Q&A with Star Wars Insiders: What really happened to Darth Vader at the End of Episode 4?

 If we, the folks here at ROCKWORLDEAST were the betting type, we'd bet that the most acutely focused fans in the world are Star Wars fans... by a long shot. There doesn't seem to be a group on fans anywhere in this galaxy that we've heard of, that is more inquisitive about the plots, sub plots, characters, machinery, development or film to film referencing than this group. Yeah, a lot of them like to live a happy-go-lucky lifestyle of re-watching the classics and cos-playing their troubles away, but that doesn't mean these guys don't mean business. Star Wars fans have been demanding answers on a variety of points for decades including, 'How did the 2nd Death Star get built so fast?', 'Why aren't Jedi's allowed to have families?' and probably most famously, 'Who Fired the first shot in Episode 6?'

These rabid fans are not a small group either, in fact, just this week we released to our email subscribers, the RWE Quarterly Top 5 Tees and Top 5 Hoodies of the year (so far) and out of 10 items, Star Wars took 2! If you're curious, it was the Star Wars Le Force Baseball Jersey and the   Star Wars Boba Fett Hoodie.

But to get back to getting some answers, we tried our best to solve the mystery of one of the greatest unanswered Star Wars questions of all time: What ever happened to Darth Vader at the end of Episode 4? How exactly did he manage to survive when it seemed impossible? So we contact a few folks from Lucasfilm as well as many of the current and past artists and writers of the Star Wars comic series. Well basically we contact every Star Wars insider we could find to get down to the bottom of this mystery.

Here's what we came up with, it looks like you may have to take these hypotheses and settle on your own conclusion:

We nay not have solved the mystery, but we sure had fun trying! Check out our huge selection of Official Star Wars merchandise, t shirts and collectibles (seriously, it's probably time you considered how sweet a Storm Trooper lamp might look in your living room!)