General Grievous is best known as the imposing cybernetic villain of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. He was a powerful Separatist commander second only to Count Dooku.
Fans may not know that Grievous almost became Force-sensitive and Dooku’s apprentice. How did this happen? Read on to find out.
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How Grievous Almost Became Force Sensitive and Dooku’s Sith Apprentice
As the cybernetic warlord, Grievous trained in lightsaber fighting under Dooku and became a general of the Separatist Droid Army.
Grievous stood second only to Dooku in the Separatist ranking.
Yet, Grievous was almost Force Sensitive and a Sith apprentice under Dooku too.
Fans may know that the warlord Sheelal fully transitioned to Grievous after Count Dooku left him on the verge of death.
Before the Clone Wars, as this video recaps, Dooku planted a bomb on Grievous’s shuttle that left the latter seriously injured.
Afterward, Grievous went through surgery that applied cybernetics to reform his body, and Dooku took some of Grievous’s skin and combined it with the blood of Sifo-Dyas.
Sifo-Dyas was a Jedi who commissioned the creation of the Grand Army of the Republic and was known to have a high midichlorian count.
Sify-Dyas had died when his ship was shot down, with Dooku behind this too.
Dooku’s planned to mix Sifo-Dyas’s DNA with Grievous’s to bestow his apprentice with Force sensitivity.
As this video also explains, Dooku wanted Grievous to become Force Sensitive to help Dooku’s rise to power as a Sith.
Dooku hoped this power and the aggression he installed into Grievous would make for a perfect apprentice, whereby the two of them would overthrow Palpatine.
This action would fall in line with the Sith Rule of Two, with Dooku and Grievous supplanting Darth Sidious.
However, Dooku’s experiment with Grievous failed, and his would-be apprentice did not gain Force sensitivity. Could he still have been his apprentice?
Could Grievous Have Been Dooku’s Apprentice?
Given his record, Dooku training an apprentice like Grievous makes sense. As we saw in the Clone Wars series, he trained both Asajj Ventress and Savage Opress.
Like Grievous, Ventress was especially promising as an apprentice.
This video shows how Dooku took Ventress before Palpatine, who “welcomed her as a disciple of the dark side.” Yet, Darth Sidious came to see her as a threat and ordered Dooku to assassinate her (although she survived).
Dooku also planned to take on Pong Krell as his apprentice before the latter met his end at the hands of clone trooper Dogma.
These villain trainees show that Grievous’s potential as a Sith apprentice coincided with other trainees that Dooku had, except that they had Force powers where Grievous did not, which stifled Grievous’s potential.
In addition, even before Grievous was killed by Obi-Wan, Dooku had turned against training him.
As this video conveys, Dooku “despised Grievous and thought he was a monster” but also enjoyed training him.
Dooku thus had mixed feelings, which ultimately tipped toward seeing Grievous as a threat and someone who did not follow proper ways of fighting because he used multiple lightsabers.
Hence, the chances of Grievous becoming a Sith apprentice narrowed sharply.
Dooku and Grievous
Grievous did have a window where he could have become Force-sensitive and Dooku’s apprentice. Yet, this was a brief period with several factors working against him.
Dooku trained him in lightsaber dueling and tried to give Grievous Force sensitivity, but he ultimately pulled back on completing this journey to the dark side.
Todd Wahlstrom is a creative and analytical freelance writer and life-long Star Wars fan. He has covered such topics as Darth Vader, the Jedi, Boba Fett, and AT-AT Walkers. Todd has published a non-fiction book, holds a Ph.D. in history, and enjoys hiking, running, and reading about science.