Star Wars’ future Sith sport tattoos similar to Darth Maul’s, but one even further dark future showed a horrific vision of Darth Vader’s descendant with his own Sith tattoos. These tattoos have a surprising origin, and their history reveals not only more about the nature of the Sith themselves, but serves as a perfect demonstration of how cultures and groups change over time, taking disparate parts of others into themselves as they do.
Star Wars: Legacy, set in the pre-Disney acquisition Legends canon, introduces the One Sith, the future version of the Sith who have abandoned the Rule of Two. The One Sith have instead adopted a Rule of One, in which thousands of Sith all serve a single dictator in Darth Krayt.
These Sith prominently use tattoos to denote their allegiance, inspired by both Krayt’s and potentially those of older Sith like Darth Maul. It’s this Sith-controlled galaxy that former Jedi Cade Skywalker finds himself in after the murder of the Jedi Order as he’s torn between the legacy of his famous family and the temptation offered by the Sith.
Cade Skywalker’s Dark Future Sees Him Become a Sith in Body and Soul
In Star Wars: Legacy #39 (written by John Ostrander and penciled by Jan Duursema with story by both) Cade Skywalker gets a vision of his potential future, in which he’s fallen to the Dark Side and adopted One Sith tattoos for himself. The implication of this vision is that the tattoos of the One Sith aren’t just their black markings, but a full body red dye, like most of the One Sith. While famous Sith like Naga Sadow and Darth Maul have had tattoos, with Naga’s denoting his leadership as Dark Lord, the One Sith’s tattoos are based off Dath Krayt’s facial markings.
One of the most interesting things about Sith tattoos is that they’re an expression of Sith culture. What both the pre- and post-Rule of Two Sith demonstrate is that the Sith are more than simply Dark Side adherents; they’re a people with shared traditions and customs, of which tattoos are only one facet. In fact, the Sith were originally a literal species originating from the planet of Korriban. Over time the Sith people became the Sith Order, which eventually became the One Sith, evolving like any other culture through the passage of time, the ideologies of its adherents, and its exposure to the outside galaxy.
The One Sith’s Tattoos have a Surprising Origin
It’s also worth asking where Darth Krayt’s tattoos originate. Krayt’s tattoos aren’t in fact Sith at all. Krayt, aka former Jedi A’Sharad Hett, is an ethnic Tusken Raider, and it’s this culture that his tattoos come from. Part of the One Sith’s cultural legacy then comes from the Tusken Raiders. Similarly, Darth Maul’s tattoos aren’t of specific Sith origin, but are part of his Nightbrother and Dathomirian heritage. It’s a demonstration that very few cultures exist in isolation, even in Star Wars, and that it’s cross-cultural pollination that’s built the culture of the Sith, from Darth Maul to Darth Vader and beyond, to the One Sith of Darth Krayt.
