@emperor_jar_jar: Whether you take me seriously or not is your decision. All I know is that:
Shazam! Everyone except Mace, Yoda and Anakin are dead before they even realized what hit them. And given that even the trio is pretty much defenceless against Sheev's lightning in the long run, and have no way to counter or hurt him with anything, I wouldn't bet on their chances.
@azronger: I'm more of an Anakinite and Jar Jarite but thank you. They're defenseless against force lightning?
They can't do anything to Sidious?
Yoda and Sidious are basically equals. Even if not, Yoda is close enough that Sidious would have to work his butt off. He can't take Yoda AND Anakin and Mace.
@emperor_jar_jar:There is a clear issue with all your examples. They can defend for a short period, but as I said initially in the long run, they have no answer to Palpatine's Force Lightning. I will now pick apart all the possible instances where one might be inclined to believe the contrary.
The scene below starts right after Mace has Sidious on the ground, seemingly defeated. The Dark Lord then lashes out with a violent burst of Force Lightning at Mace. The sequence as depicted in the novelization:
Lightning blasted the clouds above, and lightning blasted from Palpatine's hands, and Mace didn't have time to comprehend what Palpatine was talking about; he had time only to slip back into Vaapad and angle his blade to catch the forking arcs of pure, dazzling hatred that clawed toward him.
Revenge of the Sith
As read from the text, Mace's brain did not have time to even comprehend words spoken to him, lest he would not have caught the lightning before it hit him. So essentially, in order to merely react to Sidious' lightning, his brain has to quite literally shut off and he himself becomes oblivious to pretty much everything else going on around him. It should not require stating, that this is an enormous advantage for Sidious. In theory, he could pretty much fire a casual bolt in Mace's direction every now and then, to keep him permanently out of the fight by forcing him to devote all his concentration to the act of merely keeping up with the speed of the lightning, and be capable of little else. Yet it continues...
Because Vaapad is more than a fighting style. It is a state of mind: a channel for darkness. Power passed into him and out again without touching him. And the circuit completed itself: the lightning reflected back to its source. Palpatine staggered, snarling, but the blistering energy that loured from his hands only intensified. He fed the power with his pain.
Revenge of the Sith
So Sidious wasn't even going all out in the previous quote, when right above it states he could ramp up the lightning even more from his initial burst that took Mace every ounce of his brain power and reflexive prowess to block. So if Sidious had opened with even more intensity than he actually did, Mace most likely would have not been fast enough to catch it on his blade and be hit by it full on. Given how his death went down, I would not bet on his chances to survive prolonged exposure for very long. Even only a brief hit would most likely incapacitate him for a decent duration and take him out of the fight, given how painful Force Lightning is, and Mace's own durability seemingly capping out when he is maimed as demonstrated by how he screamed when Anakin severed his hand, and generally looking paralyzed when shocked by the lightning. I am not done yet, however...
Now Anakin was at Mace's shoulder. Palpatine still made no move to defend himself from Skywalker; instead he ramped up the lightning bursting from his hands, bending the fountain of Mace's blade back toward the Korun Master's face.
Revenge of the Sith
Here Palpatine increases the potency of his lightning even further. On top validating all my previous points even further, it also states a very interesting fact: Mace's lightsaber was bending backwards toward him. In other words, Palpatine was overloading the lightsaber's capacity to contain energy, and as a result it began to contort. Not only is this the single greatest Force Lightning feat in all of Star Wars, never duplicated by anyone before or after, it pretty much supplants the idea that Palpatine's Force Lightning is more potent than lightsaber plasma pretty much as fact. And if the blade's capacity to contain energy is exceeded, that would make it a useless weapon if one wishes to defend against Palpatine's Force Lightning, as is rather nicely demonstrated by the following...
"You're the chosen one, Anakin," Mace said, his voice going thin with strain. This was beyond Vaapad; he had no strength left to fight against his own blade. "Take him. It's your destiny."
Skywalker echoed him faintly. "Destiny..."
"Help me! I can't hold on any longer!" The yellow glare from Palpatine's eyes spread outward through his flesh. His skin flowed like oil, as though the muscle beneath was burning away, as though even the bones of his skull were softening, were bending and bulging, deforming from the heat and pressure of his electric hatred. "He is killing me, Anakin—! Please, Anaaahhh—"
Mace's blade bent so close to his face that he was choking on ozone. "Anakin, he's too strong for me—"
Revenge of the Sith
Self-explanatory, really: Mace has no strength to combat against his own lightsaber contorting so close to his face he began to choke on ozone. The thing that is most intriguing to me, though, is the declaration that Sidious' Force Lightning went "beyond Vaapad." What does that mean? you ask. Well, Vaapad is both a fighting style and a Force technique developed by Mace Windu. It functions as a conduit for the darkness within Mace, and those he faces, which he can turn into power to boost his own combative performance. In fact, he was doing exactly that during his fight with Sidious...
Sinking into Vaapad, Mace Windu fought for his life. More than his life: each whirl of blade and whipcrack of lightning was a strike in defense of democracy, of justice and peace, of the rights of ordinary beings to live their own lives in their own ways. He was fighting for the Republic that he loved.
Vaapad, the seventh form of lightsaber combat, takes its name from a notoriously dangerous predator native to the moons of Sarapin: a vaapad attacks its prey with whipping strikes of its blindingly fast tentacles. Most have at least seven. It is not uncommon for them to have as many as twelve; the largest ever killed had twenty-three. With a vaapad, one never knew how many tentacles it had until it was dead: they move too fast to count. Almost too fast to see. So did Mace's blade.
Vaapad is as aggressive and powerful as its namesake, but its power comes at great risk: immersion in Vaapad opens the gates that restrain one's inner darkness. To use Vaapad, a Jedi must allow himself to enjoy the fight; he must give himself over to the thrill of battle. The rush of winning. Vaapad is a path that leads through the penumbra of the dark side. Mace Windu created this style, and he was its only living master. This was Vaapad's ultimate test.
[...]
Mace was deep in it now: submerged in Vaapad, swallowed by it, he no longer truly existed as an independent being. Vaapad is a channel for darkness, and that darkness flowed both ways. He accepted the furious speed of the Sith Lord, drew the shadow's rage and power into his inmost center—
And let it fountain out again. He reflected the fury upon its source as a lightsaber redirects a blaster bolt.
There was a time when Mace Windu had feared the power of the dark; there was a time when he had feared the darkness in himself. But the Clone Wars had given him a gift of understanding: on a world called Haruun Kal, he had faced his darkness and had learned that the power of darkness is not to be feared. He had learned that it is fear that gives the darkness power. He was not afraid. The darkness had no power over him. But—
Neither did he have power over it.
Vaapad made him an open channel, half of a superconducting loop completed by the shadow; they became a standing wave of battle that expanded into every cubic centimeter of the Chancellor's office. There was no scrap of carpet nor shred of chair that might not at any second disintegrate in flares of red or purple; lampstands became brief shields, sliced into segments that whirled through the air; couches became terrain to be climbed for advantage or overleapt in retreat. But there was still only the cycle of power, the endless loop, no wound taken on either side, not even the possibility of fatigue.
Impasse.
Revenge of the Sith
Mace no longer existed as an individual being, as noted by the text. He was drawing strength from Palpatine's own near limitless reserves of power, forming a superconducting loop that cycled the power back and forth between the two combatants, allowing Mace to match Sidious on equal footing. So when Mace "slipped back into Vaapad" in the first passage I quoted, he was drawing on Palpatine's own power once more to match him as an equal. That isn't the full story, though...
He could feel the end of this battle approaching, and so could the blur of Sith he faced; in the Force, the shadow had become a pulsar of fear. Easily, almost effortlessly, he turned the shadow's fear into a weapon: he angled the battle to bring them both out onto the window ledge. Out in the wind. Out with the lightning. Out on a rain-slicked ledge above a half-kilometer drop. Out where the shadow's fear made it hesitate. Out where the shadow's fear turned some of its Force-powered speed into a Force-powered grip on the slippery permacrete. Out where Mace could flick his blade in one precise arc and slash the shadow's lightsaber in half.
[...]
"Save your twisted words, my lord. There are no politicians here. The Sith will never regain control of the Republic. It's over. You've lost." Mace leveled his blade. "You lost for the same reason the Sith always lose: defeated by your own fear."
Palpatine lifted his head. His eyes smoked with hate. "Fool," he said. He lifted his arms, his robes of office spreading wide into raptor's wings, his hands hooking into talons.
"Fool!" His voice was a shout of thunder. "Do you think the fear you feel is mine?"
[...]
And Palpatine was not afraid. Mace could feel it: he wasn't worried at all.
Revenge of the Sith
Mace feels a pulsar of fear in the Force, and transforms it via Vaapad to bolster himself to even further heights, allowing him to disarm the Sith Lord. He initially mistook this for Palpatine's fear, but later on he realized this is in fact not the case; Palpatine was never afraid. So logically, the only option we have is that it was Anakin's fear. He was the only other person in the room, his crumbling emotional state had been elaborated upon earlier in the novel, and Mace only picks up on the fear once Anakin enters the fray. If he could amplify himself from Sidious' rage to be the Dark Lord's equal, then he would most likely be able to add Anakin's full power on top of his own and Sidious' by drawing on his negative emotions, making him almost doubly as powerful as Sidious or Yoda, or Anakin himself.
So how is this relevant? As I said earlier, Mace re-entered Vaapad when he blocked Palpatine's Force Lightning. Now that we have the added context of him drawing on Anakin's fear on top of Sidious' hate, it's probable he was doubly amped when deflecting the lightning too. Yet the task was still "beyond Vaapad" even though he was drawing on the combined power of Sidious and Anakin. This can infer several possibilities:
Whatever conclusion you yourself arrive at, the point is quite clear nonetheless: Sheev's Lightning can overpower lightsaber blades and the combined power of himself and Anakin Skywalker. One more thing to highlight this, and it is quite useful for Sheev here, is that he can shoot bolts all over the body at once, and so catching them all with a lightsaber becomes impossible:
The only reason Mace is enduring so well is because he is amped to hell and back, and the junior novelization nonetheless noted he was being hurt badly. You can only imagine how normal Force users would fare with having multiple arcs of lightning, each more potent than a lightsaber blade, crawling all over their body. Given that most can't even take a regular lightsaber hit, much less having a score of them stabbing you dozens of times every second, I'd imagine most Force users would be reduced to subatomic mush instantly.
All in all, pretty much conclusive evidence that lightsabers, no matter who they're wielded by, are useless in the face of Darth Sidious' Sith Lightning. So Yoda and Anakin will have to get by with just their Force abilities, which leads us to Sidious' fight with the former.
Immediately upon their battle starting, it becomes quite clear Yoda is not a match for the forks of electric hatred the Lord of all Sith can unleash at a moment's notice:
"So easily slain, Obi-Wan is not."
"Neither are you, apparently; but that is about to change." The shadow took another step, and another.
A lightsaber appeared, green as sunlight in a forest. "The test of that, today will be."
"Even a fraction of the dark side is more power than your Jedi arrogance can conceive; living in the light, you have never seen the depth of the darkness."
The shadow spread arms that made its sleeves into black wings.
"Until now."
Lightning speared from outstretched hands, and the battle was on.
In the Senate Arena, lightning forked from the hands of a Sith, and bent away from the gesture of a Jedi to shock Redrobes into unconsciousness.
Then there were only the two of them.Their clash transcended the personal; when new lightning blazed, it was not Palpatine burning Yoda with his hate, it was the Lord of all Sith scorching the Master of all Jedi into a smoldering huddle of clothing and green flesh.
Revenge of the Sith
Both in the film and the novelization, Yoda has trouble reacting to the incoming lightning bolts. In the movie he doesn't even get his hands up in time. In the novelization, he deflects the initial blast but is downed by the second despite having his lightsaber on guard. This is further corroboration for the idea that Sidious can pretty much bypass any lightsaber defence, in addition to the image with him and Mace above.
After a while, his and Yoda's fight continues to the Senate Arena, where the Sith Lord again blasts him with Lightning. This time, Yoda does manage to react and catch the barrage on his lightsaber, but unfortunately for the little green Jedi Master, it does jack shit to aid him:
Even on the slim chance, that anyone here could catch Palpatine's lightning on their lightsaber, they would just get cockslapped away. Even further clairvoyance on the notion that lightsabers are totally ineffective and serve no purpose against Sheev, in addition to the fact that even if someone here were capable of standing their ground with their lightsaber defence (they aren't), they would just find their blade bending to their face, and their defence circumnavigated by several more bolts that would be crawling all over their body, causing excruciating pain and severe burns - and in the case of lesser Force users, instant death.
And for a final piece of evidence:
Sidious can just "remove" the lightsabers off of everyone's hands with a flick of his wrist if he targets the hilt. Given that no one here is fast enough to consistently react to him, he can full well do that as he pleases. Yes, I concede that Yoda did manage to pull it off a few times, but overall he fails more often than he succeeds in all adaptations of the fight, and in the comic it's fifty-fifty: movie: 2 - 0; script: 2 - 1; novel: 2 - 1; junior novel: 2 - 1; comic: 1 - 1. In total across all the media, Yoda has three successes and nine failures. And given that he is the fastest Jedi here, I doubt anyone else could manage it even once - Mace's feat doesn't count because Palpatine was holding back, and he was pushed to his absolute limit even then.
Some might like to point out that Anakin Skywalker has been described as the fastest Jedi around, including Yoda, so it might be arguable he could consistently react to Sidious. However, the extent of his speed edge over Yoda is unclear. Is it 50 %? 10 %? 0.1 %? There is no way to know whether Anakin could keep up with Sheev's Lightning simply based off of that quote, not to mention the quote itself falls under scrutiny when we observe Anakin's own thoughts on Sidious' speed when he witnessed him fighting:
Anakin blinked and rubbed his eyes again. Maybe he was still a bit flash-blind—the Korun Master seemed to be fading in and out of existence, half swallowed by a thickening black haze in which danced a meter-long bar of sunfire. Mace pressed back the darkness with a relentless straight-ahead march; his own blade, that distinctive amethyst blaze that had been the final sight of so many evil beings across the galaxy, made a haze of its own: an oblate sphere of purple fire within which there seemed to be dozens of swords slashing in all directions at once.
The shadow he fought, that blur of speed—could that be Palpatine?
Their blades flared and flashed, crashing together with bursts of fire, weaving nets of killing energy in exchanges so fast that Anakin could not truly see them—but he could feel them in the Force. The Force itself roiled and burst and crashed around them, boiling with power and lightspeed ricochets of lethal intent. And it was darkening.
Revenge of the Sith
Apparently Anakin can't truly perceive Palpatine move, to the point where it seems like he is fading in and out of existence. Note that this is just Palpatine fighting with his lightsaber, and not his Force Lightning, which is much faster, as is made rather clear when Yoda contends with the former just fine, but is barely able to react to the latter. There are several explanations to this internal inconsistency:
Even if you disregard the first two options, and think Anakin is faster than Yoda and can react to Sidious' Lightning bolts consistently, that is ultimately beside the point. As demonstrated with Mace and Yoda, it doesn't matter whether he is more powerful than Sidious, or whether he manages to react or not, he will still have his lightsaber nullified, and he'll have to resort exclusively to his Force powers, which echoes what I said earlier. So onward to that.
Mace doesn't need much elucidation: he had his Force deflection immediately overpowered and got killed in a matter of seconds:
As MACE stares at ANAKIN in shock, PALPATINE springs to life.The full force of Palpatine's powerful Bolts blasts MACE. He attempts to deflect them with his one good hand, but the force is too great. As blue rays engulf his body, he is flung out the window and falls twenty stories to his death. No more screams. No more moans. PALPATINE lowers his arm.
Revenge of the Sith Script
Yoda will take a bit more effort for Sheev, but in the end, even he is ultimately helpless. A scenario where both Yoda and Sidious would be blasted backwards by the amalgamation of their combined powers in the form of a ball would only happen if the two were in close proximity to each other. From afar, only Yoda would get flung back, as the energy ball would cumulate in his hands, and not anywhere near Palpatine. In fact, such a scene is exactly what happened in the junior novelization of the fight:
Hurling Force lightning, the Emperor backed away, to the very edge of the platform. Following him was like walking against hurricane winds. Never had Yoda faced one so strong in the dark side. Before he came within reach, a particularly strong blast knocked Yoda out of the pod.
Revenge of the Sith Junior Novelization
Yoda likens trying to walk through the lightning storm akin to trying to persevere against hurricane winds. The act of moving towards the Emperor is so difficult that Yoda is effectively immobilized here. Before he can come within reach, his Force defence will be overpowered and he will be flung backwards. Even if Yoda did manage to somehow gain on the Sith Lord, all the latter would need to do is to step back to elongate the gap between them, just as he does above. Yoda does not have any chance or method of damaging Palpatine here or effectively defending against his attacks. All Sidious needs to do to win against Yoda is to create some distance, fire lightning, and Yoda will go down. Every. Single. Time.
Same with Mace, same with Anakin. Neither of them have anything that'd allow them outperform Yoda in a similar situation, and even if you buy into Anakin being more powerful than Sidious and Yoda, the former's lightning is still powerful enough to seriously injure being more powerful than him, and is beyond their most advanced Force techniques (Mace with Vaapad). And I seriously doubt Anakin is even twice as powerful as Sidious, even if he is his superior. One'd have a very tough time making that case.
Now I believe I have adequately explained how Palpatine does indeed have the destructive firepower to defeat the combined might of Anakin Skywalker, Mace Windu and Yoda. But to recap, after he "blitzes" and annihilates the rest of the Council with his initial omnidirectional storm, I believe only those three would survive, although Mace only barely, and would effectively be out of the fight for a lengthy duration. He doesn't have either the pain tolerance or the passive Force barriers to withstand Palpatine's might. The only reason I'm hesitant to say he gets one-shot insta-killed is because Lucas has stated Mace can compete with the Emperor, although whether this statement applies to standard Mace without the Vaapad amp or even Legends Mace at all is debatable. Regardless, after the first hit, he isn't in any condition to defend himself from a second one, which would probably come just as quickly. Or Sheev would just snap his neck, or blow up his body to sate his thirst for blood.
After Mace is out (which would happen in the first few seconds of the fight), Anakin and Yoda remain. Yoda has already shown his passive barriers can withstand Sheev's Lightning, so he would get up, as would Anakin if we accept he is on Yoda's level. They would then be faced with more lightning, and have their lightsabers disposed of. Now their only chance is to try to beat Palpatine with Telekinesis or their fists, but they can't get anywhere near the Emperor due to being bombarded with even more Lightning. Palpatine could either attempt to overwhelm them with a continuous barrage, or spam singular bolts to push their reflexes and defensive powers to their limits and watch as they fail to react to most of the incoming assaults. At some point, the Jedi just wouldn't be able to keep up with the never-ending volley of bolts, not to mention everyone that hits them distracts them and increases their chances of failing on the next one. I'd imagine they'd be overwhelmed rather quickly, and the pain would become too intense to cope with, so the Emperor would slowly torture them to death, similar to how he did Luke.
So there we have it: a detailed breakdown of why Darth Sidious solos the entire Jedi Council with just his Force Lightning. Keep in mind he has tons of other Force abilities at his disposal to utilize here. This was just one of them, yet I believe he would win just with Sith Lightning alone. He is also virtually immortal as he can tank lightsaber hits to the face like they were flea bites, without any effort. I may elaborate upon this later is asked, but for now I think this is enough to prove Emperor Palpatine's utter supremacy.
Log in to comment