General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager

Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager is an American comedy web series created by Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda of Blame Society Productions in Madison, Wisconsin, in which Darth Vader's younger, less successful brother manages the day shift at a grocery store called Empire Market.¹^•² The first episode was added to YouTube on July 10, 2006, and the series ran for four seasons and 38 episodes through 2012, becoming one of the early viral hits of the platform.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Creators	Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda, Blame Society Productions, Madison, Wisconsin¹
Premise	Chad Vader, Darth Vader's younger, less charismatic brother, runs the day shift at the Empire Market grocery store²^•³
First release	July 10, 2006, on YouTube; episode 1 runs 4:47²
Run	Four seasons, 38 episodes, 2006–2012; the finale, "Chad Vader Dies," aired December 11, 2012³
Signature honor	George Lucas Selects award, Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards 2007, chosen by George Lucas personally²^•⁴
Audience	Over 25 million downloads reported by 2010, with tens of millions of views overall⁵^•⁶
Filming location	The Willy Street Co-op grocery store in Madison, which plays Empire Market²^•⁷

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The series follows Chad Vader, a figure in a black helmet and life-support suit who runs the day shift at Empire Market, dealing with customers, coworkers, and shoplifters with the manners of a Sith lord. Chad hints that he is Darth Vader's younger, less successful brother.² Aaron Yonda plays Chad on screen and Matt Sloan provides the voice, enhanced in post-production.²^•⁷ Recurring cast members include Paul Guse as Jeremy and Christina LaVicka as Clarissa.⁸^•⁹

The costume was not custom built. The creators used the officially licensed Darth Vader costume sold in stores, and said they had been ribbed by costume purists for it.⁵

Origin and production

The idea came from Yonda's friend, the comedian Tim Harmston, who thought of Darth Vader working in a store for a public access show. Sloan and Yonda changed the character to Darth's brother Chad, a weak-willed loser who is not as cool as Darth.²^•¹⁰ The series began on Channel 101, which dropped it after two episodes, but the creators kept going and found a large audience on YouTube, where their own upload was featured on the front page.²^•⁴

Production was substantial for a web series. Yonda estimated that a basic no-frills episode required a minimum of 14 people and 231 hours of work, while season premieres and finale episodes took roughly twice that, about 25 people and 400 hours. Almost everyone worked for free, and the creators said they could never have made the series otherwise.¹¹ Episodes were shot at night after the Willy Street Co-op closed at 9 pm, with crew call at 8:30 pm.⁷

Reception and honors

Clips from episodes 1 and 4 aired on ABC's Good Morning America on October 11, 2006.²^•⁷ In 2007, George Lucas personally chose the series for the George Lucas Selects award at the Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards; cast member Mike McCafferty accepted the award in Los Angeles, and Lucas mentioned the creators by name in his press release.⁴ By 2010 the series had won over a dozen film festival awards and had been covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, and broadcast outlets including VH-1, BBC News online, G4 Tech TV, and Spike TV.⁵ In 2010, Babelgum acquired the Blame Society catalog, which by then included more than 20 episodes across three seasons.⁶

The series was nominated for best series in the first annual YouTube Awards, losing to "Ask a Ninja."⁴

The television deal that did not happen

The creators pitched the concept to television producers, and Yonda reported that Chad Vader was the only idea people cared about. The deal collapsed because, as Yonda learned later, everyone was too worried about Lucasfilm suing them.¹⁰ The same fear shaped the web series' finances: potential commercial sponsors withdrew after considering the possibility that Lucasfilm might shut the production down.¹¹

In 2008, with no new episodes in production, Blame Society launched the Chad Vader Training Videos, a microseries of corporate human-resources parodies set in Empire Market, planned at up to a dozen shorts, partly to keep the character visible during television negotiations.¹² Several of these employee training videos later appeared as specials alongside the main seasons.³

End of the series and aftermath

The series ended for financial reasons. YouTube monetization, which began only at the end of Season 1, never covered production costs even with millions of views. Season 4 was funded by a modest Kickstarter that let the creators make another season without paying people what they were worth, and Yonda and Sloan went further into debt making it, so they stopped.¹¹ Yonda estimated that reviving the series would require at least $10,000 per episode, at the outer edge of low budget and possible only because the production was not in Hollywood.¹¹

The series had a career consequence for its voice actor. LucasArts was impressed by Matt Sloan, and he went on to voice Darth Vader in games such as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.²^•¹³ In 2026, on the series' 20th anniversary, Yonda announced a newly updated reunion episode and a GoFundMe campaign to raise production funds.¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Comedy, drama, and general-genre web series › Premiered 1999 to 2016

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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