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Every time we’ve seen Order 66 in Star Wars movies, video games, and TV shows

Twenty years ago, if you asked a Star Wars fan to name the most pivotal moment in the franchise’s fictional history, you could be confident that they’d answer with the Battle of Yavin, the climax of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. After all, this event serves as the starting point of the official Star Wars calendar; fans and producers alike measure time in Star Wars in terms of years BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin) or years ABY (After the Battle of Yavin), endowing the destruction of the Death Star with a historical importance within the fictional galaxy that’s equivalent to the birth of Christ. Though the BBY/ABY calendar is still in service today, the ever-expanding Star Wars continuity now revolves around a different moment of historical import: Order 66, the flashpoint of the Jedi Purge and the rebranding of the Galactic Republic into the Galactic Empire.

First depicted in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith in 2005, Order 66 has become the most revisited moment in the current Star Wars canon, and explored from a multitude of perspectives. Then-Supreme Chancellor Palpatine’s directive to execute the entire Jedi Order, from the ruling council to the youngest student, is now the inciting incident for Star Wars as we know it. Every character active in galactic affairs in the year 19 BBY has their own Order 66 story, and several of them have been depicted in film, television, and video games. Let’s takea look back at each substantive on-screen portrayal of the Jedi Purge to determine what (if anything) each of them adds to our understanding of the tragedy and its repercussions on the Star Wars galaxy.

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Revenge of the Sith shows the broad strokes of the Jedi Purge

A child looks at a lightsaber in Revenge of the Sith.
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The execution of the Jedi has been an important piece of backstory since the original Star Wars in 1977. Obi-Wan Kenobi regales Luke Skywalker with a heavily editorialized version of the fall of the Jedi, explaining that his pupil Darth Vader betrayed his comrades, including Luke’s father, Anakin (Vader and Anakin were not yet the same character when A New Hope was written, and storytellers would spend the next 40 years unpacking Kenobi’s choice to withhold the truth from Anakin’s son). It wouldn’t be until 2005’s Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith that audiences learned exactly how the extermination of the Jedi took place. After convincing Anakin Skywalker to side with him against the Jedi, Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine issues the famous Order 66 to his Clone Troopers across the galaxy, summarily convicting all Jedi of treason. Programmed to obey his commands without question, the Clones turn their blasters against their Jedi comrades, depicted via a montage that draws comparisons to Michael Corleone “settling all family business” in The Godfather.

In addition to the battlefield executions of Jedi Generals like Ki-Adi Mundi and Aayla Secura, Revenge of the Sith also shows Anakin Skywalker, now rechristened as Darth Vader, leading a legion of Clone Troopers into the Jedi Temple to slaughter everyone inside. Not even the children are spared, with Vader himself cutting down a roomful of preadolescent Younglings. This highlights the brutality and totality of the Purge. It’s not just an act of betrayal, but an act of genocide.

An alien woman is surrounded in Revenge of the Sith.
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The viewing audience is not the only witness to this atrocity — Alderaanian Senator Bail Organa visits the burning Jedi Temple during the purge and watches helplessly as a group of Clones shoots down a teenage Jedi Apprentice. This no doubt contributes to his radicalization against the new Empire. While Palpatine and his propaganda machine are able to convince most of the galaxy that the Jedi were traitors to the Republic, Organa knows what he saw, and will spend the rest of his life building the Rebel Alliance.

Finally, Revenge of the Sith shows us how two key Star Wars characters managed to escape execution — one by Jedi intuition, one by blind luck. When the order is issued, General Obi-Wan Kenobi is fighting the Battle of Utapau alongside Clone Commander Cody and the 212th Attack Battalion. As fate would have it, Kenobi is separated from the rest of his squad when they receive Palpatine’s orders, and they open fire at him from a great distance, knocking him off of a cliffside and into a pool of water below. Assuming (incorrectly) that no one could survive such a fall, they make no effort to find the body, leaving Kenobi alive to fulfill his destiny established in the original Star Wars trilogy.

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith - Execute Order 66 Scene 4k

He goes into hiding on Tatooine to watch over the infant Luke Skywalker, staying off the Empire’s radar for the next decade. Master Yoda, on the other hand, is strong enough with the Force to sense his Clones’ betrayal, and beheads his would-be assassins before they can open fire. After failing to defeat the newly crowned Emperor Palpatine in battle, Yoda retreats to the lonely planet Dagobah, where Luke finds him in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back. Kenobi sends a warning to any remaining Jedi, implying that there may yet be more survivors, but so far as we know from Revenge of the Sith, only he and Yoda are spared.

Jedi: Fallen Order puts the player through the trauma of Order 66

Cal is attacked by drones in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
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In the 2019 video game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, players take on the role of Cal Kestis, a young survivor of the Jedi Purge. Though most of the game is set five years later, it includes a heartbreaking playable flashback sequence that provides the player with the firsthand experience of the terror and heartbreak of Order 66. Still only a Padawan in the final days of the Clone Wars, Kestis is stationed on a Republic battlecruiser alongside his master, Jaro Tapal. Kestis is something of a little brother figure to the Clone officers with whom he serves, which makes their sudden betrayal all the more shocking. One moment, these men are firing nonlethal practice shots at him as part of his training; the next, they’re shooting live rounds.

While Tapal fights off the Clones, the player must sneak through the bowels of the ship to the escape pod, separated from their master and unable to put up a defense. They are eventually reunited, but Tapal is shot as he boards their escape pod and dies shortly thereafter. Kestis escapes alone in the escape pod and crash-lands on the junkyard planet of Bracca, where he remains in hiding for the next five years.

Kestis’ emotional scars from this event are actually represented through gameplay, as his Jedi skills are repressed behind a mental block. Kestis gradually reacquires his abilities over the course of the game as he finds the strength and confidence to revisit the memories of his training. In addition to being a clever way to incorporate a traditional skill tree into the adventure game, it also makes Jedi: Fallen Order the most complete way to experience the horror and aftermath of Order 66.

The Clone Wars finale depicts a desperate escape for Jedi and Clone alike

The animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars is set between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, but was made after the Prequel Trilogy was released, allowing its producers to employ dramatic irony to underline the tragic inevitability of Palpatine’s revolution. Told from a multitude of perspectives on both sides of the war, The Clone Wars features several story arcs that foreshadow Order 66 and its impact not only on the Jedi, but on the Clones themselves.

During Season 6, trooper CT-5555 (aka “Fives”) even discovers the existence of an organic control chip implanted in each of his brothers to overwrite their thoughts, forcing them to obey a particular command without question. When his attempts to expose this conspiracy are foiled by Palpatine, Fives goes mad and is eventually killed. The story of Fives helps to reframe the Clone Troopers as victims of Order 66 rather than perpetrators, since they were robbed of their personhood and brainwashed to murder their friends.

The Death of Fives [4K HDR] - Star Wars: The Clone Wars

In the epic four-part finale of The Clone Wars, which was released in 2020, we finally see the events of Revenge of the Sith from the perspective of The Clone Wars’ most important original characters, Clone Commander Rex and Jedi-in-exile Ahsoka Tano. Ahsoka and the clones of the 501st Legion essentially grow up together, with Rex and Ahsoka developing a strong family bond and the entire 501st eventually painting their helmets in Ahsoka’s image.

When Rex receives the order from Palpatine, he is unable to resist his programming and tries to kill Ahsoka. But, unlike the other Jedi we see defending themselves against turncoat Clones, Ahsoka is unwilling to give up on Rex. Risking her own life, she successfully excises Rex’s inhibitor chip and the pair fight their way to safety, refusing to use lethal force against their brainwashed foes. Despite their efforts, the 501st is killed anyway, and Ahsoka and Rex give their former comrades a proper burial before retreating into hiding.

Ahsoka stands in a graveyard of Jedis in The Clone Wars.
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A few other animated Star Wars stories expand on the anguish of the Clones’ betrayal. In the Tales of the Jedi short Practice Makes Perfect, Ahsoka flashes back through her years of training alongside the 501st as she prepares to meet them all in battle after Order 66. In the follow-up series Star Wars Rebels (which was produced during The Clone Wars’ long hiatus), we catch up with Rex and a few other clones who remain scarred by their role in the Jedi Purge 15 years later.

The Bad Batch retreads familiar territory

Soldiers stand in The Bad Batch.
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Aftermath, the 2021 series premiere of Star Wars: The Bad Batch, shows the end of the Clone Wars from the perspective of Clone Force 99, a band of five Clone Troopers with unusual mutations that make them distinct from their army of otherwise identical brothers. Like many Clone units, 99 attached to a Clone battalion and a pair of Jedi on the day that Order 66 is issued, in their case Master Depa Billaba and her apprentice, Caleb Dume. When the rest of the assembled Clones turn against Master Billaba, she is able to hold them off for long enough for Dume to flee the scene.

However, when Clone Force 99 receives the order, only their sniper, Crosshair, immediately obeys and attempts to kill Dume. The four remaining mutants refuse to fall in line with the new Empire and go on the run, while Dume grows up to be the guerrilla fighter and informal Jedi master Kanan Jarrus in Star Wars Rebels. This revisiting of Order 66 is important as a turning point for the main characters of the two Clone Wars spinoffs, but in terms of depicting the event itself, there’s not much new here.

Obi-Wan Kenobi shows the temple massacre from a Younglings’ perspective

A woman and some kids run from Stormtroopers in Obi-Wan Kenobi.
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The 2022 live-action miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi reveals that not all of the Younglings in the Jedi Temple are slain during Order 66. At least a handful escape, including Reva Sevander, but only after watching Anakin Skywalker kill their teachers and classmates. Some time later, Reva is captured by the Empire and conscripted into the Inquisitorius. Introduced in Star Wars Rebels and explored further in Jedi: Fallen Order, the Inquisitors are a small group of Force-sensitive warriors trained to hunt down and kill surviving Jedi, and include multiple Jedi Younglings and Padawans who Palpatine and Vader deem young enough to be reeducated. In Reva’s case, her cooperation with the Inquisitors is only a means to an end, part of a long game to exact revenge against Vader for destroying her life.

The experience of surviving Order 66 had been thoroughly documented by the time Obi-Wan Kenobi was released in 2022, but Reva’s flashbacks still offer a new perspective, as we see her run through the besieged temple alongside the Younglings in real time, via a handheld camera, and with only a single cut. Still, it’s difficult to compete with the feeling of panic and immersion found in the Jedi: Fallen Order flashbacks from three years prior.

Grogu’s escape from Order 66 is split across two different series

Jedi prepare to fight in The Mandalorian season 3.
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Grogu, aka Baby Yoda, is the breakout star of the live-action series The Mandalorian, but he also appears in the 2022 companion series The Book of Boba Fett, where he receives some Jedi training from Luke Skywalker. In the course of their meditation, Luke helps Grogu to unlock his repressed memories of surviving the Purge of the Jedi Temple. In this instance, we only get a very brief glimpse at a group of Jedi Knights fighting off Clone Troopers, shown from Grogu’s perspective inside his floating carriage. It isn’t until the following year’s season of The Mandalorian that we get a more substantive look at Grogu’s escape from the temple, where an even more itty-bitty Baby Yoda is ushered to safety by Jedi Master Kelleran Beq.

By this point, as with the reiterations in The Bad Batch and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Grogu’s flashbacks don’t add very much to the overall narrative or emotional understanding of Order 66, only specific context for the backstories of individual characters. This doesn’t necessarily render them useless or unnecessary, but there does come a point when returning to the same event in the fictional history of Star Wars starts to make the galaxy seem a little smaller.

Order 66 Extended Cut - The Definitive Edition [4K UHD]

The idea that this one moment has a profound effect on people throughout the galaxy helps to unify the Star Wars narrative, but the more we see characters experience it in the same way, the less impact each reprise is going to have. Should the storytellers at Lucasfilm Ltd. choose to mine this fictional tragedy again in the future, they would do well to find new angles from which to interrogate it. Otherwise, they are likely best leaving it alone for a while.

Dylan Roth
Dylan Roth [he/him] is a freelance film critic, and the co-host of the podcast "Are You Afraid of the Dark Universe?"
Purdue vs. Michigan State: How to watch, results, and highlights
Michigan State basketball court from an aerial view.

Two of the Big Ten's best teams face off on Tuesday night. Braden Smith and the No. 13 Purdue Boilermakers (19-7) take on Jaden Akins and the No. 14 Michigan State on Tuesday night. After hot starts, both teams have dropped recent games. Purdue enters Tuesday's game on a two-game losing streak, with their most recent defeat coming at the hands of Wisconsin. Michigan State has lost three of their last five but picked up a crucial victory over Illinois this past Saturday.
After the departure of Zach Edey, Purdue had major questions in their frontcourt. Trey Kaufman-Renn has been better than advertised, as the junior forward leads the Boilermakers in points (19.4) and rebounds (6.3). Plus, Smith's veteran presence in the backcourt will pay dividends in March. It's a true team effort for Tom Izzo's Spartans, with five scorers between eight and 14 points per game. The x-factor is freshman Jase Richardson, who has scored over 10 points in three straight games, including a 29-point outburst in the win over Oregon.
With the regular season winding down, this game will go a long way when determining seeding for the Big Ten Tournament. Find out how to watch the game below, including the start time, channel, and streaming information. Read our NCAA men's basketball March to the Madness guide for more information.

Purdue vs. Michigan State: How to watch
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If you have to watch one Hulu movie in February 2025, stream this one
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25 years ago, Vin Diesel had the best day of his career
Vin Diesel looks cool in black goggles and a black tank top in a still from the movie Pitch Black.

Vin Diesel in Pitch Black USA Films
More than almost any other movie star working today, Vin Diesel seems to think only in franchises. Skim the last two decades of this muscle man’s filmography, and you’ll see almost nothing but sequels or movies designed (not always successfully) to spawn sequels. Once Vin got a taste of life in the fast lane, he never really looked back. Maybe he was always just destined to become a Hollywood action hero: When you’re built like a bullet and talk like a subwoofer, the Italian Stallion career path makes a lot more sense than anything else.
Of course, like Sly Stallone, Vin didn’t start out making multiplex cash grabs. Before he was Dominic Toretto, Xander Cage, and Groot, Diesel was a hungry young actor, more focused on honing his craft than bulging his biceps. In the ’90s, he even dabbled in writing and directing, penning his own gritty, calling-card starring vehicle; it was that indie drama, Strays, that caught Steven Spielberg’s attention and earned Diesel a breakout role in Saving Private Ryan. To watch him there or in the late Sidney Lumet’s swan song, Find Me Guilty, is to be reminded of a time when the big guy aspired to a little more than bankable machismo.
What’s wild is that you can pinpoint to the day the pinnacle of Diesel’s time as a dramatic performer as opposed to a box-office draw. Said day was 25 years ago tomorrow, when not one but two movies featuring the future star hit theaters nationwide. There he was as a likable off- Wall Street stock broker in the financial drama Boiler Room, and there he was again as a mythic outlaw in the deep-space creature feature Pitch Black. Diesel has never been better than he was in these two very different movies, which kind of makes February 18th, 2000 the best day of his career — and also the last moment before that career changed directions.
Boiler Room (2000) Official Trailer #1 - Vin Diesel Movie HD
Of the two films, Boiler Room is the more obvious acting showcase, though Vin has a much smaller part in it. Written and directed by Ben Younger, this Martin Scorsese-indebted procedural essentially fictionalizes the true story the actual Scorsese would later dramatize with The Wolf of Wall Street. Younger looks at the fraudulent practices of brokerage houses like Stratton Oakmont from the perspective of one of the cold callers, a Long Island entrepreneur played by Giovanni Ribisi. Maybe fourth or fifth booked in the cast is Diesel, who steps in as one of the more experienced brokers who takes Ribisi’s snake-oil salesman under his wing.
“He’s like gravity —everything gets pulled to him,” is how someone describes Diesel’s most famous character, Dominic Toretto, in the following year’s franchise-launching melodrama The Fast and the Furious. But he’s much more conventionally magnetic in Boiler Room as a slick but approachable young millionaire swindler. Vin’s first big scene in the movie puts his signature bravado to good use, as he gregariously coerces a doctor into buying a bunch of shares over the phone — a hard sell that he makes look effortless. It’s a kind of initiation, laying out the seductive thrill of how these chop-shop frat boys make their fortune. They’re really just actors, playing a part for the clients they unscrupulously exploit.
Diesel’s Chris Varick, like Toretto, is as much teddy bear as shark, though. Boiler Room positions him as a big brother for Ribisi— the warm alternative to Nicky Katt’s jealous, competitive bullpen prick. The script’s pages of shop talk (the kind of industry exposition that Scorsese waved off with a fourth-wall-breaking wink from Leo) go down smoother when delivered in Diesel’s low rumble and New York accent. And Chris becomes an unlikely figure of redemption at the ending, confronted by both the impending collapse of his livelihood and the opportunity to do one noble thing before it all comes crashing down. That makes Boiler Room the first in a long line of movies that find the conscience burning within Diesel’s bad-boy routine.
Pitch Black Official Trailer #1 - Vin Diesel Movie (2000) HD
A secret flicker of decency also defines Richard B. Riddick, the apprehended mercenary Diesel plays for the first time in Pitch Black. In terms of temperament and vocabulary, he’s a much different animal than Varick: a stony Western archetype unleashed onto the final frontier, like Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name airdropped into an Alien knockoff. Writer-director David Twohy builds Riddick up, establishing his fearsome bona fides by keeping him chained, shrouded in darkness, and silent for the first act, when the ship carting this dangerous fugitive crash-lands on a planet with three suns and some deadly nocturnal wildlife. Beyond the opening voice-over, Diesel doesn’t utter a word for the first 30 minutes of the movie.
More than Toretto, that marble-mouthed, messianic Robin Hood patriarch always mumbling about family, Riddick is the quintessential Vin Diesel character. Twohy leans on and inflates his comic-book physicality – the bulkiness that caught the actor bouncer gigs before he went Hollywood. And he streamlines that familiar Diesel braggadocio into a cucumber cool, the poise of a post-human bruiser in touch with his wild side. His performance in Pitch Black arguably comes closer to approximating the original conception of Wolverine than the one Hugh Jackman would deliver, for the first time, a few months later in the first X-Men movie. Diesel is so convincing here as an animalistic loner that his eventual, reluctant call to be a team-player, à la Logan, packs the desired punch.
Less blockbuster than glorified sci-fi programmer, Pitch Black didn’t make boatloads of money. But it was a successful proof of concept; what it sold the world was Diesel’s suitability for action-hero duty. Those who caught the movie in theaters, maybe even on a double bill with Boiler Room, could clearly see into his future as a post-millennial Rambo. But few of the big Hollywood projects that followed better capitalized on his rugged, monosyllabic qualities. No wonder Diesel returned to the film’s treacherous star system, reprising the role in two sequels — the goofier, more expansive Chronicles of Riddick and the back-to-basics Riddick — even after he had moved on to more lucrative multi-picture engagements.
Boiler Room Prospecting Scene - Vin Diesel Closing
In retrospect, 2000 was as much a last hurrah as it was a highpoint for Vin Diesel, the actor, not the brand. A year later, he’d buckle in for the comparably low-key first entry in a series he’d eventually makeover into a multi-billion-dollar vanity project. There was really no turning back from the road Fast & Furious put him on. It’s been basically all intellectual-property bids since, as Diesel has balanced his cash cow franchise with attempts to develop new ones. You have to strain to see any real artistic ambition in any of the work he’s done since the day the multiplex served up double, clashing doses of his cowboy swagger. Besides a supporting role in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, it’s been one star sleepwalk after another.
Maybe Diesel never had a character actor's range. As a performer, he mostly offers different shades of macho — brooding, sentimental, or arrogant as needed. But on one winter day at the start of a new century, he demonstrated that his particular steroidal charisma could be stretched a little, and applied to projects with wildly different aims. February 18 was a crossroads for this modern tough guy. He took the path to marquee immortality that Pitch Black opened up before him, while leaving us wondering how many Boiler Rooms he bypassed along the way.
Boiler Room and Pitch Black are both available to rent or purchase from the major digital services. For more of A.A. Dowd’s writing, visit his Authory page.

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