The Jedi Purge | The Empire hunting down the Jedi Knights | a general discussion

“. . . .Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights.”

A thread for discussing anything and everything about The Jedi Purge.

What did you think the Jedi Purge would be like before the Prequels were released?

Did you think the Purge would be set 17 years after the end of the Clone Wars, like it was originally stated and planned?

^ abridged screenshot image from ‘A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded’ 1994 book, by Bill Slavicsek. More sources for the original timeline above: Pre-PT era lore | an OT & EU scrapbook resource OT•com thread.

Did the Jedi Purge scenes in ROTS resonate with you, or were you expecting more, and anticipating something different?

Were you expecting to the see The Jedi Purge over a longer period of time in the Prequel films, or maybe spanning across a couple of the PT movies (instead of mainly just seeing Order 66 less than an hour before the end of Revenge Of The Sith)?

Did you think fallen or captured Jedi would turn on their former brothers & sisters, working for the Empire and hunting down and killing other Jedi (as happened with the Inquisitors)? Or that it would be just Vader plus an elite squad of stormtroopers?

Have there been too many Jedi shown to have survived past Order 66, and the following Jedi Purge (in either canon or legends)?

Just how did everyone in the galaxy seemingly forget or be unaware of the Jedi (and the Force), the very people who ended up leading the Republic military forces in the devastating Clone Wars, just circa 20 years before events in the Original Trilogy?

For example, Han Solo, well travelled smuggler from Corellia, a place where Jedi had their own temple, with a large group of Jedi living there, has seemingly never heard of them, or the Force:

^ ignoring the retconned issue of Han’s best friend Chewbacca having met and fought alongside Yoda during the Clone Wars, in ROTS. Or that the Inquisitors and other Imperial forces were openly and publicly on the lookout and hunting the Jedi (even issuing “wanted” posters, threatening the public for information on the Jedi, and even overtly maiming and killing civilians in public places for it?).

Or that there appears to be many Jedi surviving Order 66 & The Jedi Purge, despite what Yoda explicitly stated to Luke in ROTJ:

Or what Tarkin stated in exposition to us the viewer (and also to Darth Vader), in 1977’s Star Wars:

Would you have preferred the Jedi Purge to have been done differently to what we got onscreen in the Prequels?
If so, how would you improve it, or rewrite it? Or just talk about what you want to on the topic of The Jedi Purge. . . .

Some background articles and information on the topic of the Jedi Purge and questions how everyone forgot about the Jedi so quickly:
 

The Great Jedi Purge : wookieepedia page

Jedi Purge survivors (a list of) : wookieepedia page

Jedi Purge victims (a list of) : wookieepedia page

20 Years to Forget : article at Star Wars Canon

How Will the Star Wars Galaxy Forget the Jedi Again? : article at CBR

Star Wars: Why Does No One Remember the Jedi in The Mandalorian? : article at IGN

The Mandalorian: Why don’t our characters know about the Force? : article at Dork Side Of The Force

How Did The Jedi Become Just A Myth In ‘The Force Awakens’ : article at SlashFilm

Ignorance in the Star Wars Galaxy : 2014 OT•com thread

Do you think the average citizen of the Star Wars galaxy would even be aware of the Force? : 2012 OT•com thread

Vader being seduced by the power of the Dark Side has its own category: ‘The Fall of Anakin Skywalker to the Dark Side’, in the ‘Prequel Trilogy’ section of An Index Thread for Beyond the Original Trilogy (click on the ‘Expand’ button below to view):
 

An Index Thread for Beyond the Original Trilogy…

 

The Fall of Anakin Skywalker to the Dark Side / Vader being seduced by the power of the Dark Side…

 
• “You don’t know the power of the dark side! I must obey my master” (2005 thread)

• Anakin’s fall - did it really need three films or could it have been done in one? (2005 thread; pre-ROTS)

• For those who are familiar with it, what do you think of the fan script of “Fall of the Republic”? (2023 thread)

• Interesting Hypothesis of the Prequels Story from the Mid 90’s (2005 thread; John L Flynn’s ‘Fall Of The Republic’ fan-script)

^ John L Flynn’s ‘fan-lore’ script: 1983’s Fall of the Republic & 1994’s Looking Back to the Future of Star Wars & his other works

• How did you imagine The Star Wars Prequels before they came out? (2011 thread)

• Fall to the Dark Side? (2007 thread)

• One of the flaws with Anakin turning to the darkside… (2009 thread)

• Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side (2011 thread)

• Anakin’s official history (2015 thread)

• Help: looking for… ideas on fixing Anakin’s fall to the darkside (2019 thread)

• Anakin Skywalker’s turn to the dark side; your alternatives? (2021 thread)

• How would you restructure Anakin’s turn to the dark side in the Prequels? (2022 thread)

The Turn: A History of the Evolution of Anakin’s Downfall - from ‘The Secret History Of Star Wars’, by Michael Kaminski (zombie84)

^ Pages 202-207 of the “Making of Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith” book, by JW Rinzler, also chronicles the late re-writing & re-editing.

Some background videos on the topic of Jedi who lived past the Prequel Trilogy’s Order 66 and subsequent Jedi Purge:

‘EVERY Single Jedi That Survived Order 66 (All 114 Survivors) [2023 CANON & LEGENDS]’

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmSQg9GVLOI - a 62 minute video from The Stupendous Wave

‘EVERY SINGLE Jedi That Survived Order 66! (2024 Updated)’

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQaG190wtmI - a 16 minute video from Red Five

‘EVERY SINGLE Imperial Inquisitor Explained!’

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWGOIRNclpE - a 15 minute video from Red Five

‘Why The Jedi Were Hated After Order 66 [Legends]’

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrfrdzRvIvQ - an 11 minute video from The Lore Master

‘Did too many Jedi survive Order 66?’

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBEFRA0a5fc - an 8 minute video from EckhartsLadder

‘Are There too many Order 66 Survivors?’

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmcWLbbxEUE - an 8 minute video from The Stupendous Wave

(with George Lucas shooting down Dave Filoni wanting to have Plo Koon to have somehow survived Order 66)

I found it underwhelming. I remember before watching Revenge Of The Sith I reminded myself to go in with an open mind, not to anticipate anything, or have high expectations based on my disappointment with the previous two Prequel Trilogy films.

It still underwhelmed. Order 66 seemed an easy option to take to show the majority of Jedi falling, but the way it was done just left me cold. Seeing a number of Jedi I hadn’t seen much of before or really cared about, be cut down, didn’t click with me. The Jedi Temple scenes made little impact too (poor younglings! like the poor Tusken women and children in AOTC). It also seemed rushed and impactless, like ticking off boxes on a list to get through to the end the movie where they thought they needed to be, to somehow line things up with the Original Trilogy.

When I see clips of the Jedi Purge I just shrug. It doesn’t mean much. A bit like how I feel in much of modern Star Wars when I see many dead characters return to the screen, or people surviving lightsaber impalements, or the poor writing in making vague references but with no build up or pay off, or use of memberberries in place of a good story or plot arc.

The Purge should have been memorable. It should have had a deep emotional connection or feeling. But it felt as disappointing as many of the other aspects on the prequels. In my head canon, ROTS never happened. I fill in the blanks with my own beat on the the original ‘Vader has been luring and tricked the Jedi to their deaths while he pretended to still be one of them over a long time’ story, to the point where he and Kenobi fight at the volcano pit:
 

This feels kind of right:

I figured the Jedi Council would get eliminated and the Jedi Temple razed in Episode III, but that the Purge would otherwise occur offscreen between the trilogies with the details to be filled in by EU writers. I was immensely dissatisfied with how it actually went down.

Gandalf the Cyan said:

Keyan Farlander said:

This feels kind of right:

Exactly this. So many Jedi survived that, if you look at ROTS, Order 66 feels meaningless. It removes any/all of the emotional impact it had in that movie.

Plus, the idea of a Jedi surviving Order 66 has become incredibly cliché to the point that it comes across as lazy writing. It seems as though every Star Wars TV/EU writer thought “a Jedi survives Order 66 story would be cool” without realizing that dozens of other writers had the exact same idea. It’s cheapening too, as it makes the idea of Obi-Wan and Yoda being the last remnants of the Jedi seem dubious. The Obi-Wan show was especially terrible about this, with the existence of an Underground Railroad for Jedi, and there are apparently so many survivors that there just happen to be two survivors on the same remote backwater planet (the other Jedi on Tatooine in Ep1.) It makes you wonder why the survivors didn’t team up to stage a coup to overthrow the Empire or something, since there evidently were enough of them to do so.

Absolutely. Instead we get:

Although I was surprised we never got to see something like Conclave On Kessel set not long after Order 66, in the animated series like The Clone Wars, Rebels, Visions or even Tales Of The Jedi. A group of Jedi come together to make a stand or try to take down Vader, or other upper Imperial hierarchy, or even to inform the general public of what has really occurred.

To make a “last stand” or even continue resisting the Emperor and his new Empire. Or simply as a “warning” story for why no other Jedi tried to band together afterwards.

Conclave on Kessel - https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Conclave_on_Kessel

^ from the 2005 comic “Star Wars: Purge” - https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_Purge
 

It would be at least something similar to what was described here, which we unfortunately never got to see:

from JW Rinzler’s Making Of Star Wars book, posted in the Pre-PT era lore | an OT & EU scrapbook resource thread

Gandalf the Cyan said:

Keyan Farlander said:

This feels kind of right:

Exactly this. So many Jedi survived that, if you look at ROTS, Order 66 feels meaningless. It removes any/all of the emotional impact it had in that movie.

Plus, the idea of a Jedi surviving Order 66 has become incredibly cliché to the point that it comes across as lazy writing. It seems as though every Star Wars TV/EU writer thought “a Jedi survives Order 66 story would be cool” without realizing that dozens of other writers had the exact same idea. It’s cheapening too, as it makes the idea of Obi-Wan and Yoda being the last remnants of the Jedi seem dubious. The Obi-Wan show was especially terrible about this, with the existence of an Underground Railroad for Jedi, and there are apparently so many survivors that there just happen to be two survivors on the same remote backwater planet (the other Jedi on Tatooine in Ep1.) It makes you wonder why the survivors didn’t team up to stage a coup to overthrow the Empire or something, since there evidently were enough of them to do so.

It is like you took the words right out of my mouth!

This, along with the bringing back of dead characters, and a growing number of characters surviving lightsaber impalements, are choices I really wish Star Wars writers would stop using.

If they can’t write an original story idea, new compelling characters (learn to “let go” of the dead ones), or rely on lowering the stakes of the action by having characters walk off quickly and easily being impaled by a lightsaber, perhaps they shouldn’t be writing for Star Wars.
 

Keyan Farlander said:

The “They tried to regroup, but they were eventually massacred by one of the elite special forces led by Darth Vader” would have indeed been much more preferable to what we actually got in Revenge of the Sith.

Personally I’d have preferred to have seen an Order 66 type event in the 2nd PT film, leaving the third film to deal with the fallout of that, and really hammer home the defeat of the Jedi and the Republic, instead of a few montage shots, Anakin killing helpless kids again, and some way overlong fight with Obi-Wan which was monotonous and became boring after just a few minutes.

The 501st Journal

Inhibitor chips? We didn’t need no stinkin’ inhibitor chips!

 
From a time when the Clones were growing increasingly disenchanted with the Jedi for some time before Order 66, had already started working in secret behind the Jedis’ backs; even undergoing secret side missions on behalf of Chancellor Palpatine.

This was obviously before the clones’ story was later retconned in 2008’s The Clone Wars film and TV series to include the inhibitor chips. A decision to retcon the clones and perhaps portray them as unwitting victims, to humanize and personalize them for the 2008 film and series, as opposed to the above original storyline and lore, maybe?
 

The 501st Journals highlighted some of these clone actions against the Jedi, in the then canon 2005 Battlefront II video game:

'The 501st Journal was a compiled record of journal entries written by one or more retired members of the 501st Legion.

The entries summarized their most famous battles, captured the feelings of individual troopers, and traced the 501st from its origins in the Clone Wars to its development as “Vader’s Fist” during the Galactic Civil War.

The journal was kept as secret as the missions undertaken by the 501st; only after the fall of the Galactic Empire were the journals recovered.’

and

‘Temuera Morrison provides the voice for the narrator of every journal entry. In the game’s credits, the character is identified simply as “Retired clone trooper,” implying that he survived all of the battles above mentioned.’

^ from https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/501st_Journal & https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_Battlefront_II

The 501st Journal:
 

Star Wars Battlefront II (Classic) - 501st Journal (Full) HD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWOq1Tg-Jdw - 18 minute video at the StereoLyrics Tracks YouTube channel.

This is the journal compiled together by a clone trooper from the 501st Legion in the game Star Wars Battlefront II.

The 501st Journals Told A Very Different Story About Order 66

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZOH-Bw7nAg - 17 minute video at the Generation Tech YouTube channel.

Am I the only one that has a fundamental issue with Clones’ Inhibitor Chips? - 2023 thread by Kyp_Astaar talks more about this.

Republic Commando | Lucasfilm’s 2004-2009 EU multimedia project | lore retcon #2,378 - 2024 thread by me.
 

NOTE: Everything I’m about to say doesn’t mean I think the prequels are good

I don’t actually mind a lot of the PT’s lore on stuff like this; I find it infinitely more interesting that the story we knew secondhand via Old Ben wasn’t just exactly what those movies are, particularly within a narrative primed to disentangle and even criticize “from a certain point of view”. Even if most official material hasn’t taken full advantage of it (until Andor), I’ve always had a fondness for at least this era’s state of play.

Anakin / Darth Vader is purposefully re-contextualized as a kid, and I think there is some value in foregoing the fabled ‘Jedi Hunts’ (that were sure to have happened between canonical III and IV anyway) to examine what made the monster at earlier psychological and political points. He’s a failure of institution, radicalized by war, exploited by an abuser, abandoned by pedagogy. It’s a different flavor of tragedy than personal failure.

On some level, Vader’s evil is romanticized when depicted in a badass light; which would be far beyond a meaningful reason to do prequel films in the first place. I still enjoy stuff like Vader in Rebels, Rogue One, or the Respawn Jedi games, but I can respect that those weren’t new ground to break into the saga. They’re literally just depictions of what we know from the OT. The wholly imperfect execution didn’t make the prequel direction not worth doing IMO, and I can appreciate that it now lives in the objective text.

With regard to the surviving Jedi and Yoda calling Luke the last, an interesting question emerges in this context - What is a Jedi?

If our understanding of the Jedi has shifted from ANH’s idealized Knights Errant fable, to something closer to a monastic FBI and military branch - is ‘Jedi’ perhaps a political label, and not just a description of one’s relationship to the Force? After all, there are other Force users in-universe that are not Jedi. Whose to say that characters like Kanan, Cal, or Ahsoka are even Jedi [to Yoda] at all? Ahsoka was expelled before she could finish her training, Kanan and Cal gave up many aspects of the path to survive and fight back; none of them were in contact with or under the direction of the Rump Jedi Council of Kenobi and Yoda. Meanwhile Luke is trained by that council, the only project undertaken by them during the Galactic Civil War, and specifically has an uncomplicated view of who they were. It’s ultimately pedantic and matters mostly to justify Yoda’s line, but participation in The Order as institution is an important theme for Anakin’s downfall. It may very well be an important part of what makes “a Jedi” in the non-colloquial sense, to an official of its ranks such as Yoda.

Somewhere along the way this became an unpopular idea, but to me Luke not killing his father as counter to Obi-Wan and Yoda’s direction was always an early suggestion of what the PT would eventually, if dispassionately, present about the Jedi Order. So “The Jedi” may have been purged, but the light wasn’t and couldn’t be. I can square the survivor count with Yoda’s line when I think about how Yoda kind of sucked

Channel72 said:
Anakin’s downfall should probably contain elements of both systemic failure and personal failure. But I think it should be more heavily weighted towards personal failure. Perhaps something like 40% systemic failure (failures of the Jedi as an institution, experiencing the horrors and injustices of war, etc.), and 60% personal failure (Anakin just being turned on by the allure of power, and his need for control in a chaotic Universe). The greater emphasis on personal failure is really required for Vader’s redemption in ROTJ to have real dramatic weight. It really needs to be Vader’s choice to embrace the Dark Side, and also his choice to save his son in ROTJ.

I agree with this! In my heart of hearts, this is how I see Vader, and I wish the prequels were much better films that communicated that.

Vladius said:

NFBisms said:

NOTE: Everything I’m about to say doesn’t mean I think the prequels are good

I don’t actually mind a lot of the PT’s lore on stuff like this; I find it infinitely more interesting that the story we knew secondhand via Old Ben wasn’t just exactly what those movies are, particularly within a narrative primed to disentangle and even criticize “from a certain point of view”. Even if most official material hasn’t taken full advantage of it (until Andor), I’ve always had a fondness for at least this era’s state of play.

Anakin / Darth Vader is purposefully re-contextualized as a kid, and I think there is some value in foregoing the fabled ‘Jedi Hunts’ (that were sure to have happened between canonical III and IV anyway) to examine what made the monster at earlier psychological and political points. He’s a failure of institution, radicalized by war, exploited by an abuser, abandoned by pedagogy. It’s a different flavor of tragedy than personal failure.

On some level, Vader’s evil is romanticized when depicted in a badass light; which would be far beyond a meaningful reason to do prequel films in the first place. I still enjoy stuff like Vader in Rebels, Rogue One, or the Respawn Jedi games, but I can respect that those weren’t new ground to break into the saga. They’re literally just depictions of what we know from the OT. The wholly imperfect execution didn’t make the prequel direction not worth doing IMO, and I can appreciate that it now lives in the objective text.

With regard to the surviving Jedi and Yoda calling Luke the last, an interesting question emerges in this context - What is a Jedi?

If our understanding of the Jedi has shifted from ANH’s idealized Knights Errant fable, to something closer to a monastic FBI and military branch - is ‘Jedi’ perhaps a political label, and not just a description of one’s relationship to the Force? After all, there are other Force users in-universe that are not Jedi. Whose to say that characters like Kanan, Cal, or Ahsoka are even Jedi [to Yoda] at all? Ahsoka was expelled before she could finish her training, Kanan and Cal gave up many aspects of the path to survive and fight back; none of them were in contact with or under the direction of the Rump Jedi Council of Kenobi and Yoda. Meanwhile Luke is trained by that council, the only project undertaken by them during the Galactic Civil War, and specifically has an uncomplicated view of who they were. It’s ultimately pedantic and matters mostly to justify Yoda’s line, but participation in The Order as institution is an important theme for Anakin’s downfall. It may very well be an important part of what makes “a Jedi” in the non-colloquial sense, to an official of its ranks such as Yoda.

Somewhere along the way this became an unpopular idea, but to me Luke not killing his father as counter to Obi-Wan and Yoda’s direction was always an early suggestion of what the PT would eventually, if dispassionately, present about the Jedi Order. So “The Jedi” may have been purged, but the light wasn’t and couldn’t be. I can square the survivor count with Yoda’s line when I think about how Yoda kind of sucked

Counterpoint - you’re wrong and all of this is worse, even if it was intentional on Lucas’s part, which it wasn’t.

Oh, I absolutely don’t think his intentions are all of this lol

I don’t really know what there even is to be wrong about though, I’m not asserting any real argument - honestly proposing a question more than anything. It doesn’t really matter to me what was intended or how it would/should fit into the OT. The setting just has so many implications and contexts that are interesting to think about as presented. Symptomatic of unclear / muddled writing, perhaps, but at a certain point embracing the emergent themes is way more fun than lamenting what could have been. The Jedi Order isn’t real, but the mechanics through which they interacted with hypothetical people and systems are. What we can extrapolate is much broader than the constraints of narrative tidiness.

Not that any of us are writing Star Wars, but burrowing into that philosophy is the kind of thing the franchise could use more of, as opposed to towing an imaginary line and chasing what George Lucas would do.