Does The New Star Wars Sith Lord Break George Lucas’ Canon?

Summary

• The Acolyte will likely introduce a powerful Sith Lord prior Darth Maul, but it doesn’t necessarily retcon Star Wars canon.
• The Acolyte’s new Sith Lord was extremely powerful, and they have already displayed mastery over the dark side of the Force.
• There are two main ways the Sith could remain hidden even after revealing themselves: by killing all the Jedi who saw them, or if the Jedi Council didn’t believe they had truly returned.

The newest trailer for The Acolyte revealed a powerful dark side user that’s likely a Sith Lord, which might contradict the canon George Lucas established. In The Phantom Menace, the Jedi Order noted that Darth Maul was the first confirmed Sith it had seen in over a millennium. That made the Sith’s return, as well as the amount of power they commanded, a major shock to the Order. Now, though, The Acolyte has seemingly introduced another Sith Lord well before Darth Maul revealed himself in The Phantom Menace.

The Acolyte takes place 100 years prior to The Phantom Menace, during the High Republic era of Star Wars. Despite that, though, the new trailer for The Acolyte revealed the High Republic’s Sith Lord, which seemingly creates a problem for Star Wars canon. In The Phantom Menace, the Jedi were completely surprised by the reemergence of the Sith, as they thought the dark side users had been eradicated a millennium prior. Luckily, there’s a fairly simple explanation of whether the new Sith Lord actually contradicts anything in the Star Wars movies or any of George Lucas’ words.

The Jedi Were Wrong To Believe The Sith Extinct

The Jedi may have thought the Sith were extinct for 1,000 years, but that doesn’t mean they were right. The prequel trilogy went to great lengths to detail the failures of the Jedi Order, and one such mistake was their overconfidence when it came to the Sith. The Jedi were completely confident that the Sith had been wiped out, which allowed the dark side users to remain undetected. That means that a Sith Lord appearing in The Acolyte wouldn’t necessarily undo any previous part of Star Wars canon, it only means there has to be some reason they were forgotten again.

The Acolyte
‘s first two episodes premiere on Disney+ on June 4.

Just because Darth Maul was the first confirmed Sith the Jedi had seen in centuries doesn’t mean he was the only Sith they had seen in that time period. There could have been other Sith before him that the Jedi forgot about over the years, or even ones that they never knew about in the first place. The Jedi barely even knew about Darth Maul, as they didn’t believe he was a Sith until Obi-Wan Kenobi informed them he had killed Qui-Gon Jinn. There were many ways the Sith Lord could have kept themselves hidden, and they seem to have been more than capable of doing so.

The Sith Is Clearly More Powerful Than The Jedi

The whole time the Jedi thought the Sith extinct, they were actually in hiding and building power, which helps explain why they were forgotten between The Acolyte and The Phantom Menace. According to Darth Bane’s Sith Rule of Two, the purpose of the Sith staying hidden and only taking one apprentice at a time was so that they could build up strength without the threat of the Jedi intervening and ruining their plans. After about 900 years of building up that power, the Sith Lord featured in The Acolyte has clearly become a big enough threat to rival the Jedi.

In the first trailer for The Acolyte, the Sith Lord pushed a massive group of Jedi away using only the Force. That was a significant demonstration of their power with the dark side, as the group of Jedi was made up of several skilled Masters and apprentices. It also directly leads into one of the ways the Sith Lord could have remained hidden even after revealing themselves.

Will The Acolyte’s Jedi Survive Their Sith Encounter… Or Simply Not Be Believed?

There are two main theories as to how the Sith Lord could reveal themselves in The Acolyte and still maintain their secrecy by the time of The Phantom Menace. One theory suggests the Sith Lord could simply kill all the Jedi they encounter. They were powerful enough to do so, and with no survivors, there would be no one to warn the rest of the Order of the Sith’s return. The trailers for The Acolyte have also made it clear that the Jedi knew someone was hunting them, which would provide an explanation for why so many Jedi died without requiring the Sith’s involvement.

Even if The Acolyte proves to be less dark than that, there could still be an ominous way for the Sith to remain hidden. If some of the Jedi survived their encounter with the Sith Lord and reported back to the Council, there’s a chance the leaders of the Order simply wouldn’t believe them. This possibility would speak to the Order’s arrogance and stubbornness and be perfectly in line with the faults it displayed in The Phantom Menace, meaning The Acolyte‘s new Sith Lord would actually strengthen canon, now change it.

The Acolyte is a very exciting part of the future of Star Wars, but that doesn’t mean it will have a good ending for the Jedi. Either of the main ways a Sith Lord could remain hidden would be tragic in their own right; either several Jedi die or the Order repeats one of the mistakes that directly led to its downfall. Based on the events depicted in the Skywalker Saga, like Order 66, the Jedi of The Acolyte have very little chance of finding true success in their fight against the new Sith Lord.