Rogue One: Details About Darth Vader's Castle Revealed

Contains spoilers for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Rogue One clarified a few big mysteries about the Star Wars universe, but one of the biggest may have slipped right by you.

Although Darth Vader appears in only a few brief scenes, one of them offered our first glimpse at his house. As Slashfilm points out, the exact location of Vader's lair has been "steeped in Star Wars lore," but using the book Art of Rogue One, it seems that we now know where Vader goes when he needs to put his feet up.

We see the inside of the castle about halfway through Rogue One, when Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) visits Vader to discuss the Death Star. Vader emerges from a bacta tank, which is commonly used in Star Wars for its healing powers.

But according to Slashfilm, the castle is on the fiery planet Mustafar, which is where the fateful lightsaber duel between Anakin Skywalker and Ob-Wan Kenobi takes place in Episode III. That's the one that left Skywalker dismembered and badly burned before being reborn as Vader.

In Art of Rogue One, original screenwriter Gary Whitta says "the fact that he has chosen to build his mausoleum here is a nod to the conflict in him, that he would go back to this place to reflect on what happened to the man he once was. At the same time, it's also terrifying, and when he emerges with all of his armor, he's Darth Vader."

It was reportedly a conscious decision not to identy Mustafar in Rogue One with an onscreen title card (like many of the other planets) to help keep Vader's reveal a surprise to particularly astute fans.

In the animated series Star Wars Rebels, it was revealed that the Empire took over Mustafar after the Clone Wars and maintained secret facilities there. In the episode "Fire Across the Galaxy," Grand Moff Tarkin takes Kanan to Mustafar to get information from the Jedi. Hera says, "I've only heard that name once, from Kanan. He said Mustafar is where Jedi go to die." Sounds like an especially apt description.

Art of Rogue One also reveals that the script description for Vader's castle is a "towering, monolithic obsidian fortress of stark, brutalist design." Production designer Doug Chiang also says, "We don't see it all right now, but the idea was that Vader's castle was built over a natural cave, a Sith cave deep down below, in the lava world."

There's also a chance we'll see more of Vader's lair in future movies, but we'll have to make do with this tantalizing glimpse for now. Meanwhile, check out the surprising ways Rogue One sets up the original trilogy.