We Now Know How So Many Jedi Survived Order 66
After Jedi Order 66 was unleashed on the Star Wars galaxy, the amount of living Jedis went from 10,000 to around 100, leaving only one percent of their population alive. Some fans are surprised and upset that any Jedi are still alive, but there is a good and logical reason for this, according to Screen Rant. Some Jedi were able to survive the mass extinction thanks to an emergency warning message from the Jedi Temple.
100 Jedi survived Order 66 thanks to Obi-Wan Kenobi sending a warning message.
In Star Wars, Order 66 refers to a top-secret order that was designed by the Sith to take out all living Jedi in the galaxy. The Jedi were attacked by Grand Army clone troopers who were programmed to turn against their Jedi Generals. The program was initially placed in their brains by their creators as a contingency protocol against renegade Jedi, but the Sith used it to try and wipe out the Jedi Order.
During Anakin Skywalker’s attack on the Jedi Temple in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, an emergency message was sent out across the galaxy. The message ordered all Jedi to return to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, the capital of the galaxy. However, some Jedi heard the message before the clone troopers received Order 66, so they knew something was wrong.
Rather than head to Coruscant where they knew the evil Palpatine and his army would attack them, some Jedi escaped and survived the genocide. That is if they could make it out before their clone troopers turned on them.
One percent of the Jedi population survived Order 66, and some of the survivers were swayed to join the Dark Side.
This was all explained in Delilah S. Dawson’s novel Rise of the Red Blade, which follows Iskat Akaris, a Jedi who falls to the dark side after Order 66 and becomes a Jedi hunter. After he finds a Jedi who survived the attack, Akaris learns the story about the emergency message that nearly ruined the Sith’s plan to kill all Jedi.
So, who sent the message that saved so many Jedi lives? During Order 66, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda learned of the attack and went to Coruscant to deactivate the clone trooper program. While there, Obi-Wan Kenobi sent out the warning message to the Jedi, urging them to run and hide from their clone troopers.
Fans argue that Yoda knew the Jedi’s fate but let Order 66 transpire anyways so as not to interfere with destiny.
However, some fans argue that Yoda knew about Order 66 well before it happened and that he could have saved many Jedi lives if he had warned them in advance. In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, it was revealed that Yoda saw visions of clone troopers killing their Jedi Masters during Order 66, and yet he did not warn them of their fate.
After seeing the vision, Qui-Gon Jinn essentially tells Yoda that evil is already happening and that the Clone War has already been put in motion. Rather than interfere with the Great Jedi Purge, Yoda lets it happen. This is most likely because he does not want to interfere with fate.
If you can’t get enough of the Star Wars franchise, then get ready for even more new content. Ahsoka is coming to Disney+ in August, while Andor and The Acolyte will come to the streaming platform next year.
