The next step in Star Wars should be to bring back the full force of the Sith Order. The Legends Comic Star Wars: Legacy has a perfect blueprint.
Star Wars has officially ended (or at least paused) the Skywalker Saga, and the franchise plans to move forward with characters new and old taking the spotlight in feature films and television series. However, as these shows expand on the universe, one thing has become patently clear: the limited number of Sith and Jedi are not what the Saga makes it out to be. Instead, the movies represented a distinctly limited window into the Force users of the Star Wars universe.
In fact, the more Star Wars shows, comics, and video games made, the higher number of Sith and Jedi in hiding or operating as Inquisitors grows. The movies, then, have lost some degree of their stakes, as the balanced battle between a handful of people fighting for good and evil is not the truth. Moving forward, however, the movies can easily fix this issue of peering into the Jedi and Sith orders not by continuing to hide it but by embracing it. Moreover, a source from Legends has already demonstrated how to keep this balance new and exciting.
RELATED: Why Plo Koon's Forgotten Niece From Star Wars Legends Is Important
Canon never establishes Luke as having a partner, let alone children. In Legends, however, Luke has children by Mara Jade. The Skywalker bloodline doesn't stop there either. After more than a century, Luke has a descendant in the form of one Cade Skywalker, as detailed in the Star Wars: Legacy comics by John Ostrander, Jan Duursema, and Dan Parsons. In these comics, readers meet a revitalized Sith order led by Darth Krayt.
These Sith not only eschew Palpatine's Rule of One, but returns to the order's structure before the Rule of Two. Therefore, there is no longer a singular Sith master and apprentice. Instead, Krayt serves as the leader of an extensive group. Within this group, there are many masters and apprentices, echoing the structure of the Jedi order at its peak. In a sort of bastardization of its structure, though, Sith who are ready to move from their apprenticeship and receive their Darth title must kill their masters. While they try to present these kills as voluntary deaths on the part of the masters, it reveals the cruel ethos of the Sith.
RELATED: Christopher Lloyd Could Play a Crucial Legends Character in The Mandalorian
This Sith Order here is more passionate and less organized than its depiction in the Skywalker Saga. Where the Saga has Palpatine as the master, followed by his apprentices, and served by a series of inquisitors of various ranks during the Empire's reign, Legacy feels more in line with a true Sith order. Passionate power plays and ostentation as tradition abound. The Sith isn't a means to an end, as with Palpatine. Instead, it's a sect, a mix of religion and ideology by which its members abide faithfully. That makes them more dangerous than the Sith of the Skywalker era.
By using these impassioned, multiple Siths, Star Wars can potentially increase the amount of evil power in the universe while simultaneously making it feel anything but anomalous. The infamous "Somehow, Palpatine returned" won't need to be recreated if the goal of the Sith is to grow and thrive among those who are passionate. Ultimately, accepting the multiplicity of Sith can only serve to up the ante and carry the threat of the order and the inquisitors to a new, frightening level.
Benjamin Bishop is a freelance writer for CBR and a linguist. He worked in literary criticism and focuses on the intersections of linguistics and popular culture. He strongly identifies with Pokémon, the Muppets, and any book he manages to get his hands on.