Skip to main content

star wars - In the new canon what do we actually know about Darth Plagueis?


I read and loved Darth Plagueis but with all the recent changes to what is and isn't canon I'm losing track.



There's a common theory that Supreme Leader Snoke is Darth Plagueis, most are discounted because Plagueis is a Muun. But where does that information come from? What current canon information do we have about Plagueis that disproves this theory and what has been marked as Legends?



Answer



The character of Darth Plagueis is only mentioned in two canon sources: Episode III and the novel Tarkin.


The only information from Episode III is that



Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create life ... He had such a knowledge of the dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying.


...


He became so powerful ... the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice killed him in his sleep.


Darth Sidious/Palpatine (source)




A little more information about Plagueis is given in Tarkin. Perhaps most important is the fact that Plagueis was indeed Sidious' master.



Save for Sidious, no sentient being in close to five thousand years had set foot in the shrine [under the former Jedi Temple]. The room’s excavation and restoration had been carried out by machines under the supervision of 11-4D. Even Vader was unaware of the shrine’s existence. But it was here that they would one day work together the way Sidious and Plagueis had to coax from the dark side its final secrets. In the intervening years he had actually come to appreciate Plagueis for the planner and prophet he had been. Such perilous machinations required two Sith, one to serve as bait for the dark side, the other to be the vessel. Success would grant them the power to harness the full powers of the dark side, and allow them to rule for ten thousand years.


p. 101



Elsewhere it is mentioned that the droid 11-4D was owned by Plagueis.


Plagueis was still alive by the time Sidious became Naboo's senator, which is consistent with the Legends novel Darth Plagueis:



[Sidious and Tarkin] had met several years after Sidious -- still an apprentice of Darth Plagueis at the time -- had been appointed Naboo’s representative to the Republic Senate.


p. 102




Plagueis on the Force:



Darth Plagueis had once remarked that “the Force can strike back.” The death of a star didn’t necessarily curtail its light, and indeed Sidious could see evidence of that sometimes even in Vader—the barest flicker of persistent light.


p. 102



Plagueis disdained "trivial" political matters and did not foresee that Sidious would rise to become Emperor:



The Emperor spent a long moment studying Ison and Rancit, stretching out with his powers to discern alignments, configurations, some syzygy of events. Then his thoughts turned to Vader and Tarkin. He appreciated how well they were working together, but he began to wonder if they were perhaps too close to the details of the dissidents’ scheme to recognize their ultimate objective. One needed to have a safe remove, as he felt he had, gazing into the 3-D representation of the galaxy he had made his own. How Plagueis would have mocked him for allowing himself to become personally involved in such a seemingly trivial matter; but then his Master had never foreseen that his onetime apprentice would become Emperor.


p. 103




That's it. That's all we know about Plagueis strictly from canon. We don't know Plagueis' species. The main proof that Plagueis is not Snoke comes out-of-universe, from Pable Hidalgo. In-universe, the best evidence is that Plagueis needs to have died in order for the prophecy of the Chosen One to be true (the Chosen One was supposed to destroy the Sith); Anakin is the Chosen One, so he couldn't have destroyed the Sith if Snoke is Plagueis.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...