Star Wars: The Clone Wars is one of the most critically acclaimed projects from George Lucas’ fan-favorite space opera universe, supervised by the Chief creative officer of LucasFilm, Dave Filoni. With a plotline that fans couldn’t predict completely no matter how hard they tried, the animated series is quite literally the epitome of some genius storytelling.
Ironically enough, this stands true even without the iconic Darth Vader playing the villain of the saga. The major credit for this goes to Filoni’s outstandingly creative thought process that chose The Inquisitor over Vader to play the big bad of the series. The reason behind this was simple: Vader is too big of a character to worry about minute events like this one!
Dave Filoni Had the Perfect Reason to Reject Vader for The Clone Wars Villain
Back when The Clone Wars series was originally announced, a lot of fans had been expecting to see Anakin Skywalker pop up as the saga’s primary antagonist. However, that was hardly the case, considering how The Inquisitor instead took over this place. The master brain behind this thinking was none other than Dave Filoni.
During an interview for one of those Star Wars Insider Magazines, the Chief creative officer of LucasFilm confessed the same. Initially, he admitted just why fans must have been looking forward to seeing Vader since “we have always been told the storyline that he helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights.”
However, at the same time, he also emphasized why Vader shouldn’t even be considered here as the big bad, saying:
When you look back at it, Vader is such a large character now. He is larger than life in the Star Wars galaxy so it didn’t make sense to us to have him chasing this small-scale band of rebel rousers. To me, they’re beneath his notice.
Continuing, he explained how small of a character Kanan Jarrus is, pointing out how “they just haven’t become important enough to get Vader to go all the way out to Lothal, where they are.” Besides, Vader must have more important concerns to care about rather than “some rebels he has never heard of!”
Arguably enough, that is some clean thinking from Filoni indeed. But what’s more interesting than this is how he describes the “subordinate-level inquisitors” playing the antagonists in the series.
Dave Filoni Calls The Inquisitor “A Very Well-Educated, Very Intelligent Villain”
During the same interview, Filoni went on to explain how Vader doesn’t have any “crack in his visage that would be softened or weakened, so it would be very bad for our guys to meet him—because he would probably kill them very quickly.” That said, this was the perfect place for The Inquisitor to step in instead, “kind of like a hunting dog” on a mission to track down Jedi.
Talking about this very villain, Filoni said:
He’s a very well-educated, very intelligent villain. He gets called in if there’s a problem, if there’s a suspected Jedi. If he found Obi-Wan Kenobi, then he’d call Vader. It was a way to give us a villain who was still very evil and used the dark side, but wasn’t nearly as powerful as Vader or the Emperor.
Of course, this seems to have fit perfectly in accordance with the series. This stands true considering how, even without the involvement of Vader as the antagonist of the lore, it still managed to become one of the best pieces from the Star Wars universe of all time, judging from its 93% critical score on the Tomatometer.
You can stream The Clone Wars on Disney+.
