I actually really enjoyed being reminded that he was, once upon a time, actually scary. Maybe because it's a far away galaxy and long ago and I have a terrible imagination, but the growing threat of planet-destroying weapons is always a little bit too abstract violence for me to buy into the good/evil division they work on. So having Darth Vader kind of gleefully destroy and terrify a bunch of helmeted Alliance doofuses was actually worth something to me in terms of narrative. And it was killing just for fun too.

But that "choke on your aspirations" joke was fucking rough, made worse by the double pun. Going Full Briscoe is grizzled seen-it-all detectives just trying to make it through the day, not timeless and iconic space villains.