The Rule of Two helped the Sith survive for centuries in Star Wars, and despite its importance to the galaxy, a new theory suggests it might have been fundamentally misunderstood. The Sith Rule of Two, a way of passing down Sith teachings from a master to an apprentice, was created by Darth Bane, one of the most powerful Sith ever. In the thousand years since he implemented the rule, Bane has become one of the most important figures in the Sith’s history, as well as the entire Star Wars timeline, but his greatest achievement might not be what it seems.
Throughout the Skywalker saga, the Sith were the single greatest threat to both the galaxy and the Jedi. They weren’t always an oppressive, indomitable force, though, as for a millennium prior to The Phantom Menace, they were forced to operate in secret. Upcoming Star Wars shows like The Acolyte will begin to explore the time when the Sith were thought extinct in greater depth, and they could contain shocking revelations about the Sith. Those revelations could completely redefine the Rule of Two, right down to Darth Bane’s original intention for the lineage of the Sith.
At the time of Darth Bane, the Sith had far more members than they did during the Skywalker saga. Entire armies of Sith Lords and apprentices battled with Jedi forces, but their strength in numbers also revealed a hidden weakness. Because of the arrogant and greedy nature of the dark side, and with so many Sith Lords operating at the same time, there was near-constant infighting that hindered their plans. That problem came to a head at the end of the Jedi-Sith war, when the Jedi capitalized on it and nearly wiped out the Sith.
After that war, Bane was the only Sith Lord left alive. He realized then that the old ways of the Sith would always lead to conflict and defeat, so he decided to change them. Bane created the Rule of Two to centralize the Sith’s power into a single line of heritage and avoid the problems of having a huge Sith Order. With a single line, the infighting that plagued the Sith could actually be used to strengthen them by encouraging apprentices to grow in power and defeat their masters. Though the Rule of Two helped the Sith grow strong, it also created some unintended issues.
Condensing the Sith lineage into a single master and their apprentice gave those masters strength and helped them hide, but it also made them vulnerable and amplified their mistakes. With only two true Sith in existence, it would have made the Jedi even more suspicious of any dark side powers they encountered. Since there were far fewer Sith Lords, if any of their plots were discovered, the Jedi would have instantly known it was their doing. One misstep in their secret work to advance the dark side’s agenda would have exposed them, and the entire Sith Order, to the Jedi and ruined all their plans.
The entire weight of the Sith was resting on their shoulders, along with millennia of knowledge of the dark side. If they died, the entirety of the Sith died with them. The Jedi only had to find two people, master and apprentice, to wipe out their oldest enemies in one fell swoop. That problem eventually did lead to the destruction of the Sith, for a time, in Return of the Jedi. In one moment, every vestige of the dark side cult was ended by the Skywalkers, and there was no one left to continue the Sith lineage until Palpatine’s return.
Darth Bane’s main goal in creating the Rule of Two was to preserve the Sith at all costs. Creating a single line of lineage, though, placed enormous faith in future masters and apprentices to avoid detection and survive long enough for the ultimate Sith Lord to arise. To solve that problem of trust, Bane might have hedged his bets and created multiple Sith lines to better their odds of survival. Since they would have all been operating in secret, none of the individual lines would know about each other, and thus would think of the others they encountered as pretenders.
There have been Sith pretenders, dark side Force users who claimed to be Sith but didn’t fall into the main lineage, ever since Bane established the Rule of Two. If Bane had actually started multiple lines, though, it would explain why the pretenders thought of themselves as true Sith: because they were. They would have had just as much claim to the Sith lineage as the main Sith Lords did, the only difference being how powerful they were.
In order to preserve the Sith, they not only had to avoid Jedi attention, but they also had to be as strong as possible. In the old system, individual Sith would test their skills and grow in power by challenging each other, with the survivors proving their strength. The Rule of Two did encourage apprentices to overtake their masters, and masters to dominate their students, but it didn’t offer as many opportunities for growth as the old system did. If there were multiple lines, though, the future of the Sith could enjoy the benefits of both systems.
Establishing multiple Sith lines would give each line an opportunity to face off against each other, like in the times before Bane, while also preserving the secrecy the Rule of Two afforded. Every time two Sith lines encountered each other, they could battle, and only the strongest would survive, ensuring the Sith grew ever more powerful. Also, since the Jedi were aware of the Rule of Two, if they ever found and destroyed one line of Sith, the Jedi would think they had eliminated the last Sith, but there would still be others left to preserve the dark side’s legacy in Star Wars.