It is no secret that Darth Vader holds only hatred in his heart for the Jedi Order, and especially the Jedi Council, after his fall to the Dark Side during the events of the Star Wars prequel trilogy–and one comic book tie-in reveals that Yaddle is no exception.
Yaddle is a Jedi Master who is of the same species as Yoda. She made her debut in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, and her inclusion in the lore was met with equal parts intrigue and ridicule. On the surface, Yaddle just looked like ‘Yoda with a ponytail’ as she didn’t have any other defining characteristics that separated her from the little green Jedi fans were introduced to nearly two decades earlier in Episode V. While some thought of Yaddle as a joke, other fans saw her as an expansion of the lore surrounding Yoda himself as Yaddle was the second member of his mysterious species to have ever been shown. Regardless of one’s opinion of Yaddle, her time as a Star Wars character was short-lived with Episode I being the only film in which she appeared. While Yaddle’s fate was revealed in the animated anthology series Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi, it seems there is yet another layer to her story–one which apparently invoked the eternal wrath of Anakin Skywalker.
In Star Wars: Darth Vader #25 by Charles Soule and Giuseppe Camuncoli, Darth Vader’s spirit is traveling through the cosmic current of the Force, reliving certain moments from his life while others are reframed based on his hate-fueled skewed perception. For example, in one instance Vader sees Obi-Wan fighting Palpatine (something that didn’t happen) while in another he sees himself fighting alongside Ahsoka (something that did happen). While walking through a fiery trail of memories and memory-based hallucinations, the swirling black and red spirit of Darth Vader finds himself standing before the entire Jedi Council, and all of them are in battle-ready positions–including Yaddle.
Darth Vader Had a Vision of Brutally Killing Yaddle
When Darth Vader’s spirit responded in kind to the Jedi’s aggression, he murdered every single one of them in increasingly violent ways, and Yaddle found herself getting slashed by two ‘spirit sabers’. So, what did Yaddle do to deserve such hatred? All the other Jedi Vader kills here seem to make sense, but Yaddle is seemingly just a goofy character many fans wrote off as being a total joke. Plus, based on what can be gathered from Episode I and Tales of the Jedi (which admittedly did come out years after this comic, but is still considered canon), it seems as though Anakin barely knew Yaddle, let alone knew her well enough to feel this level of hatred towards her. Sure, he was introduced to her in Episode I along with the other Jedi council members, but beyond that they hardly had any interaction (which was confirmed in Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi). Well, the answer is actually surprisingly simple: Darth Vader hated Yaddle because Yaddle was a Jedi.
After Palpatine corrupted Anakin and seduced him to the Dark Side of the Force, Skywalker saw the Jedi as an evil force in the galaxy that did the bidding of a corrupt Republic. He believed that so thoroughly, that Anakin murdered younglings just to keep them from growing into Jedi. So, while this Star Wars comic confirms that Darth Vader hated Yaddle, it also highlights exactly why he hated her–and as it turns out, she was just an extension of his hatred for the entirety of the Jedi.