It’s a long-held belief in the Star Wars fandom that Anakin Skywalker essentially had no father, with the character coming into existence in what’s essentially the saga’s own equivalent of the virgin birth. An excerpt from the Darth Vader comic, however, has got fans debating whether the future Sith’s conception was purely a miracle of the Force after all.
In the panels recently shared to Reddit, we see Shmi Skywalker being approached by none other than Sheev Palpatine, who seems to be manipulating the development of her child. With this in mind, the question is posed of whether Darth Sidious is the closest thing that Anakin has to a biological father.
Naturally, the claim has been met with some counterarguments, and many of them are pretty convincing. For one thing, some fans point to the fact that Shmi is already looking very pregnant before Palpatine gets to her.
Granted, this doesn’t rule out the Sith Lord repeatedly returning to nurture his child with dark energy, but it does leave plenty of room for doubt that he was there at conception. On top of that, fans have also drawn on the wider context of the comic to argue that the sequence is more a depiction of what Anakin suspects might’ve happened than what necessarily did happen.
In short, this isn’t exactly smoking gun evidence that Sheev is the father, but it at least leaves the option open for fans to consider. And if you feel that the journey of Anakin throughout the saga is rendered all the more tragic if the character was literally doomed from the womb, then surely there’s no harm in making this idea headcanon. But regardless of how the Skywalker Saga started, the whole thing will be ending when Star Wars: Episode IX hits theaters on December 20th, 2019.
