I’ve recently rewatched all the episodes, but in bits and pieces and out of order. Anyway, I might be missing something, but this is sort of bothering me:
There can only be two sith at a time, a master and an apprentice, right? So it is the Emperor and Maul, or the Emperor and Dooku, or the Emperor and Vader. (I guess in the first ones he is not really the emperer yet.) And the sith seem to understand this pretty well. For example, Dooku asks Obi-Wan to join him against Palpatine. And, Vader says something like “Luke, together we can defeat the emperor and rule the galaxy as father and son.”
I assume that when the emperor wants to currupt Luke, his plan is to have Luke replace Vader as his number 2. But Vader must know this. So why is he so willing to go along with the plan? They talk about trying to get Luke to join them, but again Vader must know that if Luke joins the dark sides, he will be out and probably killed.
Now, maybe, Vader is too under the Emperor’s control to do anything about it. At one point he says something like “I must obey my master”. However I don’t think I buy this, as he also conspires against him Episode 5. So anyway, somehow this does not seem to add up to me. Any thoughts?
Also, while I am asking, here is another question. Is there any chance that Dooku was working for Palpatine longer than we are led to believe? It just seems that he is pretty fleshed out and Maul is so lame. Could they have been plotting together even when Maul was supposed to be the apprentice? I can’t remember who “commissioned” the clone army (was it Dooku?). But I assume the army would have had to have been started before the action in episode 1. And how would the “two sith” rule apply if Maul and Dooku were around at the same time?
Isn’t Vader just obliged to do whatever his master commands? His own life is not worth anything.
Perhaps he thinks that without Luke, he’ll never be able to rebel against Palpatine. So unless he can get his son to join him, he’ll just accept his role as a slave and do anything his Master commands.
As for Dooku, there’s no way to tell if he was working with Sidious. Officially, there can only be two Sith at a time, but maybe Dooku was simply a fallen Jedi and not the official Sith Apprentice until Maul fell?
I’m not a hardcore Star Wars fan, so those are just my random guesses.
Okay, hardcore fan here. The clone army was supposedly ordered by a Jedi Master who is now conveniently dead. My guess is that Palpatine did it and killed off the Jedi Master (Sufa Dyas?)
The reason that there are now only two Sith at a time is because in the past, there were many of them, and they tended to kill each other, because only one can be the most powerful. i suspect that both Palpatine and Vader wanted to turn Luke to the Dark Side and replace the other. This is how a Sith’s mind works. They are always seeking more personal power, and trying to prevent anyone else from getting their own. Hope this helps; just a random smattering of facts and conjecture.
All o the the above. There’s no reason Sidious can’t have a few potential replacements on the back burner in case some get killed. He has Anakin as a replacement for Dooku, and possibly even several other less power possibilities which we never see.
Actually, the Emperor was even willing to have Luke kill him instead of Vader. Palpatine was awesomely corrupt, more of a shell of a man covering for the vast Dark Side power contained within. Perhaps he considered finally destroying the rebellion and shrouding the galaxy in evil for ages to come more than sufficient reward for death.
Of course, according to the EU, the man was darn near impossible to kill because he essentially nolonger needed a body.
This is how I see it. We can’t really understand how incredibly corrupt the Sith are. There’s a storyline in Knights of the Old Republic that deals with this, on the planet Korriban. It’s very cool, and helps you understand the Sith better.
Of course . . .
. . . While technically probably true, I thought that game was better than either of the two newest movies :).
Because Vader wants to turn Luke against the Emperor at the last second (so to speak). And if that doesn’t work, then he wants to kill Luke to prevent the threat to himself. He would have prefered having Luke join him and then becoming the master, so he’s willing to go with the plan for now.
I’m sure on some level Vader thought he would actually depose the Emperor, but I think that he was just doing the Emperor’s bidding… luring Luke in with false promises, reunion with daddy, and all that. Who says the Sith have to tell the truth?
I’ve seen this debated numerous times on this board (hey, I’m new as in “money paying new”). Why the controversy? From the movies I arrived at the conclusion that this particular Jedi was killed, but the clone army was ordered under his name. Kind of like using his Coruscant credit card via the internet. Same thing.
I’m right there with you, The Hook (Line, and Sinker… sorry :D). I didn’t even know there was a “controversy”… I thought it was pretty clear that the individual Jedi master was nothing more than a McGuffin. In fact, I felt it created a nice twist (one of a dissappointingly few, I’m afraid) to the Clone Wars. For decades, Star Wars nerds have had the concept of the Clone Wars built up into this bugbear condition, so finding that they were actually “caused” by the Jedi makes their eventual slaughter and decline even more ironic and tragic.
I propose that Palpatine was being ARROGANT in trying to recruit Luke.
He had conquered the galaxy, was about to put the smack down on the Rebellion, and was probably not going to die of natural causes anytime soon (Darkhorse’s Dark Empire series if you accept that).
He was obviously overwhelmingly powerful. He had kept Vader, a true badass, at bay for over 20 years.
Maybe he “foresees” boredom.
No better way to spice up a long life of dominance than to see if you are so great that YOU can be the Master that dominates TWO Sith.
Things can get boring sitting in that Dark Throne room all day.
Jabba had his dancing girl, metal bikini slaves and Rancor.
Maybe the Emperor likes a project for his entertainment.
Anakin was at one time the most powerful Jedi. But now he’s a broken figure in a mobile iron lung.
Luke, on the other hand, is the son of Anakin, and so has inherited his father’s force sensitivity and potential. He is also in great health and would make a much better apprentice after a period of Sith training.
Palpatine was looking to upgrade to the younger model.
Well, one thing’s for sure: Palpatine had to do something about Luke, either destroy him or recruit him. The only way to know which to do is to pit him against his servant… if Luke could defeat Vader, great, that means he’s more powerful, and gee whiz, he just turned to the Dark Side… perfect! But if Vader defeated Luke, that just means Luke was too weak and unfit to be Palpatine’s servant.
So, essentially, Vader was Palpatine’s little puppet, and knew it, and deluded himself into thinking he still had some form of free will. Which, in the end, he did.
Excuse me for asking a dumb question, but who says there are always only 2?
I thought Mace and Yoda meant that Sith only move in groups of two(one master, one apprentice) and they want to know which one they just killed. In the past, couldn’t there have been plenty of groups of two?
Definitely. The two KOTORs were the best Star Wars games ever, and far better entertainment than eps 1 & 2. I might even like them more than the original trilogy (that’s probably considered sacrilege).
According to this entry at starwars.com, only the movies are canon. But really, this is a stupid argument. There is no true “canon” here… we’re not talking about a work of God or something. There is only LucasUberCorps’ initial “Hey! Let’s see how much money we can get from licensing these three movies!” and then “Oops. Looks like some of the stuff is contradicting itself. Oh well, instead of correcting errors, let’s just say they’re all false and point people to the movies!”
At the risk of getting into Comic Book Guy territory here, that site says that the movies are “absolute canon,” but goes on to say that the other stuff is also in continuity: “The analogy is that every piece of published Star Wars fiction is a window into the ‘real’ Star Wars universe.” I take the use of “real” to mean that yes, they’re in continuity.
(No, I’ve never gotten into a fight with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog).
Yeah, essentially what they are saying is “Yes, it’s all part of the same continous universe! Otherwise, how could we convince you to buy our stuff?” But once it starts contradicting, they’ll automatically revert to “Well, remember, only the movies are truly canon!”
Just a big money-making scam Which is, of course, what all business is.
OK, here’s your cite: Star Wars, the Essential Chronology by Kevin J. Anderson and Daniel Wallace.
“…Over the next thousand years the Sith remained in hiding. Following the strict dictate of Darth Bane, there were never more than two Sith Lords at one time-a master and an apprentice. The Sith meditated on the dark side and codified their teachings. Like monks in a hermitage, they waited in isolation for a chance to strike at the Jedi Knights.”
