The real problem with Star Wars isn’t the boring Jedi, it’s the boring Sith

In the esteemed circles of people who think too much about Star Wars, there is a persistent and popular diagnosis of what is wrong with the franchise. It has to do with the Jedi: honestly, they’re boring. The fact that they have laser swords helps mitigate this a lot; people like laser sword. The magical powers are cool too, cool enough that you can tolerate the idea that you have to become an ascetic to obtain them. But their inner life? It’s not very sexy – which is probably why the big Jedi stories of the movies involve the temptation of the Dark Side.

This is the uphill battle that stories like the upcoming Disney Plus series will face The acolyte, which will be the first live-action Star Wars show to delve into the world of the Jedi at their peak. It has an edge thanks to its murder mystery structure and wuxia-influenced action, and perhaps it will be successful in overcoming this challenge. However, Jedi are not the real problem. The problem is that the Sith are boring too.

Like the New England Patriots of the late Tom Brady era, no fictional group has ever won so consistently and yet remained so boring. Their main appeal is usually twofold: cooler Force powers (lightning, suffocation) and sick accessories (masks, the color red). Just looking at the movies, the Sith hardly make sense – motivated by a lust for power and a serious threat to the galaxy, but there are only two of them, per Yoda? Come on.

One of the funniest bits of old Expanded Universe Star Wars lore came from fan favorite writer Drew Karpyshyn’s attempts to explain the so-called Rule of Two, and how a vast force of selfish strivers can function even if everyone wants to take over the person above . them. The result, the Darth Bane trilogy, is an entertaining read about the rise to power of a Sith that comes not from any inherent malice, but from great talent soured on the margins of society. In short: there was once a lot of Sith, until the conniving and powerful Darth Bane found a way to wipe out all the competition so he could rebuild the order from scratch. Unfortunately, the books show the Sith at their peak as monastic as the Jedi, only super into recreational cruelty and beating each other up.

This is especially funny when you consider that the central force of Anakin Skywalker’s fall from grace is the love for Padmé Amidala, forbidden among the Jedi Order, and the fulcrum that turns him into Darth Vader by Palpatine. On the other hand, it doesn’t actually seem any better, my friend! Just virgins, all the way down.

To paraphrase the late Roger Ebert, this sucks! Perhaps the Jedi are locked into their dogma – exploring that is one thing whole different essay – but why can’t the Dark Side users have a little swagger, an inner life with interesting motivations, the freedom to move through the world independently, and their selfish plans reinforced by the Force? It’s baffling that the Sith, like their light-oriented counterparts, get very little interiority on screen. They’re just the extra crunchy version of Original Recipe Jedi, and reading or watching stories about them feels like following a bunch of slightly edgier nerds. Or perhaps better said: very religious.

Image: Lucasfilm

The end result is that pretty much everyone in Star Wars feels a million times more interesting than a Jedi or Sith. Hell, Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca Darth Vader funny introduced evil counterparts to C-3PO and R2-D2 and they practically stole the damn show.

The current canon doesn’t really have an in-depth exploration of the Sith, preferring instead to root around the margins of the Force-sensitive populace like the Witches of Dathomir, or establish the Inquisitors as a new branch of villains operating under slightly different regulations. This could be a great opportunity, maybe even one The acolyte could explore – to introduce a dimension that Star Wars lacked.

Love it or hate it, The Last Jedi articulated the powerful idea of ​​the Jedi religion as extremely limiting to the franchise’s narrative potential. While The Rise of Skywalker wasn’t quite in the same direction, would probably agree that the path forward is a little more nuanced than the hard moralistic lines previously drawn for the Jedi. The same goes for the Sith. Villains are important in stories. Interesting, compelling villains only drive heroes to react more compellingly as they struggle to meet the challenges presented to them. The grand, operatic paragons of good and evil worked quite well for the epic scope of the films, but as Star Wars gets narrower and (hopefully) deeper on television, some of those rules may get bent a bit.

Let the Sith fuck, man.

The acolyte premieres with two episodes on June 4 at 9pm EDT.