Dark Side of the Force

In Star Wars, the dark side is one of the two aspects of the Force, the metaphysical energy that connects all things in the franchise's galaxy. Villains such as the Sith draw on it to act aggressively and toward selfish, destructive ends, while the Jedi use the light side for defence and peace. According to Dave Filoni, George Lucas held that a character's intention, a will to be selfless or selfish, is what separates the light side from the dark. Lucas's early drafts of the first film called the dark side the Bogan; his near-final 1976 draft kept a single reference to the Force's seductive dark side, and the dark side was treated as the main villain of The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Commentators have compared the split between light and dark to Zoroastrianism and to yin and yang in Taoism.