How James Earl Jones could live on in the Star Wars franchise

James Earl Jones' Star Wars legacy could continue despite his death aged 93, which was announced on Monday.

The actor lent his distinctive baritone to the iconic villain in the original Star Wars movies —A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi— as well as the prequel films Revenge of the Sith and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. He also returned to the role for the sequel film The Rise of Skywalker. Though some people might think his death will mark the end of Darth Vader onscreen, there is a reason fans may still hear his voice in a galaxy far, far away.

Prior to his death Jones signed the rights to his archival voice work to Ukranian company Respeecher, which has permission to use AI technology to recreate his baritone in future Star Wars projects. Some may be shocked by the mere idea of this, but it has already happened — Jones' voice can be heard in Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi as Darth Vader even though he didn't voice him again.

Jones didn't record new lines for the show they were recreated thanks to Respeecher, which used AI to analyse hundreds of hours of sound bites of Jones recorded over the years as a way to "clone" his voice in a new setting.

The actor had quietly stepped back from the role, and as his voice had also changed with age Lucasfilm were keen to recreate Darth Vader's voice as it was 45 years ago. Respeecher was happy to oblige, and could well continue to do so in the future.

Read more: The first time James Earl Jones met Carrie Fisher wasn't on Star Wars

Matthew Wood, supervising sound editor at Lucasfilm, spoke to Vanity Fair about using Respeecher to recreate Jones' voice, saying: "He had mentioned he was looking into winding down this particular character. So how do we move forward?"

According to Wood, Jones acted as "a benevolent godfather" during the process of his voice being recreated for Obi-Wan Kenobi, and he oversaw all the work that went into the "cloning" of his voice and would give advice on how to improve it.

This is not the first time that Respeecher has done this either, as the company also recreated Mark Hamill's voice to sound like when he originally played Luke Skywalker for the Disney+ show The Book of Boba Fett and The Mandalorian.

In a behind-the-scenes documentary for The Mandalorian, Woods explained how the process worked by sharing: "I had archival material from Mark in that era. We had clean recorded ADR from the original films, a book on tape he’d done from those eras, and then also Star Wars radio plays he had done back in that time.

"I was able to get clean recordings of that, feed it into the system, and they were able to slice it up and feed their neural network to learn this data."

Because of this technology, it seems entirely possible that Star Wars fans will hear Jones' voice again in the future. There are currently no plans to feature Darth Vader onscreen that we know of, but that doesn't mean that Lucasfilm isn't planning something.

What we do know is that Lucasfilm and Respeecher have the technology to recreate Jones' voice, and were given the actor's permission prior to his death. So, much like Carrie Fisher being included in The Rise of Skywalker through unused footage from The Force Awakens after her death, there is a way for Jones to return as Darth Vader.