WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Wars: Darth Vader #9, by Greg Pak, Raffaele Ienco, Neeraj Menon and VC's Joe Caramanga on sale now.
As Darth Vader continues to attempt to regain his standing in Emperor Palpatine's good graces in the immediate fallout from being unable to turn Luke Skywalker to the Dark Side of the Force, he stumbles across important elements of Sith history directly tying his adventures to the events of The Rise of Skywalker.
As Vader leaves one important Sith location in Star Wars: Darth Vader #9, he embarks on an unlikely team-up that takes him beyond the Outer Rim to travel to a secret planet that prominently appears at the end of Episode IX: Exegol.
As punishment for his failures to utterly crush the Rebel Alliance at Hoth -- despite possessing an overwhelmingly superior force and turning his own son to the Dark Side and kill Padme's double Sabe on Naboo -- Palpatine stripped Vader down to his most humiliating elements. Left behind on the lava bank of Mustafar where Palpatine rescued his apprentice after his fateful duel against Obi-Wan Kenobi -- depicted in the climactic battle of Revenge of the Sith -- Vader must struggle to survive without the cybernetic enhancements and usual red lightsaber that Palpatine affixed to his charred body. Adding insult to injury, Palpatine dispatched Ochi of Bestoon, the Sith assassin who would eventually murder Rey's parents, with killing the impaired Vader.
Still maintaining his strong connection to the Force, Vader managed to stay one step ahead of Ochi and used the spare parts from salvaged droids to construct his own makeshift prosthetics. Now mobile once again, Vader mercilessly dispatched anyone that stood in his path and learned more about the secret history of the Sith after conferring with the Eye of Webbish Bog. With Ochi in tow, Vader obtains the Sith Wayfinder and uses it to chart a path to Exegol to discover more secrets about the Sith's past as he continues to determine what his standing is with the Galactic Empire and Palpatine.
In The Rise of Skywalker, Rey led her friends to recover Ochi's dagger from his ship on the planet Pasaana where he had crashed years earlier while being pursued by Luke and Lando Calrissian to learn more about the remnants of the Sith following the fall of the Empire. Decoding the ancient Sith text on the dagger, the group found a Wayfinder in the wreckage of the second Death Star and finds the Sith and Final Order at the planet Exegol, just beyond the galaxy's edge, a world previously found by Kylo Ren via a Wayfinder found on Mustafar leading to his own confrontation with Palpatine.
Vader is poised to travel to the Sith's biggest secret, a planet existing beyond the confines of the galaxy that will provide Palpatine with the means to return from the grave and rebuild a new effort to crush the New Republic. The ties to the Star Wars sequel trilogy are becoming all the more apparent as Darth Vader continues his odyssey through the forgotten side of the galaxy, coming face-to-face with more secrets and allies linked to Emperor Palpatine that will shape the course of history for decades to come. And while a monster stands directly in the Sith Lord's path, Vader appears undeterred as he turns to explore Exegol and learn its ancient teachings for himself to regain his sense of honor and glory.