10 Defining Rules Of Iconic Characters (That Came Later Than You Think)

"Always two there are; no more, no less. A master and an apprentice," so said Yoda in Episode I, laying out the rule for Star Wars' bad guys.

The titular Phantom Menace of secret Sith lord Darth Sidious and his apprentice Darth Maul do seem to follow the same gruesome twosome pattern as the original trilogy's Emperor and Darth Vader. So, the Sith Rule of Two has always been a thing in the Star Wars universe, then? Except that Yoda mentioning it there was the first anybody had ever of it!

Not only was there no real sense of a Sith code during the era of the original Star Wars, there wasn't even much clear concept of "the Sith" at all. Vader is referred to as "Dark Lord Of The Sith" in George Lucas's Star Wars scripts, but that appeared to just be his personal title and was never applied to anyone else, nor ever actually used in the films' dialogue anyway.

It was not until the prequel era that "Sith" started to appear more widely as the Dark Side counterpart to the Jedi. Earlier (now non-canonical) expanded universe novels like Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy referred to Vader and those like him as "Dark Jedi" and had no sense that there was a "two at one time" limit.

Ultimately, the introduction of the Rule Of Two in 1999 kind of gets in the way of creating more villains with Dark Side powers, so it's largely a semantic rule anyway. From Asajj Ventress to the Knights Of Ren, there are plenty of powerful Dark Side apprentices who only manage not to violate the rule by not getting referred to as "Sith".

That's the thing about rules. They may help add interest to characters, but they weren't always around and they can always be bent in future. In fact, they're really more like guidelines anyway.