“There are always two, a master and an apprentice” means just what it says on the tin.
The books and comics (which are canon) confirm this. Bane is the one who came up with the Rule of Two and he did it by killing the shit out of everyone until only he and his apprentice were left. I’m pretty sure you could theoretically trace the line all the way from Bane to Sidious without any breaks- an endless cycle of apprentice killing master.
Which unfortunately leads to the strong possibility that something will happen whereby both are killed and the line dies out. Overall a very bad plan.
Okay, thanks. I’d heard that story but didn’t know it was canon.
A Sith Lord isn’t worried about the line dying out-- He’s worried about him dying out. The odds of that are minimized by having only two: That still leaves you with someone to watch your back (until he stabs it), but cuts down on the competition.
I take it to mean there are only ever two Sith at a time, but there may be some larger number of dark side users associated with the Sith. There’s a scene in the Clone Wars miniseries cartoon (not the CGI series that’s currently running) where Dooku encounters a dark side user named Asajj Ventress, who claims to also be a Sith. Dooku laughs at her claim, kicks her ass, gives her new lightsabers, and then sets her on Anakin. My take-away from that scene is that there are people in the universe who have learned some secrets of the Dark Side, but haven’t been initiated into the Sith traditions. The true Sith Lords employ these people, and if they prove themselves strong enough, may groom them as apprentices with the eventual goal of using them to either over throw their master, or to test their current apprentice, depending on which Sith Lord is doing the grooming.
When Bane implemented the rule of two he wasn’t interested in survival. He was interested in strength. He believed (and don’t ask me to explain this because it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me) that the way to strengthen the Sith was to limit their number to two at a time. Even if individual Sith are only concerned with themselves (and really, if they weren’t it sort of goes in the face of everything the Sith are about), the purpose of the Rule of Two isn’t survival.
If Sidious was really worried about “him dying out” he would have killed Vader and, instead of attempting to turn anyone who showed promise to the Dark Side, he’d have just had them assassinated. He already had a stranglehold on the Galaxy. One more Force-user going around in his name would have been like having one more Star Destroyer. It wouldn’t have made a difference at all. I mean, really, how useful does Darth Vader show himself to be in the grand scheme of things? There isn’t anything he accomplishes that couldn’t be done by some ordinary admiral.
But instead what we see in the canon are sith lords who are training their apprentices to one day betray them. They get pissed when they don’t try to betray them. Sidious is ready to leave Maul to rot on some uninhabited world but when Maul loses his shit at the idea of his beloved master leaving him to die and tries to kill him Sidious declares his training complete. As selfish as these guys are, they want their apprentices to try to kill them. That’s the only way they can ensure that the line stays strong.
Agreed. But people in the Star Wars universe rarely behave logically.
Figured I’d link to Wookieepedia page on the subject.
Even if the idea is dumb, you have to admit Bane’s description is pretty epic: “Two there should be; no more, no less. One to embody power, the other to crave it.”
“Five… is right out.”
Once the number two, being the second number, be reached…
Some of the earliest stories Lucas wrote were about brothers rescuing sisters, so I do think the sister thing was known in advance. At the time, though, the “there is another” line was thought to be a way of dealing with Hamill if he got too uppity. Leia’s supposed ability to use the force was not all that evident in Ep. VI, except the novelization said it let her strangle Jabba.
Haven’t there been other sith in the CGI Clone Wars? How about that Force unleashed game, where you start out as Vaders apprentice?
Also, who placed the order for the clones in AOTC? (I’ve always been a bit confused about this one). Presumably, it was a Sith. I seem to remember that the clones grew at twice the normal rate, so wouldn’t this have occurred before the death of Maul in TPM?
I always assumed this was Sidious himself posing as the jedi master, but was it?
Wasn’t it Tyranus? He’d ordered them before leaving the order.
I think Tyrannus was Dooku’s darthy name, but wasn’t the name Syfo-dias mentioned as well? I’d assumed this was a mis-pronunciation of Sidious, but according to wookiepedia, he was another jedi master. So wasn’t he a Sith too?
Why do you guys write “Palpy” ? I hate that.
Hey.
I call him Pappy.
It is, yes.
Like many things STAR WARS, Sith philosophy doesn’t really stand up to a lot of examination. Knights of the Old Republic was awesome, but I never found the Dark Side arguments remotely compelling & only flipped because I was a completist and had already seen the Light Side ending.
But that wasn’t canon in the first three. It didn’t come out until the prequels.
I’m well aware of that. I was alive then, you know.
I agree he wasn’t the big dog, he certainly deferred to Grand Moff Tarkin. But “minor character” is a bit much. He was above minor thug (Stormtrooper), but not pulling the strings (Tarkin, Emperor by extension). He was the heavy that was the nemesis for Kenobi, the challenge to Skywalker, and the bully to Organa. He’s the senior henchman of the film.
She wasn’t suddenly pushed into his arms. Empire is full of the Hollywood “They hate each other because they really love each other” trope.
This is my point. At the time of these movies, there is no “Rule of Two”, no Sith lore. What we have to go by is the movies. We have the Emperor who is revealed to actually be a Sith primarily because it became obvious after Empire that there was no way Vader could be so powerful and be subservient to a mere mortal. Somebody with his abilities and personal ambition would not get ordered around, he’d get an audience with the ruler, then force choke him, and coup de etat complete. So the Emperor almost had to be a Sith to keep Vader in check. And it made sense for the Emperor to be old and ugly and twisted as a symbolism for the Dark side of the Force at work.
So why are there only two? Well, remember Vader was actually a former Jedi. Note in Star Wars, Grand Moff Tarkin says something to Vader about being the last of that religion. It wasn’t clear to me watching the movies that Vader wasn’t still a Jedi. It was only later that I learned that the Jedi and the Sith were two different orders of force users, kinda like Catholics and Baptists. Both are christians, have largely the same Bible and traditions that come from the same source, but they have very different attitudes and approaches. Like the difference in baptism, or the issue of confession, or the approach to communion (“The Lord’s Supper”). Both Jedi and Sith use The Force, but how they use it and why they use it is very different. It’s captured in the films by the simplistic description of “light” and “dark” sides, but the essence of the difference is more subtle, it’s in their aims and goals.
It’s plausible to me that the Emperor had Vader as his apprentice, his deputy, tasked with killing or turning any Jedi. Since most Jedi don’t turn, Vader is pretty effective at killing them. And is devious and fights unfair, and probably doesn’t just engage in a stand up lightsaber duel, but complicates matters with stormtroopers and booby traps and whatever else he can. It’s not that the Emperor wouldn’t want more force using apprentices, it’s just that the other force users get killed off rather than turning evil.
But I can see how the Rule of Two makes some sense from their perspective. Being Sith is all about personal achievement, becoming the ultimate power of the galaxy or whatever. It’s a very different thing than being a Jedi.
Think about it - two powerful Jedi from different regions of the galaxy meet up, they will see each other as partners, or at least allies, to the same goals of truth, justice, and [del]the American way[/del] peace. They’d have mutual respect, maybe admiration. They’d get a beer and swap stories and compliments.
Two Sith meet up from different regions of the galaxy, they will see each other as competitors for the same goal - being top dog. They will challenge each other, probably to the death, because stopping before that leaves a future opponent who could toughen up and come back again.
But it does make sense to have a follower, someone you train in the force, who you can use as your henchman for tasks you personally can’t do for various reasons (maybe like Darth Sidious, you are hiding your true identity and have some other obligation, maybe the task is too small for your personal attention, whatever).
And I can see how the Rule of Two would naturally evolve from Sith culture. There maybe any number of weak dark force users, but if any start to have abilities, they get used in training the Apprentice. And if they succeed, they become the Apprentice.
And that very nature, plus the inherent selfish ambition that drive the dark users, builds the notion that one day the Apprentice will try to take over from the Master. And either the Master slaps him down, which means he’s not ready, or he succeeds.
The only fine point I see is I could see a Master deciding that he didn’t like the Apprentice trying to take him out, and killing him and taking a new Apprentice. Because the Master isn’t trying to train a replacement, merely an assistant. “Know your place.”
So deliberately trying to provoke the Apprentice to take over seems off to me. YMMV.
Either he intended to take Luke to the Emperor and turn him, and have two Apprentices for the Emperor, which would be acceptable under the original movie canon, or he was already thinking of using Luke to take on the Emperor, which is a fair position to take, or else he realized Luke was more capable than he first imagined, and that inspired the idea that he could use Luke’s presumed ambition to turn Luke to his side, and then use Luke’s surprise abilities to help take on the Emperor. Sort of an inspiration to the plan based upon what happened. Any of those three options make sense to me as possibilities. Or I guess he intended to take Luke to the Emperor, and then kill Luke there to assert is rightful place as apprentice, which doesn’t make sense. If he want’s Luke dead, he’d just kill Luke right out. If he thinks the Emperor won’t accept 2 apprentices, then he wouldn’t float that justification to the Emperor to bring Luke to him in the first place. It doesn’t really make sense. He has to think the idea sounds plausible of turning Luke and making him a deputy Apprentice. So I don’t buy the Rule of Two is an absolute at this time in the movie making.
If you recall, Tyranus was a Jedi first (Count Dooku), who got turned. It appears to have occurred after Darth Maul was axed. So it holds up. Similarly, Sidious was courting Anakin, but didn’t turn him until after Tyranus was kaput. So the Rule of Two is upheld for the prequels.
I guess that is one interpretation for the Emperor’s actions, and his continued insistance that Luke strike down Darth in anger. He wanted Luke to give in to the rage, to experience the power of the Dark and the loss of control to the Dark, and thus become his own tool. Or else he wanted Luke destroyed so he wouldn’t be a threat. I did kind of wonder at that, given that to me it would make sense for turning Luke and having two Apprentices of different levels.
I could see how technically there could be some force user who developed independently, and learned the Dark side because he didn’t have a Jedi to guide him in Jedi ways and naturally turned to the power. I could see said dark force user developing his abilities and start to accummulate personal power, until the Sith in the other corner of the galaxy (the Emperor or whomever) noticed him, and decided something needed to be done, because if left alone he could develop enough ability to become a threat. Thus sending his Apprentice. And if the Apprentice lost, then realizing he needed to either subvert the new guy as his own apprentice, or kill him off.
I guess I can see why there are only 2 Sith. Being a Sith is more than being a dark force user, it is being a decendent of a particular school of thought, a disciple of a particular cadre of dark force users. And now it makes sense to me how it would arise that there’s only one line of descent, and so only two Sith at any one time (with perhaps a number of adept non-Sith Lords trying to get enough power to challenge their way up).
In the movie, at the end she is able to sense that Luke survived the Death Star destruction. She doesn’t demonstrate overt ability, but the sensitivity is starting to emerge.
I picked it up from another thread as a shorthand for Palpatine. I’m a bit iffy on it myself. “Pappy” is right out. This isn’t somebody’s granddad, it’s the fucking Emperor of Ugly. Besides, Pappy could be confused for Vader, who is Luke’s “pappy”.
yeah, episode 4 was full of it too, from the moment they meet. the whole trilogy establishes their relationship, definitely not sudden that they end up together by rotj.
it’s been awhile since i read some of the expanded universe novels (which are canon as far as i am aware) but i remember mentions that leia never completed jedi training later on and that her force skills lay more with communication and diplomacy rather than in combat, which is why she spends a lot of the time post return of the jedi establishing a new government. so actually, we do see a bit of her force skills in the movies, like in empire when she senses luke is in distress, and in jedi when they witness the death star blowing up, she senses luke made it out in time. i think luke and leia complement each other’s skills because while they both have the combat and communication skills, luke excels ast the former, leia at the latter.
Ohhhh the fuck with that “Sith thing”. Nowhere in the original trilogy is there any of that bullshit “classic Sith behavior”. Keep the shit to the prequels and dont mar the original trilogy, pleaaaaase.