Star Wars: 10 Things You Didn't Know About The Sith

When talking to his new apprentice/brother during the fifth season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the recently returned Maul tells Savage Opress, "Always two there are. A master and an apprentice."

And if this sounds a little familiar, it's because that's pretty much the exact thing Master Yoda told Mace Windu towards the end of The Phantom Menace when talking about the return of the dreaded Sith.

Both powerful Force users were actually referencing the Sith Rule of Two here, a commandment put in place by none other than the aforementioned Darth Bane.

But why did this particular Sith Lord decide to establish the rule in the first place?

Well, a millennium before the events of the Skywalker Saga kicked off, the Jedi finally got the better of their ancient enemy, with Bane being the only remaining survivor after the Sith's desire for more power left them turning on one another and making themselves vulnerable to their adversaries.

So, in an attempt to keep this from happening again as the Sith looked to exact revenge on the Jedi, Bane created a new rule that stated there could now only ever be a powerful dark-side-using master and an apprentice craving that power who would one day strike them down and take their place. No more, no less.

Of course, with Sith being greedy souls at their core, this rule has been bent and broken on numerous occasions over the years. And unsurprisingly, the return of the Sith never really lasted all that long in the wake of Darth Sidious' rise, fall, rise, and then fall again.