Order 66 was first introduced to audiences all the way back in 1977, during Obi-Wan’s conversation with Luke about Anakin, Vader, and the Jedi Order:
“For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire…Now the Jedi are all but extinct.”
The events of this ‘extinction’ would play out on screen almost 30 years later in Revenge of the Sith. After we see Anakin make the decision to betray the Jedi in order to save Padmé, it subsequently causes the galaxy-wise massacre. We see a clips of Commander Cody receiving the order from Palpatine and subsequently shooting Obi-Wan on his Varactyl, as well as Ki-Adi-Mundi, Aayla Secura, Plo Koon, Stass Allie, and Yoda all being shot down by their own Clone battalions (with varying rates of survival). Anakin then leads 501st in the attack on the Coruscant Jedi Temple and kills all Jedi inside, including younglings.
Order 66 is already an emotional sequence, and it’s only masterfully elevated by The Clone Wars.
As Star Wars fans are quick to say that The Clone Wars provided additional context to the prequel trilogy and allowed audiences to really care about these characters in ways the films didn’t allow. Week after week, kids and adults alike were sent on missions alongside Anakin, Obi-Wan, Plo Koon, Yoda, and introduced to a slew of new characters including the now fan favorite Ahsoka Tano. Kids grew up with these characters for 6 years, & when including the Season 6 and 7 episodes as well, Clone Wars “aired” from 2008 to 2020 – that’s over an entire decade of time spent with these characters.
Audiences learned what it was like to be a Jedi living in the Jedi temple. We spent time with them, saw their sparring practices and studies in the temple library. We saw Anakin become a mentor and brother-like-figure to Ahoska, and we saw Ahsoka grow from a snippy 14 year old to a mature beyond her years (17…war makes you grow up pretty fast). We watched their bond alongside Obi-Wan grow, and we also saw the bond they and all the Jedi shared with their Clone Commanders. We as the audience knew the Clone’s names, their stories, and how they had fought to stay alive all these years – as well as their struggle to understand their existence. Born & condemned to fight and seemingly nothing else.
As I briefly touched on earlier – The Clone Wars was cancelled in 2013 at the end of Season 5. It was speculated for years what would happen to Ahsoka as she’s never mentioned in Revenge of the Sith. Would she be killed during a mission, or worse, would she not make it out of Order 66? Was she not even safe after she formally left the order?
We got our answer in March of 2015 when #AhsokaLives came true and made her first appearance on Star Wars: Rebels working alongside Bail Organa for the Rebel Alliance. But then the question turned from if to how?
2020: 12 years, 7 seasons, 131 episodes (and 2 months into a global pandemic) we finally got our answer. In the penultimate episode of The Clone Wars, we see Ahsoka’s perspective of Order 66. After successfully capturing Maul, standing on the bridge of the Tribunal, she senses something isn’t right. Anakin, Palpatine and Mace Windu’s voices are heard (from Revenge of the Sith) and senses something horrible has happened to Anakin. She approaches Rex, just as Palpatine finishes giving the Order and what follows is an absolute masterclass in storytelling.
Ahsoka’s subsequent response captures the strong friendships formed and everything Anakin taught her over the course of her time as his Padawan. Her lightsaber skills are masterful after hundreds of hours training and thousands of hours on the battlefield. She’s able to deflect each and every blasterbolt with precision. Despite the clones firing on her, she’s able to remain compassionate and curious – these are her friends and have had her back hundreds of times before. Why would they be firing on her? She’s resourceful, and chooses to solve the mystery and save Rex as she sees him physically struggling to resist whatever is ailing the rest of the clones.
Ultimately she’s successful in saving herself and Rex, but unfortunately, and not to Ahsoka’s fault, the rest of the 501st is killed in the subsequent crash of their cruiser. And ultimately in the end she chooses kindness and chooses to memorialize each and every one of the Clones that perished – both in body and soul – and creates a memorial marked by each of their helmets. Instead of turning on the Clones as they had been programmed to do to her, she chose to remember their friendship.
– just as she does with Anakin, Obi-Wan, and the rest of her the Jedi who all perished or went into hiding that fateful day. In her time onboard she barely has a moment to even pay attention to the other Jedi suffering throughout the galaxy and must focus on her goal to keep herself alive. In a singular moment, her entire past life was no longer in existance, and she had no choice but to say goodbye – just as we the audience were saying goodbye to these charcters and these stories as well.
Jakku Journal 