Did Anakin Skywalker's body vanish after he died?

Originally, I had assumed not.
Qui-Gon didn't, and they had a funeral pyre for him.
Anakin had a funeral pyre, so I would have thought that he didn't either.
But he is the Chosen One, so he could have been different.

Thing that threw me off was when I was reading over Champions of the Force by Kevin J. Anderson, and I ran across the following line: "[Luke] recalled how Obi-Wan's and Yoda's and Anakin's bodies had all vanished upon their deaths: Obi-Wan and Yoda leaving only crumpled robes, Anakin Skywalker leaving only the empty body armor of Darth Vader."

Now, I know that this is EU, but unless we have good reason to disregard it, I think it should still be considered.
Do we have any other more official reason for discrediting it? Are we allowed to just make up our own minds?

I'll take a small poll here to see what you all think:
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A) No, Anakin's body never faded away.
The movie never showed it. The EU should have burned on that funeral pyre right next to him.

B) Yes, Anakin's body faded away after he died.
Luke was burning Vader's armor. The EU is usually a very valuable and reliable source of information.

C) Maybe, I don't know.
Why did I even bother reading this stupid thread? Now you have me all confused.

D) Perhaps both views can be combined.
Luke could have seen Anakin's body fade out of the armor during the funeral pyre.
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I'm hoping more for Option D myself, but you never know....
Please feel free to add your own comments to your posts. Thanks!

 

Actually, the answer is B).His body vanished after he died.

Lucas has mentioned this before, I'm not sure if it's on the DVD though. But, I definatly know that he has said before that Anakin's body vanished after he died, thus allowing him to become a spirit.

 

So Luke's cremating a Vader costume with no-one inside?????????

 

Lucas has stated that Anakin's body disappeared "off camera".

Even in 1983 I always assumed that Luke was only burning the suit because the helmet is placed where the head is supposed to be, and Luke did not put the helmet back on Anakin and then burn him while still in the suit.

 

Oh, I see, I always figured that Anakin's body was in the Vader suit when it was burning. It makes sense though, since Yoda and Obi-Wan also faded, and they are ghosts. I wonder if Lucas will ever change the Qui-Gon cremation scene since he also came back as a spirit (according to Yoda). But there is some important dialogue in that scene between Mace Windu and Yoda.

 

i always assumed that there was no one in the vader costume when it was burning. however that was back when i thought that every jedi disappeared when they died. however, he did become a spirit guide like yoda and obi-wan... and kind of off-topic... i know qui-gon did not exist yet as a character when the OT was made, but he turned out to be important in the whole becoming one with the force thing. they should've put him there next to anakin obi-wan and yoda at the end of ROTJ.

 

Well Luke didn't know Qui-Gon so it wort sort of be like "who's that guy?" instead of him just being happy to see his two mentors and his father at peace with them.

 

I guess it makes sence that he would disapear. That explains why the suit looks so thin when burning. I would prefer that we got to see him disappearing in ROTJ.

 

I would think he did disapear. It wouldn't make any sense for luke to cremate him in the vader suit, especially not the helmet. I always thought that it was more symbolic as the burning of the empire. Luke was not having a funeral that is why no one else was present. I think if Luke was cremating Anakin he would have invited his sister Leia.

 

I think if Luke was cremating Anakin he would have invited his sister Leia.

Leia would never attend. Not only did she hate Darth Vader, but she also hated Anakin Skywalker. Years after the fall of the Empire, Anakin reveals himself to her but she basically tells him to go away.

 

Wait a damn second...woah!!

out of all my years in Star Wars, someones' telling me that Leia actually hated Anakin Skywalker.

I missed something really big!!!!

 

Thanks for all the responses so far!
It's nice to see that we're getting relatively consistent answers for a change.

 

JEDIMASTERBAC:
First of all i know nothing about EU except the names of Han and Leia's children. If she hated Anakin Skywalker so much..why did they name one of their kids..Anakin.

just curious.

 

She came to terms with the fact that Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were two different people. She realized that it was Darth Vader that did all the horrible things, not Anakin Skywalker.

Then, she named here son Anakin Solo out of respect to her father.

 

gotcha..
thanks..i guess i can see that.

 

jedimasterbac, " Leia would never attend. Not only did she hate Darth Vader, but she also hated Anakin Skywalker. Years after the fall of the Empire, Anakin reveals himself to her but she basically tells him to go away."


Thats the dumbest thing I have heard on this site. Anakin is gone and is consumed by Vader. Leia only knows Vader, and hates him, but there is no indication that she still hates him at the end. I would suggest you actually watch the movies instead of closing your eyes.

 

Well, he did disappear, according to Lucas, but certainly not in the same way that others who pulled the disappearing act. Qui-Gon achieves an after-life after his body is clearly immolated. Obi-Wan does so quite by force of his own will. He disappears before being struck by the lightsaber, such that Vader never actually makes contact with his body. Yoda appears to take a final breath and die of natural causes before passing on. The head of Anakin is in frame for a good bit longer than what appears to be his final breath, and the suit certainly appears to be "full" when on the pyre. Since the method of "becoming one with the Force" has not been displayed consistently, there's nothing reasonably stopping us believing that Lucas is "lying" or even "retroactively editing" Anakin's passage.

(As an aside, your choices in the "poll" above are a kind of false. Chosing "B" doesn't imply that you believe the EU has the answers, but rather that you interpret the "G"-level source of the movies the way Lucas himself apparently means for you to see them. That's not the same as saying that you think the EU has an answer the movies didn't consider.)

I rather suspect that if you watch them in episode order, not ever having seen or heard about STAR WARS before, this ambiguity might add a nice edge of suspense for you. You might well wonder, in those last moments of ROTJ, "Well, is he really saved or does he just believe he's been saved? Only a Force Ghost will tell for sure." When you actually do see Anakin's ghost winking in at the last moment, it might have a more powerful impact on you than it does to those of us who saw the movies in production order. Of course, this tension would all be heightened by Qui-Gon's voice coming back to Episode III so that the issue of Force Ghosts becomes a more obvious theme...but I digress.

 

Here is my theory, a spirit and your identity is two seperate things. When you use that technique of disapearing after you die you keep your idenity after death, not your spirit. The technique allows to retain your living force after death. Qui-gon did not know this technique so he did not retain his living force after death, I think Yoda told Obi-wan to contact Qui-gon in the spirit world, but I only saw Episode III once so I don't know for sure.

 

Thats the dumbest thing I have heard on this site. Anakin is gone and is consumed by Vader. Leia only knows Vader, and hates him, but there is no indication that she still hates him at the end. I would suggest you actually watch the movies instead of closing your eyes.

Wow, bit of a smartass here aren't we? I would suggest that you go and read Tatooine Ghost. Then, you can go and tell the writer of that it is the dumbest thing you have heard. Here's an idea for you: use your brain, then speak. Don't do it the other way around.

 

I go by George Lucas and the films, nothing else!

 

Before 1997, it was A.. The script specifically said the body was in the suit. After the Special Editions Lucas changed it to B with a change in the script.

 

He appears to her (he being Anakin) in Truce at Bakura, and she basically tells him to get the ***** out of her life, and he tells her if she decides to forgive him, he'll here it. Tatooine Ghost i feel she started to forgive him, and definetly had by DE and DE2, since when an apparation of Vader appeared to her in DE, she said "Father?" rather than "Why the **** are you here?"

 

I prefer to go by what I see in the movie. Not what Lucas decides to change the story around to being AFTER the fact. Not what some Darkhorse comic suggests. And not what my know-it-all friends try and tell me.

Fortunately this is left up to your imagination. Using deductive reasoning, you can come to this conclusion. Obi Wan disappeared and later became a Force ghost. Yoda disappeared and later became a force ghost. At the end of ROTJ we see Anakin as a force ghost, so one is inclined to think that his body was "absorbed" into the living force when he died, and therefore probably did "vanish."

Not that Qui Gon wasn't "merged" with the living force, or for that matter any of the countless others that Yoda mentions in ROTS that have become a part of the force, but perhaps this "way to come back" that Qui Gon figured out and taught to Yoda was realized by them disappearing.

Yeah, I know that nobody taught Vader how to "come back", unless it was the Emperor. But that opens up more cans-O-worms, and should be kept simple. Again, it wasn't in the movie, nor was it even alluded to that Vader had this knowledge of the force.

Did Anakin disappear. I believe he did, even though I didn't see him disappear.

 

I go by George Lucas and the films, nothing else!

I believe Lucas feels the same way about Leia being angry at Anakin.