Saga Lucas’s vision of the Sith and galactic history over time

I'd love to see the old Je'daii Order fully brought back into canon. I'd be absolutely ecstatic if the made a trilogy exploring the early days of the Je'daii.

The whole light, dark, and balance theme has always appealed to me in the context of Star Wars and the Force. It's why the Mortis Arc in TCW is my favorite arc of the show, except for the chosen one part of it. We actually get an exposition, albeit a brief one, into the workings of the balance and how it keeps the light and dark in check. It's also part of why the sequels appealed to me. The whole concept of equal light, equal dark. One side rising to meet the other. Sadly, again, it was too brief of an examination.

 

We know a lot more about Lucas's view of Sith history now thanks to the new book, Star Wars Archives: 1999–2005, which is being discussed in greater detail in its own thread in the Literature forum.

As discussed already in this thread, GL's story differs from what the EU and even Disney canon have established. For example, the battle of Malachor as portrayed in the Darth Maul comic would not work for Lucas. He doesn't agree with the idea of an army of Sith fighting together against an army of Jedi. The Sith Lords, like the Jedi Knights, exist primarily as pairs, a master and an apprentice. But unlike the Jedi, the Sith cannot coexist in larger groups without coming into conflict. And that was even before Darth Bane.

If we consider those recent interviews from the book (courtesy of @ColeFardreamer), along with last year's interview on StarWars.com, and the second-hand info from Terry Brooks's novelization of Episode I, we can reconstruct a rough but clear idea of Sith history:

• Thousands of years before the movies, a Jedi Knight is seduced by the dark side of the Force. The Jedi Council forbids him from continuing his studies, so he leaves the Order and founds the rival Sith Order.
• More Jedi join the Sith, and their numbers grow. The Sith conquer the galaxy, toppling the Republic and creating an Empire. As their power grows, the Sith Lords become greedier. They kill the original Sith Master, and an era of civil war ensues.
• Each Sith Lord has an apprentice and a dominion of their own. The wars between the Sith Empires last a century or two. Entire races are enslaved, whole worlds are devastated. But eventually the Sith destroy themselves.
• A new Republic takes over in the power vacuum. The Jedi Knights help reestablish and maintain a new era of peace and justice.
• But not all Sith died. Two survived, who agree to cooperate as master and apprentice and to not train any more Sith so that they can preserve their order and its teachings. But this is a lie. Both master and apprentice continuously seek to train others in order to kill each other. Whoever succeeds continues the Sith Order. And so it goes on until the era of Darth Sidious.

There is still much we do not know. But I think this does piece together some of the things we knew. I'm very curious about whether Lucas had a story in mind, because I had heard that his original ideas for Episode I would actually cover that first Sith conflict.

One of the things that's most interesting to me is that Lucas views the Sith as being essentially a dark counterpart to the Jedi. Culturally, they are almost identical. The only difference is their devotion to the dark side, which ends up being a world of difference. But there doesn't seem to be anything like what there was in the EU with an original Sith people being conquered and with the Sith becoming a fusion of their dark-side tradition and that of the Dark Jedi. Then there's also the notion, if you follow the Archives thread, that the Sith can train a new apprentice fairly quickly if they corrupt a Jedi. That clarifies part of what the Jedi fear most about the Sith: that the Sith might cause them to fall to the dark side.

 

The Jedi don't fear the Sith or that they might cause them to fall.

The Sith sprung out of the Jedi. Their training and techniques are similar if not the same. It's the approach, philosophy and end goal that differ. This is corroborated in the movies: the first thing that Qui-Gon noticed when he faced Darth Maul, and led to his conclusion that he was a Sith Lord, was that Maul was well trained in the Jedi arts. And Sidious chose Dooku, a fully trained Jedi, as his apprentice because he didn't have the time to start from scratch, implying there's a lot of overlap.

Also, the rule of two is not a lie. It's a reality that the Sith can't escape if they are to exist. Any attempts to circumvent it will lead back to two at most.

 

It’s not the rule of two that’s a lie, it’s the notion that one Sith won’t betray the other by training an ally to kill them. I agree that it’s a fact of their existence, and one they sacrificed a lot of blood and destruction in learning.

And I do believe the Jedi fear the Sith, or more precisely they fear the dark side. They fear becoming the Sith. In TCW, Yoda discovered that it was his hubris at believing he had no darkness, no fear, that actually made him most vulnerable. The Jedi do feel fear, but they don’t let it control them. By acknowledging its existence within them, unlike the Sith, and by letting go of their concern for themselves, they are able to grow past that.

And yeah, the similarity between the Jedi and the Sith is what I was pointing out.

 

The Sith will always try to betray one another because of their selfishness, greed and lust for power.

The Jedi are trained against fear. They don't fear the dark side. They recognize it, warn about its dangers and consequences, and therefore refuse to give into it. Yoda didn't discover anything in TCW that he didn't already know, as shown in the movies. It was an illustration to the audience of the trials he one has to face in order to be recognized as worthy of the knowledge he was about to gain.

 

Perhaps I do not remember that as clearly as I thought I did. I’m not trying to reframe things from an anti-Jedi perspective. But the movies and TCW don’t seem to present the Jedi as absolutely fearless. That doesn’t mean they’re cowards or anything. But I don’t think they’re so removed from humanity that they simply don’t experience fear.

The Sith had to have had something to work with in the Jedi they turned, no? In Anakin for sure, but also Dooku, and Sifo-Dyas, and the many Jedi the ancient Sith turned thousands of years earlier. To me that says that although they’ve mostly mastered it, the Jedi are still vulnerable to the dark side. I just don’t get the impression that Lucas characterized any Jedi as being invulnerable to fear.

And I would say that discovering something you already know is a legitimate discovery.

 

I don't know what you mean with "removed from humanity". There's nothing removed by having been trained against fear. You don't see Jedi panicking or being afraid, no matter what they face. They are collected, in control. Because they are trained against fear. It doesn't mean fear doesn't exist.

But he did, he said as much for years and portrayed them that way in the movies. Nobody is invulnerable to the dark side. Anyone can give into it. The Jedi are simply specifically trained not to, and thus it's harder for a Jedi to fall to its temptations. It's a matter of training and discipline. Something I'd say we all should strive for.

It's a discovery to us, the audience. Which was the point. Only it was done through Yoda who is a Jedi master and thus is fully aware of the dark side that exists in every being.

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about these last points since November. I realized that my view of the Jedi had changed a lot over the years thanks to books, comics, and fan discussions. The Jedi are not meant to be like regular people on the street. They are monks, highly trained and very spiritual beings. Most of us are not that, though, like you said, it is a worthwhile goal to aspire to.

I agree that what happens in TCW does not always need to be interpreted literally, since it is a stylized medium and similarly the plots are designed to match it. In thinking about Lucas’s comments about the Whills and his sequels, I realize he likely didn’t meant for them to be something new discovered by Luke. Instead they would be something known by the Jedi Order, and which the audience would have discovered as we got a closer look at how Jedi were trained. But Luke would not be creating a new Order, he would be rebuilding what Vader and the Emperor had destroyed. It would be new to the audience, but not to Yoda, for example, who was a great Jedi Master and gets unfairly maligned by fans.

Going back to the Sith, I think part of the point of their being so similar to the Jedi is that the big difference between the two is not in their training but rather in their perspective, with the Sith focusing on making the universe serve them while the Jedi focus on being selfless and serving the universe. In a broader sense, the Jedi serve as an archetype of selflessness, while the Sith are selfishness.

While Force powers aren’t real, I think Lucas sometimes extends the meaning of those terms (Jedi and Sith) to describe whether people are primarily selfish or selfless. It reminds me of how Tolkien would use “Orc” to describe people on a moral level. So there are statements by Lucas where he describes a society as essentially being full of Sith Lords, which leads to self-destructive events like World War II. Of course that doesn’t mean anyone has Force powers, it just means that people follow the selfish mold exemplified by the Sith.

If we, as regular people, find the Jedi to be dogmatic or moralistic, or even unrealistic in their selflessness, then perhaps that says more about our own unconscious selfishness. Nobody expects us to be monks, but maybe we are more like Sith than we’d like to realize.

We may not be as overtly evil or vicious as Maul or Vader at their most murderous. But Dooku’s arrogance, Vader’s possessiveness, Sidious’s manipulativeness, and Sith greed overall certainly seem like indictments of personal and societal failings that are all too common and real.

 

If we go off of references to EU materials, some tweets from Pablo Hidalgo, the TCW databank (which Pablo has said used notes from Lucas), and canon material I think this is what the ancient galaxy likely looked like:
25,000+ years ago - People traverse the galaxy in real space using carbonite to freeze themselves. Presumably some form of galactic society is possible with travel time being not entirely unreasonable. If I had to guess things probably looked similar to the Galactic Kingdom of Aquilae since Filoni has said both he and Lucas look to old scripts and notes from the production of the films when figuring out the ancient galaxy. It's possible that this Galactic Kingdom was even ruled by the Mortis Gods who are probably somewhat inspired by those same scripts (Lucas said they're inspired by worldbuilding notes he made while writing TPM and while writing TPM he looked to the old ANH scripts for inspiration). Also keep in mind given that the Jedi began 25,000 years ago, and given that according to Filoni various groups like the Force Priestesses, Bendu, and the Mortis Gods consider the Jedi to be a fairly new thing, it is very likely that some form of galactic society that could facilitate other more ancient religions existed before 25,000 years ago.
25,000 years ago - Various peoples study the purrgil and figure out how to build hyperdrives. Whether this first happened on Coruscant, Duro, Corellia, or Alderaan is unknown. The Jedi Bendu (their name in the ANH scripts, also according to Filoni this is the reason Bendu in SW Rebels knows of the Jedi, because this was their original name in universe) are formed on Ahch-To. The Republic is formed and the Jedi agree to serve as its peacekeepers.
5,000 years ago - (The date comes from Pablo who said this is when Lucas considered the Sith originated during production of TCW) A Jedi begins to hypothesize that true power is gained through the dark side. This Jedi gains many followers and during the Hundred-Year Darkness they fight the orthodox Jedi. They are eventually exiled to Korriban where they rule over the Sith, becoming Lords of the Sith. (That last part is from Tales of the Jedi, which Lucas personally approved back in the day, and bits of this version of their origin have been sprinkled all over canon. Not to mention Filoni also likes to stick to the EU version of groups most of the time like he did in the production notes for The Mandalorian).
5,000-1,000 years ago - Various events from the EU happen. (There have been references to much of Tales of the Jedi, Knights of the Old Republic, KOTOR 2 recently in the novel Light of the Jedi, Charles Soule has referenced the Sith Empire as seen in The Old Republic, etc.) The only element of these stories that I would say is 100% not ever returning is the existence of Sith Ghosts. At some point the Sith rule from the throne world of Exegol.
1,000 years ago - The Sith rule the galaxy (possibly even in the form of the Sith Empire from SWTOR). They then begin infighting and destroy themselves at Ruusan. Darth Bane survives and turns the pre-existing Rule of Two concept within the Sith religion into a more strict rule meaning there can literally only be two Sith at any given time. The Jedi discover this, hunt down Bane, kill him, and presumably bury him on Moraband (which has now been renamed to discourage travel) out of respect for his religious beliefs. They assume he never had an apprentice but a Sith Lord survives in secret.
1,000 - 0 years ago - The Jedi and Republic suppress knowledge of the Sith. I don't think the galaxy ever necessarily forgets about the Sith 100% but I can see them being something that only historians know of with your average person maybe only knowing of their Empire. Think of how people may know of the Catholic/Orthodox or the Catholic/Protestant splits in Christian history but they may not know of each individual Christian sect who may have argued for their own super specific belief systems that simply never made it to modern times.

 

I would loved too see George vision about Ancient Sith and Old Republic, well i am sure his Old Republic will be just the Republic not Old Republic there will not be many wars just two the war of the creation of the Sith the time where the Sith ruled the Galaxy just like Palpatine said and how Rule Two Sith begin but George also change his mind I wouldn't be surprised if George incorporated elements from the EU into his own story just like Aayla Secura and Quinlan Vos for the Prequels or the name Coruscant or Exar Kun double lightsaber for Maul

 

Well, there are two EU Sith Lords whose general role seems to parallel the role of the first Sith Lord in Lucas’s mind: Exar Kun and Darth Revan. Both are fallen Jedi who leave their order to start a rival sect. They amass followers, being a war of conquest, and are later betrayed.

That’s where the similarity ends, though it may be worth noting that both also develop their dark side power based on the ancient teachings of an ancient group of Force-users. The similarity makes me wonder if Lucas has something similar in mind for his Sith, though I suspect not.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if they just retcon one of them to be the First Sith.

Course also possible they just make their own with the same concept.

 

I suspect they might keep the specific story of the first Sith Lords mysterious, at least for a long time. I do think mystery works better in some cases. So it might be more likely that if Lucasfilm did anything with the Exar Kun or Darth Revan characters, it might just be to place them in that fairly open era where Sith existed as many independent pairs with their own dominions and conquests. Having said that, it seems like Lucas did have some clear idea for a story dealing with the destruction of the Sith before they went into hiding. It may have just been a vague outline or treatment considered for Episode I.

Talking about that ancient era, though, I’m reminded of how several users were spot-on in imagining the pre-Bane era had Sith Lords still in pairs but each with their own kingdom and in conflict with one another, not unlike a feudal/warring states setting. Lucas then said almost the exact same thing in the Star Wars Archives book, but how did fans get that impression beforehand?

 

@Sauron_18

Well...If I remember correctly in the Darth Bane novel when they do the rundown of the Era in question I believe they mention that when Darth Ruin rose up, someone killed him and then basically it was Sith Warlordism for a long time and the Republic became super duper weak but the Sith could never just beat them because well...Sith gonna Sith and always shoot themselves in the foot....Wasn't until the Brotherhood of Darkness and Lord KHAAAAAAN showed up did the Sith unite only to be challenged by the Army of Light...then Bane and well...you know the rest.

Could be the Author took notes from Lucas and just made his own lore and stuff and managed to fit it in with the fact that Darth Ruin was not the Jedi who became the first Sith but just one of many rogue Jedi who started up the order.

Since one thing they are keeping from legends is that the Sith are 5-6000 years old.

 

in KOTOR 1 Revan and Malak are Two one Master and Apprentice but yet they have millons of followers and Dark Jedi also they are the first Sith with Darth title

 

I’ll always see it as a missed oppertunity that they didn’t set KOTOR in 2000 BBY and make Revan the “founder” referenced in the TPM novelization, with the events of TOTJ being forgotten by that point. That would explain things like the technology gap between TOTJ and KOTOR and the Mandalorians being human in KOTOR and it would be fitting for the first “Darth” to be Lucas’s “founder”.

I suspect Xendor, Ajunta Pall, Exar Kun, Revan, Ruin, Kaan, etc. will all be combined into a single founder of the Sith for Disney canon.

 

I love how Rule of Two Sith act the same like Jedi having an apprentice or Padawan just like Jedi Rule of Two Banite Sith are very much like dark version Jedi in EU lore only Revan and Malak act like Rule of Two Sith in pre Bane era

 

Agreed. It highlights how similar they are to the Jedi in many ways, which somehow makes the dark side creepier. It’s what any Jedi Master and their apprentice would be like if they followed the path of selfishness instead of selflessness. I like that in Lucas’s view of things, the fall of a Jedi is an extremely rare thing.

Sometimes I get the impression that the original Sith rebellion was a very short-lived thing rather than a long war. That the Sith were born, conquered, and destroyed themselves within a century and then were thought extinct. But that the mere fact of their existence was traumatic enough for the Jedi and the Republic.

But I do prefer the idea that they persisted as a public threat after Bane’s reformation, attacking and conquering and being driven back but always surviving. Until they are thought dead. It prolongs the threat, which matches what we heard about in TCW, though it does take away from there being a singular Fall that was so terrible, despite being so brief, that it shaped the galaxy.

 

Going off Lucas' rough timeline wasn't the idea that the Rule of Two Sith created by Bane were around for centuries causing trouble before finally disappearing 1000 years before TPM?

We have the Sith wanting revenge on the Jedi and it wasn't for destroying the "Sith Order" because they did it themselves.

Lucas' notes on this are very interesting but as is his way if he were to actually translate them from notes to actual realized vision there would probably be some changes.

 

Earlier in July, StarWars.com published a synopsis and first-look article of the upcoming non-canon novel Ronin. This seems to be a reimagining of the Star Wars mythos using the lens of Japanese culture, history, and myth. But there are features of it that resemble early drafts of A New Hope, namely the notion of the Jedi serving the Empire and the Sith Order emerging as a rebel sect within that milieu.

When I first read this article, I got excited because it seemed like the novel would tell a story close to that origin point of Sith history. But it's likely to be its own thing, and while I'm still intrigued, I don't necessarily expect for this to illuminate that aspect of Star Wars history. Still, the author could certainly have been given access to some of Lucas's notes in the process of writing this book.

A more canon-focused book, Secrets of the Sith, also covers part of that Sith origin story, as we can tell from a preview posted on the official website earlier in the summer. There's a nice art piece of that early schism, which reminds me a bit of Chris Gossett's art piece in the '90s featuring Exar Kun's Sith rebellion. I know it's more than a little obsessive of me to look at all these things, but I think we can see bits and pieces of whatever history Lucas created in his notes and through his interviews with various other artists over the years. So even if these two new books are very much a thing of their own, I'm curious to see what snippets of Sith history we might glimpse through them.

 

I love this take Maul's storyline of the sequels could be swapped with post Solo, and instead of Darth Talon, you get Darth Qira in a way. A crime boss who is feared by all and can deal with sith lords. In comics she seems like she has learned all she could from Maul.

 

@Sauron_18

So I'm curious on your thoughts since Exegol and Ep 9 they've been doing the Palpation cloning thing and i'm curious how much they'll put it into other Sith if Mad/Dark Science is just naturally a Sith thing or if Mad/Dark Science is a more Palpatine centric thing

Basically were ancient Sith doing weird force experiments like Palpatine or is Palpatine just the kinda Sith who really likes focusing on the evil science angle like his master Plagueis.

 

@Jid123Sheeve

From watching the movie, my impression was that it was the Sith in general who had been interested in this sort of dark science. Some of the expanded material that has come out since then has supported both that idea and the idea that most of the advances that led to the successful cloning of Palpatine were his own. But honestly it makes sense for the Sith to be historically devoted to trying to find ways to dominate nature; it fits their view of the Force as a tool for power and domination.

The Sith in general are presented as being very closely linked to technology, especially in Lucas's movies. They have the most advanced technology at their disposal, and it clearly becomes essential to their conquest of the galaxy via the Empire. Cloning and other biological experiments could easily be seen as an extension of that. And it also serves as an implicit critique of our own technologically dominated society.

Of course, I'm not suggesting Lucas disliked technology, we know that is simply not true. But there are different ways to approach technology, and the notion of a highly technological Empire is that there is a failure in letting technology overwhelm nature or what makes us human. Hence the parallel between Vader as more machine than man and the Empire itself as something more technological compared to the Republic, which ultimately answered to the Force itself via the Jedi.

One concept from the prequels that I think is easily missed is how amazing something like the Republic actually is. This was a government that spanned a galaxy and lasted for more than a millennium in relative peace. And it had no standing armies to enforce this peace. That level of harmony is clearly attributed to the Jedi Knights, I think, and their essential role as ambassadors and diplomats, serving the Force and maintaining the balance of a government that, although not perfect, seems almost utopian compared with what we see in real life.

 

@Sauron_18

I wonder if they'll ever go as far as they did with the Old Republic MMO RPG and make a Sith Empire that seems very...IDK institutionalized in a way, a council, offs etc etc.

Or maybe they'll keep the Sith to a more KOTOR like way and kinda the way i like it, Dark Siders who command forces and sorts just plunder and attack the world

Sure they have Korriban as a Homeworld and Exegol but there kinda like a armada that just attack over and over and are spread across the galaxy.

 

Speaking of this, I find it interesting how Palpatine, who says to let your hate flow freely and be selfish to your heart’s content, created the Stormtrooper Corp., who seem to be sterile and devoid of individuality, emotions, desires, etc.