The Acolyte’s Big Bad Isn’t A Sith?
When it comes to lightsabers, Star Wars has a color problem. Good guys can have practically any lightsaber color they want. Bad guys, however, are stuck with red, and that’s it. As a result, groups like the Knights of Ren and the Inquisitors get mistaken for Sith all the time despite not belonging to the Order, meaning there’s a good chance that the malevolent being pulling the strings in The Acolyte isn’t a Sith.
A Pedantic Distinction
Even many red lightsaber wielders associated with the Sith aren’t considered Sith. George Lucas kind of shot himself in the foot with the whole “Rule of Two,” thing. To get around only having two bad guys for the Jedi to duel, apprentices like Asajj Ventress get categorized as fallen or “dark” Jedi. This could very much be the case with The Acolyte and it’s mysterious “Sith Lord.”
It may seem like a pedantic distinction, but if you’ve ever met an angry Star Wars fan, you know pedantry is their chief form of communication. Having “Darth Teeth”—the Internet’s nickname for The Acolyte‘s possible Sith Master—turn out to be a non-Sith dark-sider would actually solve so many problems the Fandom Menace has with the show.
Consider The Sith Semantics
For one thing, Ki-Adi-Mundi’s now legendary line about the Sith being extinct for a millennium wouldn’t be a lie. I mean, other than the fact that Palpatine and Maul are on Coruscant when he says it. Seriously, how did any fans ever take Obi-Wan Kenobi at his word?
Regardless, the angry fans could finally give up griping about that one aspect of The Acolyte and concentrate on all their non-Sith-related gripes. Another reason Smilo Ren—another nickname—might not be a Sith is because it would make for a better story. Fans have already got Mae’s master pegged as Qimir, but what if he’s also an apprentice?
A Lineage Of Secret Sith
We already know that Palpatine and Darth Plagueis didn’t exist in a vacuum, so Star Wars was going to have to explain the 1000-year lineage of secret Sith at some point. Part of that lineage is all of the Sith apprentices who started training secret apprentices themselves to help them overthrow their masters. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the situation The Acolyte is trying to set up with its quasi-Sith characters.
The Apprentice Assumption
I know fans might hate this, but the Rule of Two is just horrible and incredibly inaccurate. It’s supposed to be One master to wield the power and one apprentice to crave it. In reality, you have Darth Plagueis and his apprentice, Darth Sidious, while at the same time, Sidious has his own apprentice, Maul, as well as Count Dooku, who has his own apprentice…and so on and so forth.
It would only make sense if The Acolyte‘s “Sith” was actually an apprentice trying to recruit Mae to help them overtake their Sith Master.
In that scenario, all The Acolyte has to do is keep the actual Sith hidden from the Jedi at all times. If the show does that, then technically, the Jedi will never encounter an actual Sith, and Ki-Adi-Mundi’s honor will be kept intact.
We Won’t Know Until We Know
Then again, like I said before, The Acolyte may not show any Sith whatsoever. The red lightsaber could belong to a fallen Jedi or even a Jedi splinter group. It could even belong to another dark side cult that actually considers the Sith an enemy.
We just won’t know until the show tells us. Until then, however, my money is on The Acolyte‘s big bad not being a Sith.
