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Lets look at the 4 onscreen movie sith. Darth Sidious cannot even be looked at as a person, he IS the dark side, so his morality is a non-entity. Maul was raised by Sidious from childhood. Evil is all he knew. Anakin Skywalker was mentally ill, and can be said his fate was chosen for him. That leaves Dooku.... A respected Jedi Master who left the Order, in order to pursue power. He made a choice. Isn't that true evil?

They're all just deluded in their own way, and there isn't any real way to define evil. They're all bad mother****ers, that much we know.

Originally posted by Darth Abonis
Lets look at the 4 onscreen movie sith. Darth Sidious cannot even be looked at as a person, he IS the dark side, so his morality is a non-entity. Maul was raised by Sidious from childhood. Evil is all he knew. Anakin Skywalker was mentally ill, and can be said his fate was chosen for him. That leaves Dooku.... A respected Jedi Master who left the Order, in order to pursue power. He made a choice. Isn't that true evil?


Anakin Skywalker's obsession with control, while having very real causes, would not meet the definition of mental illness.

And Sidious, while full of the dark side, *is* a person who made decisions which lead him to that point and has no master hanging over him and making him act that way.

Maul, you can argue him being a tool and thus most of his actions can be passed on to Sidious rather than his own will, but given the chance to quit (believed dead for about a decade!), where he could've easily made a clean slate, he chose to go back to the fold. It may have been all he was raised to know, but he did pass opportunities to turn away.

Dooku did seem to turn the most freely of the lot to be sure, but it's pretty easy to make the argument all of them are evil.

Telling Maul to have a "clean slate" is like telling a kitten to miraculously turn into a gorilla. It's not happening. Seeds were planted.

On-screen...?


I'd say that the guy who willfully butchered children and unarmed non-combatants, and who was totally cool standing by and watching while an entire planet was destroyed, is pretty damn evil. The disfigured old guy who condoned and supported such behaviour is pretty bad too.

But the tattooed guy who's biggest crime was dance-fighting, and the old man whose biggest crime was upholding the laws of his host planet and defending himself when a bunch of assholes attacked him... not very evil.

Originally posted by ILS
Telling Maul to have a "clean slate" is like telling a kitten to miraculously turn into a gorilla. It's not happening. Seeds were planted.

True. He did have the least-odds of the lot.

Really, the surprising thing was he didn't purposefully kamikaze against Sidious. Where he directed his rage was certainly up to him.

Originally posted by Q99
Where he directed his rage was certainly up to him. Sort of. But you need to understand that his entire life was focused around the build-up to the day he'd finally be able to reveal himself to the Jedi and wholesale slaughter as many as he could. He finally got his moment and then, vwoom, Kenobi comes in. He spends twelve years alone in ridiculous conditions with a fractured mind and all he can remember is that Kenobi cut him in half and left him for dead. It's been programmed into him from infancy that what Kenobi did to him should be considered tantamount to the end of the world itself.

Essentially, everything Maul chooses to do is just in his nature now. He knows little else other than what the a Sith would do. It's like making a robot do evil things - the robot isn't evil, its just doing evil acts. Obviously Maul isn't a robot and has free thought and will, but he's along those lines.

At the end of the day I don't think anything is inherently evil, evil is a concept the human race has constructed. Your actions define you, and if your actions are evil you're perceived to be evil, but at the core of it, there is always a reason or series of reasons for someone bringing themselves to commit evil, reasons that are out of their control. Even on the most primitive level, there are "reasons" for why the earth the came to be, for example. It's the same with sentient beings, there's a "reason" for everything we do and how we are and how we end up, a reason which is beyond our control. Decisions that are made by people before we are even born could make the difference between us becoming "good" or "evil" people, like parents deciding to live in one location or another. Choosing one location ensures a normal, healthy life for their child, while choosing another will cause them to come into contact with some horrific event.. like I dunno, both parents being shot in front of the kid, which causes him to go nuts and become a serial killer from the trauma. On a more basic level, he did bad, it's his fault, but looking at it with more depth, that kid might not have turned out the way he had, had another decision been made prior to his own birth.

It's like a cassette tape has been put in and all we can do now is listen.

So yeah... /rant

It isn't the Dark Side that made Sidious act so evil, it was him acting so evil that made him such a fitting avatar for the Dark Side, IMHO.

Anakin probably takes the number two spot. Though he could ultimately sort of redeem himself, he still willingly did far more onscreen evil deeds and ultimately chose to become a Sith for the most selfish reasons (and when he himself failed his own selfish plans, he was such a shithead he blamed someone else).

Dooku? Fell due to a difference of ideology, and as LL pointed out didn't actually commit much onscreen evil. Comparatively.

No clue on Maul. My opinions are based largely on the films and my interpretations of the characters, so there may be some TCW context I am missing.

It's working it's good hum.. But I ztill acidentally uze the s inztead of the z. Eeeerrr.
O.K..... Nothing to ad on this I think...

Originally posted by NemeBro
No clue on Maul. My opinions are based largely on the films and my interpretations of the characters, so there may be some TCW context I am missing.

He slaughters children in TCW in a mirror of Anakin. He's pretty effing evil.

Originally posted by Revanchiste
It's working it's good hum.. But I ztill acidentally uze the s inztead of the z. Eeeerrr.
O.K..... Nothing to ad on this I think...

Seeing as this is an EU thread....

A better question might be: Which Sith are NOT evil?

The answer being: Anyone in process of redemption.

The biggest example being Vader, naturally. Between choking his own wife out, torturing his daughter, blowing planets up (he was standing there when Tarkin did it and could easily have stopped him), killing younglings in the temple, and chopping his son's hand off, he did many deeds that were pretty damn evil.

...Yet the entire point of his story is that for all the irredeemably evil things Vader did...Anakin Skywalker was not beyond redemption. The love and compassion and forgiveness of his son, with some judiciously applied inverse Dun Moch, brought Anakin back into the light.

He's lucky he died right then...the trial he would've faced would've been considerably more justice oriented then the story Lucas actually wanted to tell was.

Of the sith that were not redeemed, Vestara is least evil, mostly because she ALMOST climbed out of that pit, but didn't quite make it.

In terms of evil (canon):
1. Darth Sidious
2. Darth Bane
3. Darth Maul
4. Darth Vader
5. Darth Tyranus

Originally posted by DarthAnt66
In terms of evil (canon):
1. Darth Sidious
2. Darth Bane
3. Darth Maul
4. Darth Vader
5. Darth Tyranus

Bane was not born evil if you read Path of Destruction. Tyrannus was more evil than Vader. He chose the dark side. The dark side chose Vader.

This is canon... not legends.

Originally posted by Darth Abonis
Bane was not born evil if you read Path of Destruction. Tyrannus was more evil than Vader. He chose the dark side. The dark side chose Vader.


Urmm, I see to remember Vader having to choose between Windu and Sidious. We know what his choice was.

I remember Vader having to choose between Sidious and Luke. We cannot forget that choice either.

I'm only now registering the parallels between those two scenes now that you've mentioned it.

Anyways...of the 4 movie Sith, exactly one of them snapped out of it. And that is why I call Anakin the least evil of the bunch. The wife whose heart he broke died insisting there was still good in him. His son made Padme's last wish come true.

Nobody came for Maul, or Dooku. And Dooku had a considerable number of friends within the Jedi Order. Nobody in their right mind would go anywhere NEAR Sidious, who has more evil within him then the other 3 put together.

Originally posted by DarthAnt66
This is canon... not legends.

ZW canon... In all rulez of the entire univerze there iz one which never can be fully learn or maztered ZW canon....

Originally posted by Angelalex242

Nobody came for Maul, or Dooku. And Dooku had a considerable number of friends within the Jedi Order Have you considered that that says more about the quality of Dooku's friends than of Dooku?

Anakin had someone relentlessly trying to fight for his redemption. Dooku, well, didn't.

Originally posted by Darth Abonis
Bane was not born evil if you read Path of Destruction. Tyrannus was more evil than Vader. He chose the dark side. The dark side chose Vader.

I don't think people are born evil. They become evil due to many factors like if they're rich or not, how others treat them, etc.

The closest to 'born evil' is the Lost Tribe of the Sith. That's why Vestara's near redemption was so amazing

Originally posted by Nalaniel
They become evil due to many factors like if they're rich or not

lol

Why lol? If you're rich and your parents do everything you wish for, you'll be different.

In the Star Wars Universe, money is not the root of all evil. The Dark Side is. And when listing things that lead to the Dark Side, Yoda never mentions credits.

Originally posted by Nalaniel
Why lol? If you're rich and your parents do everything you wish for, you'll be different.

I do not believe that makes one evil.

Most of the people I know then would be evil...

Originally posted by NemeBro

Dooku? Fell due to a difference of ideology, and as LL pointed out didn't actually commit much onscreen evil. Comparatively.

Remember, he was one of the two who willingly and deliberately started the Clone Wars, driving the galaxy into a huge conflict for the purpose of eliminating enemies, and was key in doing so. Damage wise, that's a lot.

In terms of evil, it looks something like this.

Sidious>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Dooku>>Maul>>>>Vader

Master, Smart Apprentice, Dumb Apprentice, Redeemed.

Originally posted by NewGuy01
I do not believe that makes one evil.

Not by itself, but combined with other factors... maybe.

Originally posted by Nalaniel
Not by itself, but combined with other factors... maybe. A grilled cheese sandwich combined with "other factors" can turn someone evil. Maybe Dooku was eating lunch one day and saw Sidious's face in the bread.


Nebulous shit like "if you're rich or not" doesn't mean anything.

I don't think grilled cheese exists in the SW universe.

All of them are evil.

Dooku is the least evil though. I wonder, given his delusional but semi-noble intentions, whether he'd have it in him to commit atrocities like Vader and Maul were capable of. Could he kill children?

Edit: Oh no wait, I forgot, he tried to murder Jabba's baby son. Yeah, he's pretty fvcking evil.

To me Palpa iz really nice. Iz a god guy there iz worz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjdRtCLoaJ8

Only vitiate rize the level of evilnezz brought by the chaoz....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0CLBSVbvK0

Originally posted by Darth Abonis
Lets look at the 4 onscreen movie sith. Darth Sidious cannot even be looked at as a person, he IS the dark side, so his morality is a non-entity. Maul was raised by Sidious from childhood. Evil is all he knew. Anakin Skywalker was mentally ill, and can be said his fate was chosen for him. That leaves Dooku.... A respected Jedi Master who left the Order, in order to pursue power. He made a choice. Isn't that true evil?

Sidious can be looked at as a person of course. He betrayed Plagueis, before he reached that so called full potential of the dark side. Plagueis trusted him, and he was ready to be ''partners'' instead of master and apprentice relationship, but Sidious didn't like that so in my point of view, Sidious is truly evil just like Maul is.

Maul's evil is kind of natural, just like Mother Talzin. Most of the Dathomir people are, well, except Ventress, it seems she is turning to the light.

1- Sidious
2- Maul
3- Bane
4- Plagueis
5- Dooku
6- Vader

Lol @ ancient legendary Sith Lord less evil then an replaceable assassin.

Lol @ darthant66's hypocrisy.

What were you saying in this thread ?

http://www.killermovies.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=603986&pagenumber=1

Not to mention, that is your inconsistent claim on Darth Maul. Count Dooku described Maul as a ''Great Sith Lord'' in TCW Canon. Only a true Sith could survive from being cut in half. Maul needs some respect in here. Not to mention he was capable of being a ''rival'' to Darth Sidious, what an expandable assassin he was...

Bane always came off as more sociopathic than malicious to me. I don't recall him really enjoying doing evil stuff so much as just not caring and being pretty emotionally dead. His most evil act was done to save his own life, though it was super evil.

Originally posted by Marco1907
Lol @ darthant66's hypocrisy.

What were you saying in this thread ?

http://www.killermovies.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=603986&pagenumber=1

Not to mention, that is your inconsistent claim on Darth Maul. Count Dooku described Maul as a ''Great Sith Lord'' in TCW Canon. Only a true Sith could survive from being cut in half. Maul needs some respect in here. Not to mention he was capable of being a ''rival'' to Darth Sidious, what an expandable assassin he was...
This is canon, not Legends. Maul's backstory isn't the same.

Originally posted by DarthAnt66
This is canon, not Legends. Maul's backstory isn't the same.

What is legends ? Dooku himself called him ''great sith lord'' in a TCW episode. Which is canon.

Darth Sidious also called him ''Lord Maul'' which is movie canon.

MvP6o83qS90

Dooku is more evil then Maul, because he turned evil after a LIFETIME of being good. He became evil in his 70s. Maul, however, was trained from a young age.

Also, smart evil tends to be more evil then dumb evil.

Vader definitively wins the least evil title simply because the man who died on the 2nd Death Star was no longer Darth Vader.

Vader is even less evil than Dooku because there was still good in Vader by RotS, and RotJ, and also in the EU. We never heard any thing about Dooku's goodness, he was kind of a polite poltician and not a cold-blooded killer and wild like Sidious and Maul really is.

On the flip-side, Dooku never annihilated an entire planet.

Originally posted by Nephthys
On the flip-side, Dooku never annihilated an entire planet.

Death Star you mean ? I thought that was Tarkin's business.

Vader stood there and implicitly approved of it.

Well, he couldn't do anything even if he wanted to, since the command of the Death Star was belong to Tarkin.

Alderaan cannot be blamed on Vader. That was all Tarkin's evil cookie.

On the other hand, torturing his daughter, killing children, and making his wife die of grief definitively ARE his fault.

...buuuut. Vader was faced with another choice. The choice between Sidious and Luke. And he chose rightly that time. It doesn't make the billions of lives he ended or ruined come back to life...but the Force itself, and his son, forgave him. And that was more then any Sith since TOR got.

My favorite video on YouTube, respect Vader:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0jVPXJo5U3s

He is worthy of respect...not for who he was, but for who he became once more.

Empire>Rebellion.

Redemption>Empire

Originally posted by psmith81992
I don't think grilled cheese exists in the SW universe. And we think of them as advanced. Bah.

Originally posted by Nephthys
On the flip-side, Dooku never annihilated an entire planet.

No, but he was directly responsible for massive destruction and death across many many planets.

What's worse:

An X amount of billions dying piece-meal over several years in various conditions for various situational reasons?

Or X amount of billions dying rapidly in a few microseconds from the same thing?


Indirect slower accumulation of a body count, or mostly direct consent to an immediate accumulation of a body count?

Blowing up a planet is certainly more dramatic...

But to those killed? The people on the exploded planet probably suffered less.

Particularly since all you can pin on Vader is that he chose not to stop Tarkin. Which is expected, because he hadn't met his son yet.

Of all the people able to put a stop to Alderaan's destruction, Vader was in the best possible position. He had the authority within the Empire, the clout with the Emperor, the fear of his subordinates, the supernatural power, and the immediate proximity to Tarkin and the station's command center.

And his only words regarding the planet's destruction were... silence. Silent consent, and not a thought afterward. That's Elsa-levels of cold-blooded right there. Tarkin's just as wicked for ordering it himself, but letting the guy go through with it when you're perfectly capable of stopping him--because you don't give a shit... that's f*cked.

At least Dooku's body count was spread out among multiple subordinates and scenarios that he was mostly absent for.

Here's a question. Do any of you guys honestly think Tyranus or Maul would've done anything different were they in Vader's position?

Counter question. Would Maul have let Sidious torture and kill say his brother Opress or his Mother Talzin? Or would he have intervened just like Vader did?

Originally posted by DARTH POWER
Counter question. Would Maul have let Sidious torture and kill say his brother Opress or his Mother Talzin? Or would he have intervened just like Vader did?

That's not the same because they are also evil as well, the reason Maul would help his mother and brother not because of the light side, because of the blood relativeness. For example, if Savage would turn to the light side and still refuses to turn to the dark side, so yes Maul would kill him for that betrayal.

Well, let's see.

If Sidious was torturing or killing Maul's people, Maul would attack him, but he'd attack with the Dark Side fully in place. After all, we saw Sidious take on the bros by himself. Maul certainly TRIED to give Sidious what for, but his eyes didn't change from yellow.

Now there's Dooku. If Sidious was torturing Yoda, or Qui Gonn, or whoever to death, I'm not sure he'd interfere at all. I'm not sure Dooku had anyone he really cared about it.

Anakin, however, was all about stopping people he loved from dying. That's why he joined the Dark Side in the first place. Sidious said, "Join the Dark Side, I'll save your wife." He was family first all the way, and was never anything different. So naturally, when you torture his son in front of him...well, Dark Lord Overboard.

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
Of all the people able to put a stop to Alderaan's destruction, Vader was in the best possible position. He had the authority within the Empire, the clout with the Emperor, the fear of his subordinates, the supernatural power, and the immediate proximity to Tarkin and the station's command center.

And his only words regarding the planet's destruction were... silence. Silent consent, and not a thought afterward. That's Elsa-levels of cold-blooded right there. Tarkin's just as wicked for ordering it himself, but letting the guy go through with it when you're perfectly capable of stopping him--because you don't give a shit... that's f*cked.

At least Dooku's body count was spread out among multiple subordinates and scenarios that he was mostly absent for.


On the flip side, Vader didn't *stop* it. Dooku played an *active* role in initiating it, he took the position of flat out leader of one side of the conflict. And he's also experienced and worldly enough to know that that is actively what he was doing.


Not stopping something and being a primary architect are two different things.

Well Vader also knew what he was doing. Purposeful, personal butchery of children, and purposeful use of a planet-buster on a defenseless planet. He didn't give the order or pull the trigger, but being that okay with your colleague vaporizing a planet's worth of people is friggin evil. Remember, evil isn't just defined by what you do, but also by what you choose not to do.

And which of the other Sith would've stopped Tarkin from doing that?

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
Well Vader also knew what he was doing. Purposeful, personal butchery of children, and purposeful use of a planet-buster on a defenseless planet. He didn't give the order or pull the trigger, but being that okay with your colleague vaporizing a planet's worth of people is friggin evil. Remember, evil isn't just defined by what you do, but also by what you choose not to do.


Sure, it's evil, but it's still not as evil as initiating it. Were he there alone with no Tarkin, would he have had the idea to do so? Maybe, but then again, maybe not.


And, I'd bet the war would have a higher total casualty count anyway. Planets did get very trashed there (the Noghri planet was poisoned, for example).

Oh I wouldn't call Dooku not evil. But I view direct capability and culpability as more worthy of credit (evil or benevolence) than indirect handling or involvement.

Standing right next to the guys about to blow up a planet full of defenseless, innocent billions for the sake of sending a message, and being totally down with it, is f*cked up. To be fair, Tarkin and his commanders who said of their planet-buster "I say we use it!" are just as evil and cruel as Vader ever was. You don't need to be a Force user to be moral scum. Though having "personally stabbed a bunch of kids to death" on your resume puts you higher up on the Evil scale than anything else. I don't view that scale as a measurement of one's bodycount, but as an indication of one's mentality. Being totes cool with child murder is just... sickly evil. Something I don't think Dooku ever dabbled in.

Neither Dooku or Maul would've stopped Tarkin from blowing up Alderaan. Alderaan is kind of a wash. One might even consider that the destruction of Alderaan is just so in tune with Sith Philosophy that it's hard to find one, even in the EU, who would've stopped Tarkin.

While true Vader did more evil on screen then Maul or Dooku, that's because he's a central character. Besides, his redemption is more dramatic when you know this is a guy who murders children and chokes his own wife (The one he turned Dark to save in the first place...way to go, Vader...), and then tortures his daughter in the OT. Vader would easily take the #2 spot if it weren't for Padme insisting there is still good in him and his son pulling off a miracle redemption, which is what knocks his evil level down into the tank, far below that of his Sith Colleagues. He is still probably the most evil of the very, very small group of redeemed Sith. But redeemed Sith are still less evil then any Sith who wasn't.

Most of the details of Maul's evil deeds or Dooku's evil deeds is relegated to the EU. Maul was a Sith Assassin, so we know he probably killed people. That's kinda why they call it an Assassin. We know Dooku was the Seperatist general, and being a Sith, he probably ordered atrocities by the bucketload, but most aren't seen on screen.

Originally posted by Emperordmb
And which of the other Sith would've stopped Tarkin from doing that?


I can see Dooku arguing it out with Tarkin a little, trying to reason with some kind of logic, like "we don't even know if the Princess has given the right coordinates yet, and then we will lose all leverage on her.."

I dunno, I just see that being a bit too much even for Dooku and trying to logically object to it for a short while, but then giving in when Palpatine/Tarkin insisted.

Like he did try arguing with Sidious about not killing Ventress but then when the order was made clear, he did it. I know that was someone he was fond of, but like I said I just see a whole planet being too much even for him. But maybe that's just me.

It'z a matter of canon thing ---->
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Yhea if you try to find a conzenzuz....