By Dan Brown

James Earl Jones died one year ago this month.

A true renaissance man, he is one of the few entertainers to be awarded an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. That puts him in rare company.

But to an entire generation, he is known for a single role, and he didn’t even play the whole character – Jones supplied just the vocal cords.

If lines like, “No, I am your father,” and “I find your lack of faith disturbing,” and “Search your feelings” mean anything to you, then you know I’m referring to Darth Vader – the bad guy from the original Star Wars trilogy (by original I mean those three films appeared in movie theatres before the other trilogies and spinoffs).

Jones wasn’t in the black suit, but his deep, booming baritone arguably did more to create the air of evil and menace that Vader exuded than David Prowse’s bodily presence.

Now seems like the right time to discuss Jones’s future as Vader’s mouthpiece. Even though the character died in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, many Vader stories have been told since then and the baddie’s popularity has only grown.

I know what you’re thinking: Didn’t Jones sign a deal so his voice could still be used to bring Vader to life, even after the actor had passed? According to sources like Deadline, yes, such a deal was hammered out a couple years before his death.

But that doesn’t mean Lucasfilm is contractually obliged to do so.

They could re-cast. In fact, there might even be an advantage to doing so.

If I was in charge of finding a new sound for the role, my short list of performers would contain names like Ving Rhames (who is already the voice of Arby’s), Dennis Haysbert (who appears in commercials for Allstate Insurance), and Keith David (who has done a ton of voice roles and commercials).

Star Wars director George Lucas had originally kicked around the idea of hiring Orson Welles for his space-opera villain, but decided the vocals would sound too familiar – Welles was the person who narrated a Martian invasion of Earth on the radio in 1938, after all.

I admit re-casting comes with a substantial risk. 

Every fan who hears a different actor’s voice coming from the black mask would be comparing it to Jones. Star Wars fans can be tradition-minded folks who don’t like anything that strays too far from the blueprint laid down by Lucas before he sold his empire to Disney.

The lure of using an actual person for Vader, on the other hand, is that it would be a reminder that Vader is somewhat human, and was redeemed in the end by his son, Luke Skywalker.

What seems more likely is any future Star Wars production team will plunder the library of existing takes from Jones and use some sort of technical trickery. And I get how that would be an appropriate way to go for a character who is, according to Obi-Wan Kenobi, “more machine than man.”

There’s something fitting about using technology to portray a cyborg, so AI may in fact be the route they choose. And yes, this is what the producers of the Kenobi series did in 2022, with Jones’s voice failing as he neared the end of his life. 

One thing we know for sure: Given movies like Rogue One and TV shows like Kenobi, we haven’t heard the last from Darth Vader. 

Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.