The Mysterious Jedi Created By A Typo
No matter how often you watch the Star Wars prequels, one of your bigger questions is going to be who Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas was and what his motivation was in authorizing the creation of a Clone army. As you might expect, later media tried to expand more on this mysterious Jedi who we never saw onscreen. In a strange twist, one of the reasons we saw so little of Sifo-Dyas is simple: he was never meant to be a character at all, and he was only created due to a typo in an Attack of the Clones script.
Who?
At this point, you’re probably wondering how Attack of the Clones would have worked if Sifo-Dyas was never a character. After all, somebody has to authorize the creation of the Old Republic’s Clone Army, and Obi-Wan has to find some kind of name to bring back to the Jedi Council as he investigates Kamino.
If Sifo-Dyas wasn’t that person, then who would it have been?
It Was Palpatine All Along
Like most questions regarding the Star Wars prequels, the answer is that it was Palpatine all along. You see, in the original Attack of the Clones script, the character was meant to be named Sido-Dyas.
And he wasn’t a new character at all–instead, this was meant to be an extremely goofy pseudonym for Darth Sidious.
As you might imagine, the script was a bit different when Sifo-Dyas wasn’t a separate character. In this early version, Obi-Wan Kenobi gets the name of Sido-Dyas from the cloners and asks the Jedi Council if they know any Jedi Master by that name.
None of them do, leaving the character’s true identity a mystery (albeit a mystery that fans could solve easily enough by saying his name out loud).
A Typo
So, how did we end up with Sifo-Dyas instead of Sido-Dyas? In an early script for Attack of the Clones, there was a typo spelling the character’s name as “Sifo-Dyas.” George Lucas, always open to new ideas, liked how the name sounded and dropped the plan to make the new character nothing more than a pseudonym for Darth Sidious.
Of course, that meant simultaneously turning him into a separate character and taking that character off the board by explaining that he was killed a decade previously.
The Clone Wars
Originally, Lucas planned to elaborate a bit more on who Sifo-Dyas was in Revenge of the Sith, but he dropped those plans in favor of focusing more on Anakin Skywalker. Eventually, The Clone Wars episode “The Lost One” revealed that Sifo-Dyas was a Jedi who foresaw the need for the Republic to raise a great army and that the Council thought he was too extreme.
We also find out that he was killed by the Pyke Syndicate under the orders of Count Dooku even as Kenobi realizes Dooku was telling the truth about everyone getting played by a Sith Lord.
Still A Mystery
Despite all that belated backstory, we still have questions about Sifo-Dyas, including whether he was manipulated by visions from Palpatine (as happened to Anakin) into creating the Clone Army. Perhaps a later season of Tales of the Jedi or another show will eventually reveal more of this mysterious character’s secrets.
Until then, we’ll just marvel that the character wouldn’t exist at all if not for a single typo that George Lucas fell in love with.
