“Always two there are…” Except when there isn’t

Palpatine: "Your hate has made you powerful. Now, fulfill your destiny and take your father's place at my side."
Vader: "Luke, you can destroy the Emperor. He has foreseen this. It is your destiny! Join me, and together, we can rule the galaxy as father and son! Come with me. It is the only way."

They obviously wanted to betray each other because it's in the Sith's nature.

 

Does that mean if Luke had joined them, he would have immediately become a Sith Lord, or would he have to wait until one of them died?

 

To become a Sith Lord you need to kill the former Sith Lord. This is how the rule of two works. => Overcoming the master and getting stronger than him/her.

 

Right — and Vader and Palpatine both have to play the game of making it seem like they'll work together, even though we all know (and they know) that they won't.

 

Well remember in Episode 5, Vader had a plan to overthrow Emperor Palpatine -- and to have him and his son rule. But Luke literally bailed on that as he had no lust for power.

In Episode 6, it is unclear how Sidious and Vader expect things to go. I think Vader was conflicted the whole duel with Luke but was prepared to kill him anyways in self defense. Whoever were to win between Vader And luke was to remain or become the apprentice, in Sidious' eyes.
Obviously that didn't work out as Luke didn't join Sidious.

In the prequels you still have the Rule of 2 technically happening as you have the master and the apprentice except during TCW, they begin to bend the rules for war purposes. You can tell that Sidious was willing to bend the RULE OF 2 for his own purposes, as at that point he was willing to do anything to remain In power

 

Everyone knows the clips, we've all seen Star Wars here.

My point is that VADER and SIDIOUS obviously abandoned the Rule of 2 to some degree, and when Vader realized he couldn't defeat Luke -- that's when he lost his power. Vader's authority is partly what drove him to keep living as he could release his rage upon anyone and occupy his tormented soul with Sidious' missions. When Vader couldn't defeat Luke, he obviously knew that Sidious was going to try and take Luke as an apprentice.

VADER and SIDIOUS weren't clear with each other in Episode 6. Remember when Sidious asks Vader if his feelings on the matter of his son are clear. Sidious senses Vader's weakness.

 

First of all, turning to the Dark Side doesn't automatically make you a Sith Lord, it just means you've turned to the Dark Side.

Furthermore, you must have missed a huge part of the Originals, you know where Vader wants Luke to kill the Emperor, and the Emperor wants Luke to kill Vader. They both know what the other is up too, they both know what the other really wants, but they both still need each other, so aren't willing to call one another out on their treachery.

The nuances are pretty obvious in how Vader talks to the Emperor about making Luke an ally to help them, and than Vader turns around and tries to recruit Luke to kill the Emperor... it should seem pretty clear that are lying to one another...

 

I should point out that just because there are always two, it doesn't mean there are always only two.

 

The Rule of Two has always been one of my less favorite aspects of the canon.
That said, I think it was clear that The Emperor wanted to outright replace Vader with a new apprentice.
And the other way around. Vader wanted Luke to join him to overthrow the Emperor.
But yeah, the Rule of Two sucks for a few reasons.

 

The Sith way: the rule of two + an unpaid intern.

 

You hit upon one of the major problems with the saga... and proof that, contrary to George's numerous statements, there was no master plan. Retcon is problematic, especially when the writer/director is going to do whatever he wants. No one was around for the PT to tell him, "uh yeah, bad idea. This sucks" or "that kind of goes against what you established in V and VI."

I love it! This made me laugh big time.

 

But then it would be clear to Vader that Palpatine wanted rid of him as soon as Palpatine told Luke to kill Vader and replace him. Why then - once Luke has refused - would Vader simply walk to stand behind Palpatine like everything was fine? Why would Palpatine be okay with Vader walking to stand behind him after just clearly betraying Vader? And why would Palpatine want to get rid of Vader anyway? Why would he want Luke to kill his other minion since two is better than one? A strict adherence to a "rule of two" does explain these actions which otherwise seem difficult to explain.

Vader would have no qualms about Palpatine ordering his death at the hand of Luke since that is the method of advancement into the rank of apprentice. Palpatine would have no qualms about having a man he just ordered killed coming to stand behind him since, again, all he was doing was adhering to a code. This makes sense. But if there is no "rule of two" then how do we explain this odd ending to the duel where we have a backstabber and the backstabbed seeming to regard one another as having done nothing worthy of a drastic change in their relationship.

When Palpatine tells Luke to kill Vader, why wouldn't Vader attempt to convince Luke to kill Palpatine instead? Yet Vader lay silently without interference as though all that is transpiring is a perfectly acceptable series of events. It seems to me that there is some kind of unspoken rule underlying the events; justifying them to the mutual "moral satisfaction" of both Palpatine and Vader.

Then we have Vader and Palpatine speaking of Luke being turned to "join us or die" and if we say, there is no rule of two, then they are meaning either Luke joins the two of them to become a third - "He will join Palpatine and Vader, and Luke makes three, or die" - or "us" is meaning the Sith in general - "He will join the Sith or die". But this then leads to the questionable events of the throne room.

If we say, there is a rule of two, then "join us" is not meaning Vader and Palpatine, but is meaning, the Sith in general. "He will join the Sith or die" plus the throne room events make sense as being "morally justified" to both Vader and Palpatine allowing their relationship as Master/Apprentice to continue as it were before Luke is told to kill Vader.

So to me it seems the rule of two creates cohesion, and the absence of it causes questions. It seems to me that when Vader said Luke would "join us or die" he was well aware that for that to happen Luke would either have to kill him, or he would have to kill Luke. But prior to the duel, Vader thought to kill Palpatine if he could get Luke to join him. Luke refused the offer, and that caused the offer to be in full retraction afterward, and Vader resumed his station without further thought of betraying Palpatine. Otherwise why would Vader have stopped Luke from striking Palpatine down when he tried?

So in the end, I have no knowledge of what George Lucas had planned, and to what detail, and when; but as I think about it, the events in the throne room don't make sense without an unstated rule being in operation which makes Palpatine's call for Vader's death a fair call, and not an outright unforeseen and sudden betrayal of Vader on his part.

 

That's my favorite SW quote, although not because of the original context. Not that it didn't sound great in TPM, it expressed the stupidity of the Sith in just a few simple words (now that I think of it, that actually makes it brilliant lol) The rule of two (in that context) is so stupid that you can't even believe it, which is understandable. Who in their right mind would enter a relationship of any kind knowing that it's kill or be killed? What kind of insane partnership is that? It's madness, and absolutely bound to fail. Sure, some didn't know the rule at first, but I'm sure it became obvious soon enough. No wonder they went extinct, they were all MAD.

 

What partnership? When was it ever shown in the movies that two Sith Lords were partners?

And when was it ever shown in the films that there was more than one Sith in existence? Perhaps this third Sith appeared in "The Clone Wars" or the EU novels, regardless of whether they were a part of the PT, the OT, between the two trilogies or post -"Return of the Jedi". But I don't recall this eve happening in the films.

 

When The Phantom Menace was in theaters, I went to see it 13 times. Every time I saw it, I wondered about that line from Yoda at the end of the movie "Always two there are, a Master and an Apprentice. No more, no less.." And Mace saying, "But which was killed? The master or the apprentice?"

At the time, I thought that George was making a mistake here; that it would either indicate that something different was happening in ROTJ: that Vader and the Emperor were doing something new - a trio - with Luke, or that the whole meaning of that interaction between Vader and the Emperor in ESB has taken on a whole new, more sinister meaning (Vader was openly proclaiming to the Emperor that he was going to try to turn Luke, and then challenge the Emperor). It seemed that George was limiting the universe with this point; that he was applying rules to the Sith, an order of chaos that seemed to exist outside of any rules except that which they individually held, if they held any at all.

But, as it turns out, none of the above came to fruition within the larger consciousness of the Prequels or within the forums, fanbase or novels. In fact, just a year after Revenge of the Sith, the first of the Darth Bane series would be released, explaining the 'rule of two', as it came to be called, in much more detail. But I always wondered why there was a motivation in the first place to restrict the Sith to just two at a time. Later, you could come up with a list of about 12 or 13 Sith Lords that would stretch from Bane all the way to Palpatine, in much the same way you could trace the line of Holy Roman Emperors, or Grand Masters of the Temple of the Knights Templar. But, of course, the secret that the Sith would be hiding would be the secret of their own identity. I suppose that parallel right there - a secret society of two, so to speak - would explain partly why George may have come up with this idea; an order of chaos existing within the shadows for a millennia, hiding away from the greater civilization and the greater numbers of the Jedi; to strike again when the time was right.

When I thought about the Sith in the way of a secret society, then I came to embrace the whole idea of a 'rule of two' much more easily.

 

In the sixteen years between Return Of The Jedi and The Phantom Menace, George Lucas came up with some new ideas. Fancy that.