If you’ve been a Star Wars fan for any length of time, there’s no doubt you know that Emperor Palpatine’s execution of Order 66 is one of — if not the — biggest events in the Star Wars timeline. Now, Dave Filoni’s new animated series, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, is changing just how much Order 66 impacted the Jedi Order.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch is an animated series created by Dave Filoni. The show picks up immediately after another animated show, Star Wars: The Clone Wars ends, in the midst of the execution of Order 66.
The Bad Batch follows the adventures of Clone Force 99 — Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, Echo, and Crosshair (now a Commander for the Galactic Empire) — as they attempt to navigate an ever-changing galaxy in the days after the fall of the Republic after the Empire takes hold.
For decades, Star Wars fans took the Grand Master at his word, presuming that Skywalker was quite literally the final living member of the Jedi Order once Yoda died on Dagobah.
In recent years, however, an increasing number of surviving Jedi have been introduced into the existing Star Wars canon — and, thanks to The Bad Batch, it’s becoming apparent that there may have been even more clone troopers outside of Clone Force 99 who were able to circumvent their inhibitor chips — this means that far more Jedi Knights than we originally thought may have survived the execution of Palpatine’s fatal order.
In The Bad Batch premiere (“The Aftermath”), for example, Hunter (Dee Bradley Baker) allows Caleb Dume — later known as Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze Jr.) in Star Wars Rebels — to live.
This first episode sets up a long line of events that change the way Star Wars fans look at everything in the existing Star Wars canon, including the Skywalker Saga.
Connections between Star Wars movies and TV shows and Order 66
Although The Bad Batch is a spinoff of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and picks up immediately after Clone Wars Season 7 — the final season — ends, we really begin to see connections between The Bad Batch and other Star Wars projects in the second episode of Dave Filoni’s latest animated series.
The introduction of Dume and Grand Admiral Tarkin — played by Peter Cushing in the original trilogy — of course, are two notable exceptions from the series premiere.
Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, Echo, and Omega (Michelle Ang) meet up with Cut Lawquane and his family. Lawquane was initially introduced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars (“The Deserter”) — and we now know his inhibitor chip either wasn’t activated or he was able to bypass it, just like the “defective” clones, and Omega herself if, in fact, she has an inhibitor chip.
One article pointed out additional details about clone troopers who didn’t participate in the Great Jedi Purge:
In the Rebels episode “The Lost Commanders,” we reunite former clone troopers Rex, Wolffe, and Gregor. In the finale of The Clone Wars, we specifically watched Ahsoka remove Rex’s chip to prevent him from carrying out Order 66, but it’s less clear what happened with Wolffe and Gregor.
The existence of these clones disobeying Order 66 proves there’s a pattern here.
Since Rebels, Star Wars canon has been slowly walking back the severity of Order 66. In fact, you could even argue that this retcon predates Rebels, since Ahsoka was introduced in The Clone Wars in 2008, and then was conveniently kicked out of the Jedi before Order 66 happened.
In theory, there are dozens — even hundreds — of Jedi who survived Order 66. We are increasingly learning that the execution of the Order was sloppy and haphazard. Just last year, we unknowingly saw another connection to The Bad Batch when Jon Favreau and Filoni’s The Mandalorian informed us that Grogu secretly survived Order 66 decades earlier, adding another Force-sensitive survivor to the ever-growing list.
In fact, that’s where Darth Vader comes into play.
Although few people in the Star Wars galaxy knew Vader was formerly Anakin Skywalker, everyone knew they needed to fear Palpatine’s right hand and the deadly band of Inquisitors who worked to get rid of any Jedi “stragglers”.
As the Star Wars universe continues to expand — and Hayden Christensen returns as the iconic Sith Lord in Obi-Wan Kenobi — it seems likely that we will not only see the Inquisitors in a live-action series but that we may meet even more surviving Jedi we previously didn’t know existed.
Because Jedi Generals were caught completely unaware by their clone troopers’ betrayal, relatively few troopers were actually killed in the conflict after Order 66 was executed. Most returned to Kamino, where they were hailed as heroes by the Galactic Empire.
Jedi Knights who survived Order 66
A list of key Jedi — excluding fallen Jedi Inquisitors — who are known to have survived Order 66 (in canon) — and where they were at the time, in some cases — is as follows:
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Credit: Lucasfilm
