SUMMARY

  •  Star WArs: Dark Droids has revealed the Sith had previously defeated the original Scourge virus, and saved the galaxy from its hunger.
  •  The Scourge wants to 'eat' the entire Star Wars galaxy, and absorb or wipe out all other forms of life.
  •  The Sith may need to save the galaxy again by defeating the new form of the Scourge, which poses an even larger threat.

While the Sith may be the ultimate villains of the Star Wars movies, it turns out that the galaxy owes its survival to the despicable Dark Side cult. An ancient religious order dedicated to unfettered emotion and the acquisition of power at all costs, the Sith's power has waxed and waned over the millennia, taking them from a major galactic force to a near-mythical relic of the past and back again.

In Charles Soule, Luke Ross, Alex Sinclair, and Travis Lanham's Star Wars: Dark Droids #2, the new villain Scourge shares some of its past. Scourge is a new composite being created by the merging of two ancient technologies. One is the Spark Eternal, an ancient artificial intelligence designed to replace the Force, while the other is an unnamed viral consciousness which is driven to constantly spread and 'consume' new droids, adding them to its hive mind as its primary imperative. The two recently combined due to Lady Qi'ra's attempt to overthrow the Sith, creating the newly born Scourge - a being with the same voracious hunger, but now extended to biological life. However, as the Scourge thinks back on its viral half's origins, it reveals that the last time it ran wild, the Sith were the ones to defeat it.

The Sith Stopped The Original Scourge from Spreading

star wars ancient sith

In order to trap and kill Palpatine, Qi'ra used a device known as the Fermata Cage. The Dark Side technology is essentially a time prison, trapping its victim in one suspended moment, stretched out to eternity. However, when the Fermata Cage opened, the only thing that fell out was a small, disc-shaped droid - a device fans now know to have contained the last of the viral intelligence defeated by the Sith. Scourge reveals that the Sith originally beat it using the Force, saving the entire galaxy from its hunger.

By connecting to more and more droids, Scourge is rapidly growing its intelligence, but it now has access to so much information, it fears its sentience will end us diffused among its many bodies and minds, leaving it open to attack. The Scourge cannot stop 'eating,' and so its only possible endgame is to absorb or wipe out all forms of life other than itself. Once that's accomplished, it can explore its own endless intellect without coming to any harm.

Scourge Wants to 'Eat' The Entire Star Wars Galaxy

star wars sith spark eternal

The other half of the Scourge - the Spark Eternal - was also defeated by the Sith. Designed by the Ascendant cult - a group of non-Force sensitives who wanted to replicate the Force through technology - the AI was incomplete when Sith Darkseekers wiped out its creators and locked it away, but was reawakened and gained a biological body when it encountered the thief Chelli Lona Aphra. While the Sith may be self-serving, their religious beliefs do venerate the Force, and at the height of their power they sent out cadres of Darkseekers to wipe out any threat to their beliefs and steal any beneficial discoveries. In the case of the Scourge, however, they seem to have judged both the original virus and the Spark Eternal too dangerous, sealing them away rather than trying to use them.

It's Time for the Sith to Save the Galaxy... Again

darth vader scourge

The number of Sith shown stopping the Spark Eternal and the original Scourge virus suggests these events happened before Darth Bane introduced the Rule of Two around 1000 BBY - a millennium before the prequel trilogy. While the Sith have done terrible things, the Scourge makes it clear that its hunger will drive it to conquer all other forms of life, suggesting they truly saved the galaxy by defeating it the first time. Now, the Scourge is hoping to use the cyborg Darth Vader to spread to organic life and control the Force.

If Vader is the one to defeat the Scourge's new form, that will mean the Sith once again saved the galaxy from an even larger threat - one which, unlike their own cult, can't be overthrown at a later date. It's even possible this is why the Force allows the Sith to exist, providing it with aggressive protection against existential threats. Whatever the truth, Star Wars has confirmed that it was the ancient Sith who saved the galaxy from the Scourge virus before, and that fighting off this immense threat a second time is likely to fall on them once again.