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Warning: spoilers are ahead for Star Wars: The High Republic - Trials of the Jedi by Charles Soule. 

Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise? 

In 2005's Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, soon-to-be-Emperor Palpatine tells Anakin Skywalker the story of the Sith Lord, Darth Plagueis. Unbeknownst to Anakin at the time, Palpatine was a Sith Lord called Darth Sidious, and his little info dump told the story of how a younger Sidious had been trained by his master, only to later kill him in his sleep. It's a speech that's been memed into oblivion over the years by Star Wars fans, but now, the ending of the final High Republic novel, Trials of the Jedi by Charles Soule, has major implications for what really happened to Darth Plagueis. In fact, the ending of Trials of the Jedi features a scene that inches towards a concrete explanation for how The Sith returned to the galaxy, eventually infiltrating the highest echelons of power in the Republic during the prequels... and it's heartbreaking. 

You may be thinking, "You sound like one of those nerds who can list all the US Presidents in order. Why should we care about Darth Plagueis? It's not like we've actually seen him in any canon project so far. What bearing do Ye Olde Sith have on the Star Wars I interact with most?" But we have seen Plagueis. Last year, The Acolyte on Disney+ showed Darth Plagueis lingering in the shadows of the island that Qimir/The Stranger lived on, with the implication being that The Stranger was an apprentice of Plagueis. To understand more about Plagueis is to move beyond the existing, simple explanation for how the Sith rose to power. So without much further ado, let's get into it. 

To cut to the chase, I think I've figured out who Darth Plagueis's master was - or, at least, who taught whoever taught Darth Plagueis, who then in turn took Palpatine on as an apprentice.

So who taught Darth Plagueis?

Darth Plagueis' teacher is (probably) a former Jedi named Azlin Rell. 

Who is Azlin Rell? He's basically the scary grandpa that the Jedi keep locked in their basement on Coruscant. Once a Jedi Knight during the earlier part of the High Republic era (circa 382 BBY - which translates into "before the Battle of Yavin" as seen in the original Star Wars film A New Hope, to be exact), Rell had an encounter with Force-eating beasts called the Nameless that was so terrifying that he suffered from visions after the attack. The visions became so bad that Rell fled the Jedi Order and gouged out his own eyes, eventually embracing the Dark Side. With the help of the Dark Side, Rell managed to prolong his own life, and eventually came back into the care of the Jedi later on during the High Republic. 

Fast forwarding through a good chunk of events during the High Republic era, Rell ended up drafted into the Jedi's final fight against the Nameless in the Trials of the Jedi book. After surviving the battle, Rell decides to not return to the Jedi Order, and instead steals a ship and a lightsaber, and jets off into the galaxy. In one of the final scenes of Trials of the Jedi, Rell removes the kyber crystal (the little rock that determines the color of a lightsaber) from the lightsaber, and as he embraces all of the pain he's experienced in his life, the kyber crystal turns red. When Rell puts it back into the lightsaber and powers it on, the blade is now red. 

Which, as Star Wars fans know, is pretty important in the grand scheme of things.

The ending of Trials of the Jedi implies that Azlin Rell is the origin point of the Sith leading into the Skywalker Saga

You might remember in the "tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise" speech that Palpatine gives to Anakin, he references how Plagueis could use the power of the dark side to prolong life: "[Plagueis] had such a knowledge of the Dark Side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying. The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural." Plagueis had to learn how to use the Dark Side in that manner from someone, according to the canonical Sith tradition called the Rule of Two. Given what we know about Azlin Rell, the way that Trials of the Jedi ends and the timeline of Star Wars canon, it's seemingly increasingly clear that Rell's knowledge was passed on to Plagueis, who ultimately passed it onto Palpatine. 

Like Plagueis, Rell used the power of the Dark Side to prolong life, and the timeline within the Star Wars canon supports the implication that Rell mentored Plagueis. Rell was a human well over a hundred years old during the events of Trials of the Jedi, and we still don't know when he died. If we crunch some numbers, it looks like Rell had a century after Trials of the Jedi where he could have taken on an apprentice - who was possibly (or probably, given the timing) Plagueis... or, at the very least, someone who would eventually take Plagueis on as an apprentice. Trials of the Jedi takes place in the year 228 BBY. Darth Plagueis's appearance in The Acolyte places him in the year 132 BBY. If you ask me, that's plenty of time for Azlin Rell to find a like-minded person in the galaxy and teach them how to escape death and prolong life. 

There are some discrepancies in the Sith order of succession in Star Wars canon

Now, I know what some of you may be thinking: what about my boy Darth Tenebrous? While Legends continuity (which refers to books, comics, tabletop games, video games, and TV shows published before Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012) established that Darth Plagueis's master was Darth Tenebrous, Tenebrous has only appeared in name in the Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker Visual Dictionary book. Tenebrous hasn't definitively been established within actual official Star Wars canon, as Plagueis's master. 

Sure, it isn't out of the realm of possibility that Tenebrous was the one that Rell took on as an apprentice. Maybe Rell speedran the ins and outs of using the Dark Side to avoid death with Tenebrous before giving up the ghost (so to speak; Force users have a complicated relationship with ghosts). The fact of the matter is is that Star Wars canon is much more malleable than any of us would like to admit. There are tons of elements from Legends continuity that get brought over into official canon - I wrote a whole article about it once because I'm a madman. So if you really need to, you can take all of this with a grain of salt, Tenebrous diehards. 

So what does all of this mean?

Congratulations on getting to the end of this article. What all of this means is that the fall of the Jedi is even more tragic than we thought it was. The High Republic already established that the Jedi Temple on Coruscant was built on top of a shrine for the Sith (talk about a cursed real estate location), and Azlin Rell's implied role in the return of the Sith underscores this further. The call was coming from inside the house. Azlin Rell spent years incarcerated in the bowels of the Jedi Temple, not far away from where the architectural bones of the Sith Shrine lay. It only makes sense that someone who knew the Jedi Order intimately would eventually turn his back on it and become their worst enemy. 

Or, to put it another way: if you really, really want to find out how where the Sith came from in the Skywalker Saga, you need to go back and read the High Republic books. 

Star Wars: The High Republic - Trials of the Jedi is available now. 

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