The Sith, also referred to as the Sith Order, was an ancient religious order of Force-wielders devoted to the dark side of the Force. Driven by their emotions, including hate, anger, and greed, the Sith were deceptive and obsessed with gaining power no matter the cost. The order reached the apex of its power under Darth Sidious, the Dark Lord of the Sith who achieved his order’s goal of galactic conquest after a millennium of plotting. Within a generation, however, the deaths of Sidious and Darth Vader would mark the end of the order of Sith Lords.
Thousands of years before the Clone Wars, the Jedi Order was fractured by a schism that began when a rogue and his followers turned away from the light side of the Force, believing the dark side was the path to true power. Having relocated to the planet Korriban in the Outer Rim Territories, their movement ultimately evolved into the Sith Order, resulting in a war between the former brothers and sisters in the Force as the Jedi Knights rallied to the defense of the Old Republic. Although the Sith were driven off of the Core World Coruscant by 5000 BBY, centuries of conflict ensued between the two orders, culminating in the Old Republic’s collapse. Undermined by constant infighting and ruined by the last war against the Jedi, the Sith were rendered all but extinct with the exception of one; Darth Bane survived the ancient order’s destruction and passed his knowledge to a single apprentice, Darth Zannah, before being entombed on Korriban, which became known as Moraband. Henceforth, the Sith was governed by the Rule of Two, a new philosophy dictating that only two Sith Lords—a Sith Master and a Sith apprentice—could exist at any given time. As a result, the Sith were all but forgotten while the Jedi focused their efforts on preserving the new age of peace under the modern Galactic Republic.
The Sith remained in hiding for a millennium until the rise of Darth Sidious and Darth Maul in 32 BBY. Sidious, trained by Darth Plagueis, hid in plain sight as Senator Sheev Palpatine of Naboo. Orchestrating the blockade and invasion of his homeworld by the Trade Federation, Sidious maneuvered the Galactic Senate into electing him to the office of Supreme Chancellor. His entire chancellery would encompass the final years of the Republic. Over the next decade Sidious sowed the seeds of discontent within the galactic populace with the help of his new apprentice, the former Jedi Master Count Dooku, who adopted the name of Darth Tyranus and became the public face of the Independent Movement for Self-Determination. The Separatist Crisis culminated in the formation of the Confederacy of Independent Systems and the creation of the Separatist Droid Army which, in turn, compelled the Senate to support the establishment of the Grand Army of the Republic.
The Clone Wars began with the First Battle of Geonosis in 22 BBY, after which entire armies of battle droids and clone troopers deployed across the galaxy, making war and devastation commonplace for the first time since the formation of the Republic. In the final months of the Clone Wars, Sidious sacrificed and betrayed Tyranus as part of his plot to turn Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi Order’s prophesied Chosen One, to the dark side. Playing on Skywalker’s fear of losing his secret wife, Senator Padmé Amidala, Palpatine revealed his deception and true identity, while claiming that the dark side was the path to immortality. Members of the Jedi High Council, having learned from Skywalker’s report that the chancellor was, in fact, a Sith Lord, attempted to arrest Palpatine, but the chancellor resisted. Torn between his faith in the Jedi and the fate he foresaw for his wife, Skywalker ultimately chose the Sith by betraying Mace Windu, allowing Sidious to kill the Jedi Order’s great champion.
Using the incident in the chancellor’s office to frame the Jedi Order for treason, Sidious declared Order 66 was in effect, marking all Jedi as enemies of the state. The clone troopers‘ programming turned them against their Jedi Generals, who were betrayed and executed across the galaxy. With the majority of the order falling victim to the Great Jedi Purge, Sidious announced the creation of a new regime, transforming the Republic into the First Galactic Empire in 19 BBY. With the former Anakin Skywalker, renamed Darth Vader, at his side, the self-proclaimed Galactic Emperor‘s rise to power was complete, and the Sith were restored to dominance after centuries of plotting.
The Sith’s control of the galaxy remained relatively unchallenged for a generation until the birth of the Alliance to Restore the Republic which, in turn, led to the Galactic Civil War in 0 BBY. The Emperor, having felt a disturbance in the Force, discovered that his apprentice’s long lost son, Luke Skywalker, was training to become Jedi. Aware of the potential Luke inherited from his father, the Emperor foresaw the possibility of his own destruction but resolved to turn the young man to the dark side as he did with Vader. During the Battle of Endor in 4 ABY, the Emperor forced father and son into a duel, which ended with Luke disarming Vader. The Emperor subsequently betrayed Vader by ordering Luke to finish him off and be Sidious’s apprentice, but the young Jedi Knight refused. Knowing he had lost Luke to the Jedi, the Emperor proceeded to torture Luke with torrents of Force lightning. At that moment, Vader, overwhelmed by his son’s compassion for him, chose to save Luke by killing his master.
The death of the now redeemed Anakin Skywalker, who succumbed to his injuries, marked the end of the Sith, bringing balance to the Force. Yet while the Chosen One prophecy foretold the Sith’s destruction, it never predicted the end of the dark side. Approximately thirty years after the last battle in the Galactic Civil War, the First Order emerged from the Unknown Regions, seeking to reclaim the legacy of the Empire by overthrowing the New Republic. At this time, a new generation of dark side wielders surfaced; Supreme Leader Snoke and his dark apprentice Kylo Ren, who was the grandson of the late Darth Vader, commanded the First Order’s armies as well as the Knights of Ren. Ultimately, Ren succeeded to Snoke’s throne during the war against the Resistance. As the new Supreme Leader, he vowed to forge a new galactic order by destroying the legacies of both Sith and Jedi.
Unbeknownst to Ren, however, Snoke was in fact only a creation and tool of a reborn Darth Sidious. Supported by the Sith cultists of the Sith Eternal on Exegol, the legendary hidden world of the Sith, Sidious announced his return to the galaxy and revealed the Final Order. Sidious’s emergence from hiding resulted in desperate final battle with the Resistance which saw the Jedi Rey band together with a redeemed Ben Solo to destroy Sidious, preventing the rebirth of the Sith.