Star Wars: 5 Ways The Sith Wasn’t That Bad (& 5 Ways They’re Pure Evil)

Star Wars tends to deal in absolutes but the Sith who are technically evil, also happen to have some pretty good qualities about them.

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In most mainstream of Star Wars media, the portrayal between good and evil has always been clear-cut. Rebels are good, the Empire is bad, and most prevalently, Jedi are heroes and the Sith are villains. While that has always been the case, plenty of other Star Wars titles have explored varying degrees of morality and have portrayed more nuanced factions.

The Jedi Order, in particular, wasn’t really that perfect. Consequently, the Sith have also had some portrayals where they didn’t look so bad compared to their fascistic extremes in the Star Wars films. Hence, certain arguments and evidence have surfaced regarding a more complicated nature for both the Sith. Were they really that evil even at their best? This list ought to help answer those questions.

10 NOT SO BAD: SITH DON’T NEUTER AMBITIONS

Individuality isn’t really that welcome in the Jedi Order as much as it is in the Sith. More often than not, the Jedi will curb an individual’s ambition or quest for greatness for what it considers as a ‘greater good’ or duty to the galactic community as a whole. The best evidence of this was Anakin Skywalker.

The Sith, on the other hand, focus on self-improvement and realizing their goals. Nurturing passion is always a good thing for them. It just so happens that many of their goals are self-centered and their passions destructive but based on their code alone, they seem more innovative and ingenious.

9 PURE EVIL: FORCED RECRUITMENTS AND MASSACRES

Sadly, the crimes of the Sith simply cannot be forgotten, especially to the thousands or possibly millions of youth that they tortured or killed or made into orphans. The Sith notably captured Jedi younglings in the early days of Darth Sidious’ Galactic Empire to force them to become Inquisitors or Jedi Hunters.

Their training methods are also cruel and brutal and any Sith who grew up under Sith training is bound to be more unstable and a lot less fortunate than a Jedi-turned-Sith. It does seem that it’s a tradition for the Sith to hate children.

8 NOT SO BAD: MORE EMOTIONAL FREEDOM

Since they allow passion and expression, the Sith are more in tune with their emotions. Though one-sided characterizations and trope-y writing dictate that they must always be destructive about it. Still, that pretty much means they’re free to love and be attached to whoever they are which is a biological organism’s inherent drive.

Again, Anakin would be another perfect example of how the Jedi ruined his development and growth by severing his attachment to his mother which didn’t work anyway. The Sith tend to be more emotionally fulfilled in that regard since they have more freedom with what to do with their feelings.

7 PURE EVIL: THEY’RE DANGEROUS

Dangerous is an understatement for the Sith. The most powerful among them are genocidal maniacs who have no qualms on leveling whole cities or vaporizing planets to get their point across. There’s also the more personal and hands-on massacres that they did, particularly with the Jedi Order survivors.

They’re not just dangerous to the Jedi and to innocents but also to one another. The Sith, thanks to how power-hungry they are, are constantly plotting to become the be at the top of their food chain using any means necessary from betrayal to infighting.

6 NOT SO BAD: THEY’RE NO HYPOCRITES

Sheev Palpatine said it best when trying to explain how the Jedi and Sith are alike. Both still desire power and control, but the Sith simply have no pretenses about it and certainly have fewer holes in their arguments or code about obtaining it.

That’s why a lot of Sith are not in conflict with themselves regarding what they want. Most of them are in no trouble of falling back into the Jedi Order, meanwhile, the Jedi are always at risk of turning to the Sith. All it takes is one wrong interpretation of the Jedi code or a failure to resolve a moral impasse.

5 PURE EVIL: SOME OF THEIR PHILOSOPHY IS INSPIRED BY MEIN KAMPF

Before Bioware came up with the notorious Sith code, which is just an antonym version of the Jedi code, game writer and designer David Gaider had difficulty coming up with the lore for the previously enigmatic evil faction. So, he looked at one of the most worrying examples of morally bankrupt philosophies, in this case, Mein Kampf.

David Gaider claimed that chunks of the Sith’s philosophy were based on that certain modern fascist’s writings. That’s why most of the Sith’s ideals are a corruption of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ubermensch concept which pretty much puts power and elitism above all. In any case, any philosophy based on Mein Kampf is bound to be wicked.

4 NOT SO BAD: NOT ALL OF THEM ARE EVIL

Speaking of wickedness, it turns out not all the Sith are on that extreme side of the red lightsaber spectrum. Since the Sith also have enemies amongst themselves, some of them do the Jedi a favor. Additionally, certain Sith Lords like Darth Vectivus are actually fair and had genuine friends and loved ones as well as concern for others.

Meanwhile, Darth Revan, one of the most powerful Sith Lords known in the Star Wars mythos, also ping-ponged from Jedi to Sith and back again, doing the galaxy a huge service by defeating the Sith. Just like how there are Jedi who are horrible and use the Dark Side, so too are there Sith that act like Jedi.

3 PURE EVIL: THEY’RE OPPRESSIVE

In conjunction with their elitism and lust for status and power, the Sith– a lot of them, are also tyrannical. Those at the top treat their underlings like dogs and only give them figurative scraps for fear that they might become more powerful and take over someday.

The Rule of Two is also a blatant display of how oppressive the Sith can be as anyone else apart from them would be deemed too weak and would be culled. Needless to say, the Sith have no respect for weakness, even their own.

2 NOT SO BAD: THEY DON’T LIE AS MUCH AS THE JEDI

Oddly enough, despite the treacherous ways of the Sith towards one another, they have a tendency to be brutally honest about their intentions. At least, they know that their peers will betray them and even passive-aggressively announce it. Moreover, all their teachings and knowledge are free to be consumed by fellow Sith.

The Jedi, on the other hand, love to censor a lot of negative and contradictory actions in their history. In the prequels alone, the Jedi archives are notably missing a significant part of their history that Obi-Wan Kenobi unearthed. They simply just swept it under a rug and kept lying to themselves. Oh, and even Kenobi isn’t immune to this gesture– lying to Luke Skywalker about his father.

1 PURE EVIL: CANONICALLY EVIL

When all is been said and done, how evil or not so bad the Sith will be, is dependent on the Star Wars’ writers’ and executives’ whims. They want the Sith to be villains and the Jedi to be paragons and the story to be as black and white as possible, then so be it.

What they establish about the Sith, including just how evil they are despite having nuanced Star Wars Legends representations, is absolute. Hmm, sounds like something the Sith would say, only they deal in absolutes.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/star-wars-sith-good-bad-qualities/