In The Acolyte, we get a reminder of how powerful the Sith are. Qimir, or the Stranger, defeated a group of Jedi, and he may only be an apprentice.
If even a Sith apprentice could defeat a Jedi Master, how did the Jedi almost wipe out the Sith? Read more below to find out.
Table of Contents
The Power of Sith Apprentices
We do not know whether Qimir is an apprentice or even a Sith.
With his cortosis gauntlets and red lightsaber, though, the Stranger looks like one and is most likely an apprentice to Darth Plagueis.
In The Acolyte, Quimir managed to defeat and kill almost all of the Jedi who confronted him in a lightsaber battle.
We have seen this frightening way of the Sith before with Darth Maul.
As the famed apprentice of Darth Sidious, Maul had “deadly” lightsaber skills and became an “acrobatic warrior” who was “relentless against his enemies.”
Like Qimir, Maul defeated many Jedi, including Qui-Gon Jinn and Finn Ertay.
Qimir and Maul provide an indication of the power of Sith apprentices. One reason why these Sith can defeat Jedi Knights and Masters is because of the way they train.
The Sith are very selective about who they will train, as opposed to the Jedi who accept anyone with Force sensitivity. The Sith wait until the candidate’s promise is exemplified before taking them to the dark side.
Another reason highlighted by the above video is that Sith training extracts any weaknesses from an apprentice.
A Sith Master focuses on cultivating their apprentice’s dark side power to the maximum extent. The training is like torture that envelops an apprentice in the dark side.
These reasons alone exemplify the power of even Sith apprentices and how they could defeat Jedi Masters.
How Did the Jedi Almost Wipe Out the Sith?
Credit: starwars.fandom.com
The Jedi almost wiped out the ancient Sith in the Jedi-Sith War that ended about 1,000 BBY.
The Sith lost this war largely because infighting among themselves destabilized them and provided a way for the Jedi to prevail.
As this post expresses, these Sith were “completely and utterly aimless” and ultimately made themselves into an “impotent cult of dark side users.”
The Sith back in deep Star Wars history thus did not have the same degree of power as the Sith from the Republic to Imperial times.
Darth Bane survived the Jedi-Sith War and revamped the Order of the Sith Lords. Bane based the reborn Sith on the Rule of Two and met his end at the hands of his apprentice Darth Zannah.
Yet, Bane set up the lineage of Banite Sith that gave rise to Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious, who overthrew the Jedi.
The Sith Lords and apprentices of this later era were much more powerful and included Darth Vader and Maul.
How Did the Jedi Defeat the Banite Sith?
The more recent members of the Banite Sith are the ones who were arguably more powerful than the Jedi. So, how did the Jedi defeat them?
They defeated them on a case-by-case basis. That is, the Jedi did not have an overarching plan to defeat the Sith but had to do it as the challenge arose.
Obi-Wan Kenobi defeated Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace. Maul appeared to die but survived and came back in a cybernetic spider-like form.
In Star War Rebels, Kenobi and Maul fought again after Maul had his legs rebuilt, and Maul died.
This Star Wars Theory video explains that Kenobi won because he had studied Maul’s tactics in his mind and was ready for him to use the same approach that defeated Qui-Gon.
Obi-Wan knew what Maul was going to do and used his strong lightsaber skills and attunement to the Force to prevail.
In the case of Vader, Luke Skywalker beat him for many reasons, but one of the biggest was that Vader was not trying to kill Luke and was conflicted over the dark side. Vader ultimately betrayed Darth Sidious to save Luke.
Sidious should have died because Vader threw him down the reactor shaft in Return of the Jedi. But his cloned version reappeared in The Rise of Skywalker.
Here, it took the strength of all the Jedi and Rey to finally exterminate the Sith.
As this article states, Rey deflected Palpatine’s “lightning, darkness, and anger back at him, using the strength of Jedi long gone to allow her to hold on for as long as she needed to.”
In the end, the collective Jedi persevered and stuck together, while the Sith did not.
The Sith and the Jedi
A Sith apprentice did have the power to defeat a Jedi Master.
Yet, in the depths of Star Wars history and in the last film of the sequel trilogy, the Jedi pulled collectively together to find a way to beat the Sith.
Along the way, the Jedi defeated Sith through various means, and they also fell to them.
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.