By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
If you hang around Star Wars fans long enough, you realize it’s not actually the Force that holds fans of this galaxy far, far away together. Instead, it’s endlessly complaining about plot holes in our favorite franchise that send us careening away from the TV to howl into the empty void of subreddits and comment sections about George Lucas ruining our childhoods. Today, though, I’m focusing on one fan complaint that needs to finally just die, and that’s griping about the number of Jedi who survived Order 66.
Order 66
Originally, Emperor Palpatine intended for no Jedi to have survived Order 66 because this was his big push to kill them all and cement his control of the galaxy. While we already knew that Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi would survive this purge, canonical Star Wars shows, books, and comics keep revealing additional survivors. Each new reveal brings a new wave of fan complaints that this many Jedi should never have avoided the Emperor’s wrath, but the truth is that it was always insane to assume that Order 66 could successfully kill all but two of our favorite space wizards.
Who are all the Jedi who survived Order 66, though? There are some obvious characters such as Ahsoka Tano and Kanan Jarrus, who debuted in The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, respectively. There are also fan-favorite characters like Quinlan Vos and Asajj Ventress, the Dark Jedi and Dooku disciple who ended up falling in love.
Speaking of Dark Side disciplines, the number of Force-sensitive bad guys who survived Order 66 is pretty crazy. This includes Darth Maul, the Grand Inquisitor, his Inquisitor flunkie Reva, and so many more. In fact, if you count the Jedi and Sith together, almost three dozen of these space mystics survived Order 66, and this continues to annoy fans who believe that Palpatine’s plan should have been more effective.
However, those complaints are deeply stupid for many reasons, including the fact that Order 66 was mostly carried out by Clone Troopers. Sure, Revenge of the Sith shows us how surprisingly easy it is to overwhelm Jedi with small-arms fire, but the film also shows us how easily seasoned troops like Commander Cody would just assume a Jedi was dead without confirming the kill. Obi-Wan Kenobi basically fell into some water and was presumed dead, so it’s reasonable to assume other Force users survived Order 66 due to incompetent Clone leaders.
Plus, it was inevitable that a decent number of Jedi would have survived Order 66 because they were scattered all over the galaxy during the fight with the Separatists. Some of them may have been on small infiltration teams or even operating on their own trying to foil the plans of leaders like General Grievous. In short, not every Jedi was surrounded by a small army of Clone Troopers, making it easier for them to survive attacks by smaller groups and then get Obi-Wan’s warning to stay away from Coruscant.
Speaking of which, it was always fair to assume that many Jedi could have survived Order 66 because of that warning.n There were 10,000 Jedi Knights in service at the time, and anyone who survived an initial Clone attack had a fair chance of discovering Palpatine’s betrayal and going to ground. Plus, the whole fact that Palpatine had Inquisitors to track down runaway Jedi implicitly reveals how many survivors he must have had to contend with. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and the existence of an Imperial anti-Jedi hit squad implies that plenty more Jedi survived the purge than Palpatine anticipated.
Who Should Have Survived?
Finally, almost all of the fanboy complaints about characters who survived Order 66 are built on the assumption that only Obi-Wan and Yoda should have made it. But it’s simply unrealistic to assume that Palpatine’s shoddy plan would have had a 99.9998 percent success rate given everything described above. Plus, Obi-Wan infamously survived by barely hiding on Darth Vader’s home planet in the shadow of a Force user growing in power…like, if it’s that easy for him to escape the Empire’s wrath, there is probably any number of former Jedi roaming this galaxy far, far away.
Obviously, there are plenty of things worth complaining about with the modern state of Star Wars, including shows that keep going through the motions and a Sequel Trilogy that never fully made it off the ground. But complaints about the number of Jedi who survived Order 66 are like the local cantina drunk at the end of Sabacc night: stupid and played out. Time to let all that whininess die…or at least, fall into a big body of water, upon which I will assume it is suddenly dead and gone.
