I already addressed the main issues I wanted to address in Parts 1 and 2. But there is one final misconception that's been going around that I feel need to address:

Can Sidious stomp Yoda with lightning? The argument as follows is that in all the adaptations including the Script, Film, SN, JN, and Comic, Yoda had a total of 3 successes at reacting to lightning and 9 failures.

Now I will admit openly that it is absolutely true Sidious can seriously strain Yoda with his lightning and negate his saber advantage with it, hence Sidious pushing Yoda off the podium when the latter disarmed him and when The Dark Lord disarmed him of his lightsaber. But the reacting argument requires a little bit of investigation. Let's dive right in.

First the Office:

In the Script Yoda fails to react:

"DARTH SlDIOUS: Your arrogance blinds you, Master Yoda. Now you will experience the full power of the dark side.

The Dark Lord raises his arms, and LIGHTNING BOLTS shoot out, surrounding YODA.

YODA is picked up and thrown across the room, hitting the wall and sliding down in a crumpled heap. DARTH SIDIOUS chuckles." ~ RotS Script

In the Movie fails to react:

In the SN he actually reacts the first bolt but fails on the second:

"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. ~ RotS SN

In the JN he fails to react:

“Your arrogance blinds you, Master Yoda,” Darth Sidious hissed. “Now you will experience the full power of the dark side.” He raised his arms, and the Force pulsed as blue lightning blasted Yoda across the room. ~ RotS JN

It should be noted that in the JN Yoda was playing possum to catch Sidious off-guard.

"Mas Amedda looked from the Chanceller to Yoda, his eyes narrowed maliciously. He turned and left the room. Another wave of dark power lifted Yoda and flung him hard against the wall. Yoda used the Force to cushion the impact, but he pretended to be knocked unconscious. "A surprise I will give him." ~ ROTS JN

He fails to react in the Comic:

So that's a total 1 success and 5 failures so far, right?

Wrong for two reasons. First is one I've already addressed in part one - it's PIS. Yoda is perfectly capable of reacting to Sidious's lightning in the later portions of the fight as I will outline later.

Two this is not "5" failures it's 1. It's the same scene from the Script adapted 4 times and only the Movie version is Canon. One other example of PIS I like to use as a counterpoint, Darth Maul failing to react to Kenobi in time in TPM, was first in the Script, then the Movie, the SN, the JN, the Comic, The Darth Maul Journal, The Wrath of Darth Maul, and End Game. That's 8 times Maul failed to react to Kenboi, it's consistent and TPM Kenobi can totally move faster than Maul can react, right? Of course not, the PIS outlier event only happened one time in Canon.

Back to Yoda vs Sidious. As I outlined in part one the directorial intent was to make both seem evenly matched by both landing a major it on each other in the beginning. It wasn't the most well-written way to it but the thematic context is still there. They both score a hit, Sidious realizes this is going to be a fight for his life and attempts to flee. There is no showing of superiority for either side, otherwise, Sidious would have laughed off Yoda's push and retaliated again with lightning.

Now the other instances:

In the Script and the SN Yoda is caught twice in mid-air.

"YODA leaps after him, but PALPATINE quickly turns and aims the full force of his energy bolts at the tiny green Jedi, catching him in mid-air and throwing him back hard against the Podium." ~ RotS Script

"The shadow released its power for an instant, long enough only to whirl away through the air and alight upon one of the delegation pods as it flew past, and the creature leapt to follow—

Half a second too slow.

The shadow unleashed its lightning while the creature was still in the air, and the little green freak took its full power. The shock blasted him backward to crash against the podium, and he fell." ~ RotS SN

The first thing to note is that neither of these depictions is canon, they are directly contradicted by the Movie account. Second, as noted in Part 2, both of these instances happened when Yoda was in mid-air and attacking. It is much more easy to score a hit on a counterattack than it is against your opponent when they adopt a guard position, as Yoda does in the Movie and JN version of this scene in the Script, where he doesn't get hit - he just loses his lightsaber. It's still a legitimate feat for Sidious albeit not canon, but it doesn't mean he can zap through Yoda's defense with an active guard.

Which bring me the next examples brought up. The Movie and JN.

"As he reached Palpatine’s pod, the Sith Lord hit him with another blast of blue lightning that knocked Yoda’s lightsaber out of his hand." ~ RotS JN

Why these examples are brought up to prove Yoda failed to react to Sidious's lightning mystifies me.

As you can plainly see from the gif and passage, Yoda clearly does react to Sidious - it disarmed him yes but that's a different thing entirely.

If anything these examples help prove that the office scene was a clear outlier and that Yoda is perfectly capable of consistently reacting to Sidious's lightning.

Now the three examples acknowledged by Yoda's detractors in which he has deflected lightning, aside from the ones I already have shown he can.

"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." ~ RotS SN

This example isn't canon, but it doesn't matter since we have other examples above to support Yoda's case.

"Force lightning spat from the Emperor’s gray fingers, surrounding Yoda in a blue nimbus. But Yoda had faced Force lightning before. To deflect the first bolts, he had to stop his intended strike at the Emperor. Once his initial surprise was over, he reached out to the living Force. The lightning bent, arcing back toward the Emperor." ~ RotS JN

"YODA unleashes a ferocious assault on PALPATINE, causing him to almost go over the edge. The Dark Lord drops his lightsaber but recovers with a BLAST OF ENERGY from his hands that surrounds YODA. YODA is deflecting the Sith Lord's lightning bolts." ~ RotS Script

Both are the same event, as is the comic version, so we'll count that as one time.

So when it comes to the number of times Yoda has succeeded and failed to react to lightning in canon, we have one failure in the office after which he retaliates with a Force blast that sends Sidious into a retreat, he has one success in reacting to his lightning on the podium after he disarmed Sidious, he proceeds to be dislodged but it's still a reaction feat, and then he has another success in reacting to Sidious's lighting on the Senate pod, setting the scene for the final lightning battle, which I covered in part 2.

That's one failure, and two successes, in canon. It's clear which is more internally consistent. The one is an outlier adapted 4 times and only canon in one source. Two are non-canon and have context behind them. Yoda is perfectly capable of reacting to Sidious's lightning. Yes, Sidious can seriously strain Yoda with his lightning and negate his saber advantage with it, but it's not an insurmountable obstacle to Yoda. I hope this thread clears things up.

Callouts: @dark-sith123: @richard96: @in-sidiousvader: @keencraft: @redheathen: @erkan12: @greysentinel365: @i_like_swords: @darthant66:

Three parts to this bullshit?

@dark-sith123:

I'm still waiting from you to see how my arguments "while not necessarily bad, canon begs to differ."

Okay, this is beginning to legitimately annoy me.

@azronger:

Honest question. In what compacity do you represent Sheev? Are you like Jesus and Sheev's physical embodiment? Or are you some lackey of his like Sate Pestage?

@kilius: My former master, Gideon, labelled me Sheev's chosen vessel. Make of that what you will.

BTW, Kilius. SERIOUSLY! HOW COULD YOU? How could you ever mix up Kenobi and the Sheev when it comes to Jesus?

that dark milkshake

IJS

OK so to the seriousness of the OP...

I don't really know if Yoda was defeated by Sidious. It's that whole business about Yoda realizing that he had lost before he was even born. It wasn't about winning or losing a duel. The Jedi had been outmaneuvered in a way that no physical contest could resolve their demise:

Finally, he saw the truth.

This truth: that he, the avatar of light, Supreme Master of the Jedi Order, the fiercest, most implacable, most devastatingly powerful foe the darkness had ever known... just-didn't-have it.

He'd never had it. He had lost before he started.

He had lost before he was born.

The Sith had changed. The Sith had grown, had adapted, had invested a thousand years' intensive study into every aspect of not only the Force but Jedi lore itself, in preparation for exactly this day. The Sith had remade themselves.

They had become new.

While the Jedi-The Jedi had spent that same millennium training to refight the last war.

The new Sith could not be destroyed with a lightsaber; they could not be burned away by any torch of the Force. The brighter his light, the darker their shadow. How could one win a war against the dark, when war itself had become the dark's own weapon?

He knew, at that instant, that this insight held the hope of the galaxy. But if he fell here, that hope would die with him. Hmmm, Yoda thought. A problem this is . . .

That's pretty much what I argued in part 2.

This passage is consistent with the first portion of the lightning battle where Yoda is clearly struggling and on the verge of being overwhelmed:

Thematically we're not supposed to take the entirety of the passage literally - it's a metaphor after all. Sidious can obviously be killed with a lightsaber. Also, make note of the passage "his vision finally pierced the darkness that had clouded the Force. Finally, he saw the truth."

Yoda is basically realizing that it is not his destiny to destroy the Emporer. Doesn't mean he physically isn't capable of it, it's just that the Force has other plans.

In any case, once we return to Film canon Yoda does indeed gain a second wind and starts pushing back Palpatine.

So in the end regardless of who would have won had the duel continued. Sidious did NOT overpower Yoda in the final exchange. Frankly, there is more evidence Yoda did.

@kilius I need to read part 2 again, if I read a first time. Having these separated has made my head hurt. LOL jk, but I have such a bad memory. Sorry I posted my reply inappropriately.

@kilius: Just wanted to say that even though I don't like Legends, I find your blogs most interesting and I think your analysis of visual canon is spot on. Very nice job.

@redheathen:

That's fine. I'm just sharing my thoughts. It doesn't matter where you post it.

@rgr:

Thanks appreciate the compliment.

Wow this is an excellent job. Three posts giving enlightening information to the populace here

@kilius: I've just read your three parts and I think this is an awesome job. I've mainly thought this fight was a stalemate but you just have proove it. Great job guy.

@xolthol:

Thanks.

Yeah, I feel like this should be obvious tbh, but I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so. Yoda deserves his due. He didn't just fight evenly with Sidious in a duel - he outright beat him in lightsaber combat; his respect thread doesn't even list that! And I wanted to show once and for all that Sidious didn't overpower Yoda's Force barrier - he came close to, but Yoda persevered in the end.