Hayden Christensen will return to Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. At the time, the character of Anakin (and Christensen’s portrayal) were both widely criticized by Star Wars fans. This was partly because Anakin had so many awkward lines in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith that it was hard to take the character seriously.
Anakin’s cringeworthy and melodramatic lines are prime meme fodder, but the character is still often cited as one of the trilogy’s biggest weaknesses. Anakin isn’t a very likable character, the way he pursues Pe is incredibly unsettling, and his angsty bickering with Obi-Wan comes off as immature rather than tortured. But Anakin/Vader's most embarrassing prequel moment of all was Vader’s final line in the prequel trilogy (which wasn’t even spoken by Christensen): “Noooooooooo!” The line was a homage to Luke and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s iconic delivery of the same line in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, respectively. But the line just didn’t work coming from Vader.
Even though the line was spoken by James Earl Jones, Christensen wore the iconic black armor and appeared on camera as Vader. praise Christensen’s work and are thrilled to see him return to the franchise, hoping that Christensen's role as Vader in the Kenobi series will redeem his personal reputation as well as his portrayal of the infamous villain.
In retrospect, Anakin’s dialogue in the Star Wars prequels was poorly written from the beginning. The Star Wars prequel films succeeded in many aspects — the special effects, music, fight choreography, and cinematography were all incredible — but failed at times when it came to story, dialogue, and characters, particularly Anakin. The prequel trilogy was supposed to be a Darth Vader origin story with Christensen as the star, but the young actor ultimately had to work with the lines he was given and, to put it bluntly, a lot of those lines were bad. Even for a more experienced actor than Christensen, it would have been difficult to deliver many of Anakin’s lines convincingly.
Regardless of his performance in the prequels or his return to the Star Wars franchise, Christensen doesn't deserve the vitriol that has been directed at him personally for the last twenty years. But, with any luck, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which did not bring Christensen back as Vader, but still succeeded in showing audiences a truly terrifying and powerful Vader — the Vader that Christensen deserves to portray.