10 Movie Rules That Make No Sense

Much like Star Trek's Prime Directive, Star Wars' Rule of Two is vaguely defined and interpreted with a varying degree of faithfulness by different parties.

At face value, the Rule of Two is a Sith philosophy stating that only two Sith Lords can ever exist at one time: one master and one apprentice.

The rule was first concocted by the legendary Sith Darth Bane, who felt that an overabundance of self-serving Sith Lords led to the order's downfall through betrayal and infighting.

And the Rule of Two endured for a long time, allowing the Sith to operate undetected while maintaining a status quo whereby the apprentice inevitably killed their master and found themselves their own apprentice to mentor.

Star Wars media in general has found ways to conveniently hand-wave the Rule of Two over the years, such as The Clone Wars' Asajj Ventress being presented as more of a Dark Jedi than a formal apprentice to Count Dooku, who was himself Darth Sidious' apprentice.

Since its first mention in The Phantom Menace, the Rule of Two has become increasingly fluid and ambiguous, and much like the Prime Directive, has generally bent to the whims of various storytellers with their own visions for the IP.

The rule became even more strained with the release of The Rise of Skywalker, which presented an entire fleet of Sith acolytes residing on Exogol with zombie-Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid).

However, the movie's recent junior novelisation retconned the Rule of Two to mean "rule by two," basically implying there can be many more Sith, but only two Sith rulers.

Either way, the waters are murky enough that it'd be no surprise if this was re-worked again in the future. Basically, like Looper's time travel, don't overthink it lest you get a pounding headache.