Full Series Will the Sith's "Grand Plan" be explained thoroughly, or even mentioned in the Clone Wars?

Immortality is not same as cheating death- immortality means that one CANNOT DIE- avoiding death or prolonging life or even living without a body is not same thing as achieving immortality (when death is simply impossible)- but "mortal spirit" that can be "killed"/"destroyed" and sent where it belongs (Netherworld) could be possible for sith to achieve while actual immortality only for jedi....

 

I am aware that there is a difference between cheating death and immortality. My stance is that the arguement that Darth Plagueis couldn't cheat death because he died is erroneous. Immortality = incapable of dying, and cheating death =/= immortality, so that someone died doesn't mean that they could not cheat death.

"Cheating death" is a phrase that is used in the real world to describe persons that survive occurrences in which they "should" have died. For instance, if someone is shot in the head and survives, or someone is diagnosed with cancer and given 2 years to live but goes on to live another 20, etc.

That's the kind of power that interested Anakin. He finds Shmi and she's all beat up and is clearly dying, Anakin curses the fact that he couldn't use the Force to sustain her through that and keep her alive (i.e. help her cheat death). Then when he starts having visions of Padme's death, he assumes that they will come true since they came true for Shmi. So as far as he's concerned Padme WILL die, and so he is interested in learning how to use the Force to save her from that death.

ANAKIN: The Sith rely on their passion for their strength. They think inward, only about themselves.

PALPATINE: And the Jedi don't?

ANAKIN: The Jedi are selfless . . . they only care about others.

PALPATINE smiles.

PALPATINE: (continuing) Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis "the wise"?

ANAKIN: No.

PALPATINE: I thought not. It's not a story the Jedi would tell you. It's a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create life ... He had such a knowledge of the dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying.

ANAKIN: He could actually save people from death?

PALPATINE: The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.

[.....]

PALPATINE: Only through me can you achieve a power greater than any Jedi. Learn to know the dark side of the Force, Anakin, and you will be able to save your wife from certain death.

[.....]


PALPATINE: You are fulfilling your destiny, Anakin. Become my apprentice. Learn to use the dark side of the Force.

ANAKIN: I will do whatever you ask.

PALPATINE: Good.

ANAKIN: Just help me save Padme's life. I can't live without her.

PALPATINE: To cheat death is a power only one has achieved, but if we work together, I'm we can discover the secret.

[...]

PALPATINE: We must move quickly. The Jedi are relentless; if they are not all destroyed, it will be civil war without end. First, I want you to go to the Jedi Temple. We will catch them off balance. Do what must be done, Lord Vader. Do not hesitate. Show no mercy. Only then will you be strong enough with the dark side to save Padme.


^They are clearly talking about both Darth Plagueis and the same power. Otherwise Palpatine is just randomly mentioning both a power and a Sith Lord that had never before and never again [chronologically] been mentioned in any of the movies.

Anakin asks Palpatine to help him save Padme, to which Palpatine replies that he does not know such a power but that instead they must work together. Otherwise Palpatine could just save Padme himself, but he's admitting that he doesn't have that power and that if Anakin can go to the Jedi Temple and kill them without hesitation or mercy, then he will be strong enough in the Dark Side to do it himself.

Otherwise, the arguement is that Anakin is asking for the power previously described that allowed Darth Plagueis to save others, and Palpatine is responding that only one [not Plagueis] achiev

 

Anakin didn't buy Palpatine's lies until he betrayed Mace. He was ready to turn Palpatine into Mace, and then he fell to his knees in distress and asked "what have I done?" when he helped kill Mace. He knew what he had done was wrong, but Palpatine kept urging him on that what he was doing was right. I think he bought the lies to help ease his conscience. And once he opened his heart to the dark side it made him angry and paranoid, but even on Mustafar he shedding tears. There was always that good part that knew what he was doing was wrong. He could have turned back, he just was afraid of what might happen if he tried. Or as Mortis describes, his guilt is a prison, because he refuses to let it go. In ROTJ, Vader tells look that it's too late for him, when Luke tries to initially redeem him. Plus he started to buy into the lies, I mean were the Jedi ever really going to kill Anakin and all the senators? No. But he started to buy it, because it gave him justification for taking the steps "necessary" to save Padme.

 

No, it doesn't. It says outright that his disfigurements were nothing new. Thus it agrees with Insider and many other sources including Sithisis and KOTOR. In fact, no existing EU source confirms the fan "scarred by the lightning" theory.

As I recall, that databank had had inaccuracies before, such as in its treatment of deflector shields, and contradicted the DVD commentaries on at least one character-related issue.

Nothing is whittling away the idea of dark side corruption. ROTS itself does no such thing, and dark side corruption is alive and well in the Bane trilogy released after ROTS.

Since the databank in question is now gone, I'll have to take your word for it. But it's important to remember that much can be read into ambiguous statements, as was seen in the case of Pablo Hidalgo's comments. The EU is not sitting on the fence when it comes to this issue. Various EU sources either debunk "scarred by the lightning" or involve dark side corruption. On the opposing side there is only a databank entry which doesn't even exist any more.

Amazingly, some who insist that Palpatine must have lied to Anakin can't imagine him lying to the Muggles in the Senate.

Luceno's interpretation in Dark Lord of what was going on with Plagueis is not a case of twisting the film to fit something previously established. Plagueis was a newly created character at that point; nothing external to the film had been established about him. It was a case of Luceno trying to make sense of an apparent plot hole within the film, the kind of thing his previous book ( Labyrinth of Evil ) had already done with regard to a different PT plot point.

Even if Luceno's view of how many earlier Sith had the power to cheat death would later seem to become inconsistent with "only one", Dark Lord was sufficiently vaguely worded on the topic to permit "only one" to still be accurate.

 

I'll take your word for anything pertaining to the the scars being nothing new. I just recall people scanning pages from the novel pertaining to that scene and having it say that his face melted like molten steel or something like that.

As an aside, I find it interesting however that the movies themselves *haven't* supported this idea with anyone other than Palpatine. And it would be conspicuous if his physical deformity is never dealt with in his back story, since it is a hurdle he has to overcome to take public office. Vader unmasked kind of has a resemblance to Palpatine (minus several decades of aging), but he was scarred. I mean we've not even seen yellow eyes on Dooku, or Asajj. Maul looks exactly like he would have pre-turn (aside from a subtle red ring around his iris, which Savage gained after the Nightsister ritual). Vader looks like a younger Palpatine (though ironically he is scarred, if Palpatine is not. The idea of Palpatine being very old like Ian McDiarmid said he was originally told, does not seem to be the case anymore. When Ahsoka turned, her skin was discolored and became very "veiny" which nobody else (on screen) experiences. So that I suppose could be due to her species, but her turn also wasn't natural, she was "infected."

Huh? I'm in agreement that he lied to the senate. Though I've lost faith that "he's always looked like that." Sure, Sithisis shows some ritual, but according to a plot summary, it's also about him eating a worm, shooting lightning at a crystal, and some other such nonsense that leads to Anakin craving power. Plus it's my understanding that Visionaries tales are not considered canon by LFL.

I don't know of which previous PT plot point you are referring, and I still don't 100% understand what plot hole exists in regards to Plagueis. If it is a matter of "if he could cheat death, then why did he die?" That's not a plot hole, since never in the film is it suggested that he couldn't be killed. All that was said was that he could use the Force to save others from death.

 

Most would agree that Palpatine had a plan in place to use Anakin's fear and anger against him to turn him to the dark side, he sets up the situation through manipulation playing both sides leading Anakin to not trust the Jedi, the story of Darth Plagueis is part of the plan, it serves to convince Anakin that the Jedi are not on his side and "hidding" things from him, not telling him the "whole" truth. The line "not from a Jedi", also helps push Anakin's allegiance from the Jedi to the Palpatine. This of course works as Palpatine pushes the situation to where Anakin has to chose in an instant between the Jedi and Palpatine, Anakin chooses Palpatine, imo giving into his fear, at this point the White lies told by Palpatine earlier are lost in the moment and Anakin is good and hooked. Palpatine then plays the second card, yes there is a way to save Padme, but I can not just tell you I have to "Show" you over time, thus Anakin still is dependent upon Palpatine. It's a classic approach, dangle the carrot, just make sure your stick and string is long enough they never really reach the carrot.

I also would not be opposed to some aspects of the "grand Plan" being explained, especially more info on the early formation of the clones. I supposed we could also see some of the back room dealing done by agents of Palpatine that work to corrupt certain senators, manipulation of the trade foundation and the like.

 

It sounds like we're talking about different novels here. You may be thinking of the ROTS novelization by Stover; I'm talking about Dark Lord by Luceno. I'm sure you can see why a description of Palpatine's face apparently melting ( from Anakin's POV ) wouldn't be especially likely to appear in a book taking place after ROTS. However, a description of Palpatine's face appearing to melt is not inconsistent with the scenario of "he always looked like that" as expressed in Insider.

I wasn't referring to you when I wrote "some". However, what you're saying above is inconsistent. If you're in agreement that he lied to the Senate, that means he was lying when he said the Jedi attack left him scarred. If he was lying when he said the Jedi attack left him scarred, then he always looked like that.

This is what Leland Chee said about the canonicity of the Visionaries stories ( I cut and pasted this from the very website we're on right now ):

The Darth Maul story is non-continuity, the Wat Tambor story is possible continuity as outlandish as it is, the Sidious story is kinda continuity ("from a certain point of view"), "The Fourth Precept" is anybody's guess, and the "Celestia Galactica Photografica" exists as works of art within continuity. The rest should fit and for the most part you'll know when these are set by reading them.

It may admittedly be kind of a wishy-washy answer, but the point is that he conspicuously declined to say it was non-continuity. However, Sithisis is just one source. Excluding it doesn't get rid of the other sources which tell the same story. Even Tartakovsky's cartoon has Sidious displaying certain post-ROTS characteristics during the Clone Wars.

It's the question of how Palpatine can say that Plagueis taught his apprentice everything he knew, if Plagueis obtained an ability which Palpatine does not have.

 

Well when I was a kid and I watched ESB and ROTJ, I just took it for granted that he was over a hundred years old. He just looked like a walking corpse that was long past his natural lifespan. I recall reading a quote by Ian McDiarmid in which he said that he was instructed by Lucas that the character was 120 years old or something like that, and I'm guessing the character was created with that idea in mind, that he was an evil, unnaturally old, "sorcerer."

However, that was never established on screen and then from what I understand, the idea was changed so that he would be like 50 in TPM, and in his 80s by ROTJ, and that he would slowly degrade into that appearance by Dark Side use. Then that idea was abandoned. Then he just abruptly gets transformed in the span of a couple minutes.

So now Palpatine in his 60s looks like the character was meant to at twice that age when the original trilogy was being created. Meanwhile, the other Sith around him don't undergo any such transformation. They just get yellow eyes and darkened eye sockets. Dooku is older than Palpatine and has been a sith for 10 years... he demonstrates absolutely no kind of unnatural creases in his face, and has yet to even display yellow eyes. Ahsoka just turned a sickly color and had some weird veins crop up in her skin, the Son who is supposed to be a manifestation of the Dark Side is just a pasty white guy. Vader was a Sith for 20 years, and he looked like hell, but all of it could pretty much be attributed to not seeing the sun in two decades, and being scarred. And Maul didn't look really any different than the other Night brothers and he was raised a Sith.

So why is Palpatine special? Sure he's been a Sith for longer, but those are some MAJOR creases and weird ridges all over his face that apparently accumulate in his 50s. Vader and Maul had been Sith for a couple decades and they hadn't even begun to develop. And Dooku is older and had been a Sith for a decade but still just looks like a perfectly healthy elderly man. What, a Sith hits 50 and he just falls apart? There doesn't seem to be any sort of gradual transformation there.

If I had it my way, I'd retcon things so that Palpatine could go back to being 120. Make it so that Plagueis did teach Palpatine how to cheat death, and that Palpatine was lying to Anakin when he said he didn't know. Then introduce the idea that he's been covering it up through alchemy and whatever.

The other solution I think would be to make the saggy skin/deformity not be dark side related (the yellow eyes, and pasty skin still would be). He talks about Plagueis saving others from death, but never specifies who. Make it so that Palpatine suffered a mortal wound and that he was one of the ones rescued by his master. Not only would this make him look especially ruthless, since he kills the guy that saves his life, but could justify his zombie-ish appearance by rationalizing that his body is being sustained by the Force when it other wise should be dead. Which could also be used to justify why there's an explosion of Force power when he dies.

Yes, at that's something I would have loved to see in TCW too. I've stated before that I'd like to see the "true" Darth Sidious make an appearance in the show. It's just weird when Palpatine undergoes such a drastic transformation and nobody cares. Gunray sees his face for the first time (as far as we know) when he appears as his grotesque self in ROTS, and nobody is shocked, frightened, or hints at having any strong feelings either way. When he first transforms, neither Anakin or Mace seem shocked or disgusted, or anything. And when they see the hologram of Sidious with Anakin, everyone immediately seems to realize that he's the Chancellor despite the fact it looks nothing like Palpatine (the one they knew) nor sounds like

 

Yes, since Palpatine is one of my favorite characters, I'm hoping (though probably in vain) that it gets addressed.

 

As Carrie Fisher points out in one of the OT DVD commentaries, Lucas is often not very "verbal". The TCW crew probably has no knowledge of the positions of Lucas, Ian, or the EU regarding this topic.

 

My issue for this point is that in what possible way is there to believe that Anakin would somehow be the key to unlocking any Force secrets. He seems blissfully ignorant of Force Magic for the most part -- and is really just a great fighter.

That doesnt seem to change a whole lot when he becomes Vader either.

 

Well, it's not like we've ever really seen any Sith training. The closest thing we've seen is Dooku training Savage, which was basically just an evil version of when Yoda was training Luke to pick up rocks. We've never seen anything more advanced than that. Even though Dooku, Maul, and Vader were all Sidious' apprentices, we never see Sidious do any teaching. Instead they're just shown doing his bidding. Now that's not to say that he doesn't do any off camera training. As soon as he welcomes Vader as his apprentice, Sidious immediately tells him to go attack the temple, and that afterward he'll be strong enough to save Padme. And Sidious tells Yoda that soon Darth Vader will become more powerful than both of them, something that Anakin seems to believe as early as his trip to Mustafar (but that's just the overconfidence talking). Perhaps Plagueis did teach Sidious the basic principles of how to achieve the power to cheat death, but maybe he lacked the raw power in the Force to actually successfully carry it out. Maybe it was sort of a "well I know how, but I'm not strong enough to do it, but if you get stronger then you can do it under my tutelage" thing. It wasn't exactly elaborated on.

 

Maybe he's tested his own midichlorian count.

 

You're right.
I guess it's something we have to assume only up until now -- and perhaps after the Plagueis book we'll have A LOT more to work with during this time frame regarding Alchemy.

From the back of Dark Empire - we know Sidious is heavily engaged in Sith alchemy -- but no where can I remember Vader ever really delving into magic.

And while it might have been hard for him to fight post losing all the limbs -- Alchemy seems like something Vader still could have excelled at [unless it's all about the Midi's]

Sidious seemed to be more interested in teaching his pupils how to put the smack down on people -- only Dooku seems to have possessed the character and interest in learning Alchemy etc.

 

That's very close to what I've been thinking.

I think that Plagueis really did teach Sidious everything he knew about using the Force to manipulate midiclorians. However, despite this knowledge, Sidious found that he was unable to duplicate Plagueis' abilities. Because of this, Sidious came to the conclusion that Plagueis had omitted some crucial detail ... a secret. I think Sidious desperately hoped that Anakin, with his unprecedented connection to the Force, might stumble upon the secret himself and that Sidious would then learn this secret through Anakin. The one single moment of honesty Sidious may have had with Anakin was "To cheat death is a power only one has achieved, but if we work together, I know we can discover the secret." [My emphasis].

The thing is, I suspect that the only "secret" that Sidious fails to grasp is the amount of time and dedication Plagueis spent developing this skill. It was his obsession for decades, one he pursued with a nearly monomaniacal passion. Sidious has all the knowledge he needs, he just hasn't devoted the incredible effort required to develop the skill.

Analogy time. Imagine 2 people. The first person knows how to read sheet music, and knows which keys on a piano correspond to which notes on that sheet music. He also knows what the three pedals do. He knows how a piano is played. The second person is a professional concert pianist. What's the difference between the two? Not knowledge. Skill. The knowledge can be obtained relatively easily, but the only way to develop the skill is practice, practice, practice.

I think Sidious is under the mistaken impression that there is some secret, some trick, that will allow him to unlock Plagueis' hard-won abilities: a quick and easy path, if you will. And that path is supposed to be Anakin. It may even be the reason Sidious kept Vader around, even after he was horribly crippled. "Drat, my perfect apprentice is a shadow of his former self. In his current state, he's not ev

 

Will they bring up these two things that might, or might not be a part of the "Grand Plan"?

According to the ROTS novel, Dooku had the mindset that after the war was over, and the Jedi Order was destroyed he would be appointed to renew it in a way they saw fit.

The statement "the Jedi are doomed" made by Grievous implied that he might have known about "Order 66". Will they elaborate on how much he knows and what role he will play when the war ends?

 

Sidious may have had many moments of honesty with Anakin.

 

Dooku's 8 decades of Jedi upbringing have prevented him from being "scarred and deformed" by the Dark Side. He may be using the Dark Side but he isn't letting it consume him like the other Sith do since he's been in control of his emotions for too long. I agree on Ahsoka and the Son but as for Vader and Maul, Vader looked just as grotesque as Sidious did after his defeat on Mustafar and wearing a helmet for 25 years has made him looked like Humpty Dumpty pieced back together. Aside from the yellow eyes and tatooed face, Maul also had rotten teeth and decayed horns but if he had survived against Obi-wan, his deformity would've made Vader and Sidious look like supermodels. Now to the question of why Sidious is so special, it's because he's been hiding his Dark Side powers and pretending to be a good guy his whole life. The idea of being nice to people makes him sick and he hates himself for that but he's been careful not to expose himself to the Jedi. It is when he spills his guts to Anakin does PalpSidious finally let his true nature take form which is why he ends up looking like a twisted version of Dracula (the Gary Oldman version).

 

I see no reason to believe that Dooku is any less evil than Vader. The only thing really to suggest that is his appearance. But he's enslaving and murdering, and involves himself in all kinds of evil. Maul's horns and teeth were no different than Savage Oppress' even before he gets all doped up on magic steroids. Palpatine's change is abrupt and significant in that none of the other Sith really seem to undergo any sort of change other than the color of their eyes and slightly sickened discolorations. Palpatine is the only one to undergo a voice change (other than Savage) and he's the only one to be horribly deformed (aside from Vader). However Vader' demorfity is due to being burned, and Savage's voice change was accompanied by drastic changes in his physical being when he was magically enhanced. And Sidious gave himself over to the Dark Side in order to fight Mace. His voice dropped, he was furious, and he was trying to kill Mace, which would mean he wasn't holding back. So, if he transformed because he was giving himself over to the Dark Side, that should have happened at the beginning of the fight, not at the very end when he gets lightning reflected at him.

I know the EU has said that Palpatine keeps his "true appearance" hidden through alchemy, and in Deception we see Obi-Wan radically altered through technology, so that's also a possibility for T-canon to explore. However, to hide his appearance, would mean that such an appearance would have had to have cropped up before in his life, forcing him to deal with it. I've not read the Darth Plagueis novel, but I had been reading all the released pages and following all the spoilers, and to my knowledge there was no mention of Plagueis ever having to deal with such a thing, nor Palpatine. The closest I am aware of is the mention that when Palpatine killed Plagueis, there was some massive shift in the Force and that the Dark Side flooded into him. If that was some kind of power that didn't fully manifest itself until his fight with Mace, then that would mean that Palpatine had never before appeared as he had after being hit by his own lightning. If I am wrong about the Plagueis novel addressing Palpatine's deformity, then I would be curious to know what the book does say on the matter.

 

The funny thing is Ed Asner has actually played a Jedi Master!

 

I just want to add my 2 cents to this discussion

First if we are talking about "the" history of the Star Wars universe, then what GL says trumps anything said elsewhere. When you include other sources you're forming/making your own Star Wars universe (which is a 100% valid thing to do since it doesn't really exist) by selecting the story's and info you want to include. So if we're talking about the Sith and their history in regards to the Offical Star Wars universe/time line, we have to look at the G-Level and T-Level canon, and thats it. The Sith were 2,000 years before the movies by a Lost Jedi, they took over the galaxy and ruled for a period of time, they were destoryed by in-fighting, the suriving Sith created the Rule of Two so it wouldn't happen again. Thats offical, anything else isn't. All the other stuff does not/should not come into play in this.

Second, in regards to who Palpatine was refering too as the one who cheated death, I don't think he was refering to a Sith at all but to Qui-Gon Jinn. I've already read the tale of "Plagueis the Wise" as Palpatine saying the Sith can and do use the force to extend someones life, to prevent death etc... He says the Dark Side is a path to abilities some consider unnatural (I think this is how Maul will return). Obviously he's phrasing in a way to make Anakin (an dthe audience) believe that the Sith can "cheat death". Then later once Anakin joins him the dialog is (from IMDB scripts):
ANAKIN: Just help me save Padme's life. I can't live without her. I won't let her die. I want the power to stop death.

PALPATINE: To cheat death is a power only one has achieved, but if we work together, I know we can discover the secret

I think there are 2 things implied here. First, while the Sith can extend life unnaturally, they can't out right prevent. They can't "cheat" it, if you will. And second, I think Palpatine is refering to Qui-Gon Jinn as the only one who achieved cheating death since hes the first Jedi or Sith (as far as we've been told) to retain his idenity after death, allowing him to see/be aware of the universe after his death and still influence it. The reason no Sith has achived this abilitiy is because they can't. First it's not "cheating death" the way they want to cheat death. A Sith wants to live forever which isn't possible (Yoda's line from RotJ) and to retain ones identy after death requires a level of selfishlessness that a Sith would never have. And while I doubt Qui-Gon Jinn was popping up in Palpatines office to have chats, I think its safe to say Palpatine is strong enough in the force to be able to sense this weird thing that happened/is happening with Qui-Gon. Hes aware that a Jedi is "alive" within the force.

 

That's why Palpatine is not referring to Qui-Gon. He says that he and Anakin can discover the "secret" if they work together. This is portrayed as a Sithly enterprise, not the two of them discovering Jedi Force ghosting.

Palpatine says exactly the opposite. He's not saying they can't do it, he's saying they can do it.

Yoda doesn't say it's impossible, just that he isn't strong enough in the Force to do it - and this probably has a lot to do with his unwillingness to embrace the dark side.

 

Its established that Yoda is the most powerful Jedi out there. Through Obi-wans lines in TPM, and Lucas saying he made Yoda small and funny looking so he didn't look like the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy. If the person who is stronger in the force then anyone else (outside of Anakin, pre-Darth Vader armor) isn't strong enough to prevent death.......not really possible is it?

You're assuming Palpatine knows how Qui-Gon did it. If Qui-Gon cheated death through means an emotions and sacrafice that Palpatine can't understand, he wouldn't know/understand that he can't do it. Its the same idea that Rowling put in Harry Potter, Voldamorte doesn't understand love so he doesn't understand that he can't do things that Harry can.

The Sithly enterprise would be the two of them figuring how that other person achived it and doing it themselves.