Via Ew.com:

On Monday, we talked about a “happier ending” that was considered during the early stages of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Tuesday’s subject is the much grimmer ending that almost faced another important character.

Darth Vader was always going to be used sparingly in Rogue One, but “spare” isn’t exactly in the Dark Lord’s personal lexicon.

In early drafts of the story, his merciless nature would have been highlighted not in a brutal lightsaber melee against a corridor full of Rebel soldiers, but in the cruel and unusual execution of a member of the Imperial high command.

“Vader is in the movie as much as he always was. He only had two things in the film. He was on Mustafar and then in the battle at the end,” says Gary Whitta, who wrote a version of the script that was then redrafted by Chris Weitz and later Tony Gilroy.

“The rampage where [Vader] murdered everybody wasn’t me. That got added later,” said Whitta, although he had considered a different battlefield confrontation between a large group of opponents and the Sith Lord. “I had pictured early on Vader murdering all these Rebel soldiers but I never wrote it into the script. It was an idea that stuck around after I left and they ended up finding a cool way to use it. It’s actually my favorite thing in the film.”

He did have a bonus Vader scene near the end that ended up being dropped from the storyline.

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