to Mustafar (“I have failed you, Anakin, I have failed you”) and 2) this is also, arguably, a sliver of Anakin here — whether it’s a desperate move by the suppressed Anakin to assuage Obi-Wan’s guilt or is simply (Anakin’s) self-loathing and self-hatred, which are also canonically emotions that fueled Vader, is up to you.
The brief raw emotional vulnerability quickly fades, however, and Vader is back to threatening Obi-Wan, who finally comes to the conclusion that Anakin is well and truly gone, and decides to leave him, turning his back on him as he had done on Mustafar.
But the thing is, Vader can’t keep going on without Kenobi. The passion he has for Kenobi- whatever nature that may be- fuels Vader’s power. As Obi-Wan walks away, Vader cries out to him, calling his name twice.
The fact that he calls Obi-Wan’s name twice is really important, because I argue that this is coded as Anakin’s ‘distress signal.’ In “Twilight of the Apprentice” (from SW Rebels s2), Anakin also calls out to Ahsoka after his helmet has been slashed by her. “Ahsoka…. Ahsoka,” he says, initiating the outreach. She responds by whispering his name back in return (twice), further showing the importance of the double use of the name.
Which is why it’s a really big deal (!!) that when Obi-Wan finally tells Vader he’s given up/finally believes Anakin is well and truly gone, Vader initiates the contact and cries out to him. Twice.
This was Anakin’s last attempt to communicate his ‘distress signal’ to Obi-Wan, to tell him that Anakin needed his help. Anakin knew that he would never escape Vader if even Obi-Wan came to believe that Anakin was gone. Anakin cried out to him, knowing that Obi-Wan was his only hope.
Reading the text this way makes Vader’s final scene all the more tragic. In talking to Palpatine, Vader reinforces his desire to chase Kenobi. “He will not evade me again,” he says. (He’s my only hope, I cannot let him evade me again). Like a moth drawn to flame, Vader (or really Anakin inside of Vader) needs his Master. He cannot give up the flicker of hope that Obi-Wan presents.
That is until Palpatine yanks on his leash, reminding Vader of his dependency on him. He calls him out for his feelings over Obi-Wan weakening him, then vaguely hints that if Vader cannot overcome his past, then there would be no further use for him, and Palpatine would destroy him.
This is the final nail in the coffin. Vader sinks back into his chair. Defeated. “I serve only you, my Master,” he says, and we hear the Imperial March swell in the background.
Vader has resigned himself to his fate. Anakin slips away inside of him, not to reemerge until Return of the Jedi ten years later with the aid of his son. Until then, we see an increasingly cold, detached Vader, one that truly lost all hope when Kenobi called him “Darth” and accepted that Anakin was gone. If Kenobi had lost all hope, so did Anakin.
