Star Wars junkies: can you give me the Cliff's Notes on the Sith?
August 30, 2022 7:20 AM Subscribe
I'm in bed with Covid, mildly symptomatic and killing time on YouTube, Disney+, NF, AmPrime, etc.
I just finished watching the Star Wars films featuring the epic badass Darth Maul. A brief bit of looking into the character's back story has proven anything but brief: the vast amount of online lore and myth-making about the Sith, Maul, Vader etc is far more than I really want to spend the time getting into, so perhaps some mefites could weigh in the essentials?
Thanks. May the force be with you
This video about why Anakin was the chosen one to bring balance.
There’s so many good commentary / deep read videos on YouTube!
Basically that balance of the force is healthy attachment, and that the Jedi were too far one way (detached) and the sith were too far the other way (toxic attachment).
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:24 AM on August 30, 2022
There’s so many good commentary / deep read videos on YouTube!
Basically that balance of the force is healthy attachment, and that the Jedi were too far one way (detached) and the sith were too far the other way (toxic attachment).
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:24 AM on August 30, 2022
A lot of this is definitely discussed and dealt with in depth in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated show, including a lot of Darth Maul content. This list from reddit covers all of his appearances, but really the whole show deals with a lot more lore with the sith. It's something of a spoiler, but one of the main characters of the show comes away ultimately deciding that neither the Jedi nor the Sith are right.
posted by sleeping bear at 11:24 AM on August 30, 2022
posted by sleeping bear at 11:24 AM on August 30, 2022
From the storytelling meta/business side, it's also an antagonist force that literally didn't exist until the prequel trilogy. By that point a significant number of additional canon in the form of other media was already produced. By then there's basically established storytelling conventions with Dark Jedi or evil Force users. The prequels complicated the decades of built-up lore as people employed to produce extraneous canon AND fans tried to square this. Then Lucasfilm was sold to Disney and there was an executive decision to wipe the slate clean and start all this canon from the ground up again. By this point post-prequel worldbuilding was already developing ways to standardize existing canon (hence, if you were to branch into the animated stuff eg the clone wars etc you get Sith AND Dark Force users instead of Dark Jedi per se so you then get stuff like the Witches of Dathomir and other lore to get around the prequel-dictated "there can be only two" maxim.)
However, the reception to the sequel trilogy has been quite bad in combination with original trilogy stuff like The Mandalorian being well-received has basically induced a change in trajectory and they're mining the previously un-canon stuff. So now you even get comics with book characters like Thrawn. This means even more complications in trying to present the Sith as a coherent fictional construct.
How this relates to Maul: Lucas genuinely has no interest in any Sith who's not the eventual Emperor or Vader. But, post-prequel animated Star Wars did him a major solid by bringing him back as an active character but they had to do some intense soft-shoe tapdancing to justify it (especially as the other prequel movies were done).
TL;DR - your confusion is warranted and there's no really any there there. Suffice to note that somehow out of all the potential antagonistic Force users in this verse, the Sith is taken for granted as the worst (as to why depends very much on the story writer - but the usual take is they're the most committed/long-termist in terms of conflating Force power with political power.)
If you're familiar with wuxia or animanga tropes, the Sith occupy the same space as the evil martial arts school who's obsessed in gathering "more powah!". Their presence in the story is usually taken as an ultimate big bad with very little room to negotiate.
posted by cendawanita at 11:35 AM on August 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
However, the reception to the sequel trilogy has been quite bad in combination with original trilogy stuff like The Mandalorian being well-received has basically induced a change in trajectory and they're mining the previously un-canon stuff. So now you even get comics with book characters like Thrawn. This means even more complications in trying to present the Sith as a coherent fictional construct.
How this relates to Maul: Lucas genuinely has no interest in any Sith who's not the eventual Emperor or Vader. But, post-prequel animated Star Wars did him a major solid by bringing him back as an active character but they had to do some intense soft-shoe tapdancing to justify it (especially as the other prequel movies were done).
TL;DR - your confusion is warranted and there's no really any there there. Suffice to note that somehow out of all the potential antagonistic Force users in this verse, the Sith is taken for granted as the worst (as to why depends very much on the story writer - but the usual take is they're the most committed/long-termist in terms of conflating Force power with political power.)
If you're familiar with wuxia or animanga tropes, the Sith occupy the same space as the evil martial arts school who's obsessed in gathering "more powah!". Their presence in the story is usually taken as an ultimate big bad with very little room to negotiate.
posted by cendawanita at 11:35 AM on August 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
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Sometime after that, some guy made up the 'Rule of Two': only one Sith Master and one Sith apprentice at any given time. That gets fudged a lot for practical reasons once the Sith regain strength: Dooku (the Apprentice) had his own apprentices, and the Empire had Inquisitors, who all use the dark side of the Force but aren't Official Sith.
IDK who made up the rule where they all take ridiculous eville names, but that's essential for a proper Sith.
If you haven't watched the Clone Wars cartoon and still have time to kill, there's a fun plotline where Maul's brother Savage Opress becomes Darkside Captain America and then goes looking for his long-lost brother.
posted by mersen at 8:58 AM on August 30, 2022