Order 66 Logistics

Revenge of the Sith may get mixed reviews from hardcore Star Wars fans, yet it contains one of the most powerful moments in the entire franchise. Palpatine had a plan to wipe out the Jedi, organized years in advance, a trap to be sprung at the moment that they intended to remove the Chancellor from power. It was called Order 66. It was the moment when the Chancellor became the Emperor and finally seized ultimate power.

Once General Grievous and Count Dooku were killed, the Clone Wars were ostensibly over and the impetus for the Chancellor's emergency powers was gone. He knew that the Jedi would not allow him to retain his power, requiring them to be neutralized. Once Mace Windu confronted him, they had no choice but to proceed. In the movie, Order 66 is executed almost flawlessly, but would it actually be that easy? Several things needed to happen that Palpatine couldn't necessarily control directly. Success was dependent on some luck.

Part of that success hinged on the element of surprise. Palpy needed to kill as many Jedi as quickly as possible before they could be warned and flee their vulnerable positions. They had interstellar communication in a galaxy far far away, which provided an extra layer of difficulty executing the plan. Not only that, but every time you kill a Jedi, the others will feel a disturbance in the force. They should be able to sense that Jedi are dying as soon as the order is executed. Mace Windu had the best opportunity of all to warn all his colleagues of impending danger. He learned that Palpatine was a Sith Lord before Order 66 was issued, and didn't even send a text message to anyone on the Jedi council. They should have called every Jedi back to the Temple (or neutral meeting place), as soon as Mace sensed a plot to destroy the Jedi.

Wookiepedia estimates that 99% of the Jedi were killed in Order 66, and that 100 survived. From those numbers we can extrapolate that there were 10,000 Jedi at the moment of implementation. Yes, that number seems high. It was more likely that there were a few hundred Jedi, with most of those coming in the form of child padawans. The majority of the deaths likely occurred at the Jedi temple. The logistics of killing that many Jedi before they can warn each other or sense the unfolding murders is almost impossible.

Complicating this plan was Anakin turning to the dark side. He received specific instructions from Palpatine to kill all the Jedi in the temple, including children. Anakin's turn from virtuous hero to war criminal happens very quickly. Within the span of a few minutes, he goes from trying to negotiate with Mace Windu that it's not the Jedi way to kill Palpatine, to killing Mace, to massacring children. Even if Anakin was going to turn to dark side, there's no way his inner sense of morality would have compelled him to murder young Jedi that he had been mentoring for years. Yet much of Palpatine's plan was dependent on that rapid downward spiral.



In the wider Star Wars cannon, we get clues as to how Order 66 was set up. The clone army was ordered by General Sifo Dyas who was later killed and the cloning operation was then continued by Count Dooku. Dooku and Palpatine ordered the installation of an inhibitor chip into clones that forced them to follow any order, including Order 66. Clones came off the assembly lines with ready to kill Jedi when ordered. We even see an inhibitor chip malfunction in the Clone Wars series, which chronologically happens well before the fatal order was given.

It's easy to blame the Jedi for not sensing this plan was in motion especially Mace Windu, Yoda, and the Jedi council. In a way, they had stopped following the will of the force and had become tools of the Republic. The entire Jedi council had several meetings with Palpatine and never once sensed that he was force sensitive. Had these mistakes not been made, then Order 66 could never have worked. Its success was dependent on the negligence of the Jedi.



We don't know for sure how many Jedi were killed, but the greater that number is, the smaller the probability that Order 66 could be executed so successfully. There had to be attempts to jam communications so that it would be difficult for the Jedi to communicate and warn each other. Exterminating 99% of the Jedi should have taken longer. It's unlikely that so many would be in such vulnerable positions and would have been able to escape. It's easy to believe that once a major blow was struck, that the Empire could slowly hunt down and exterminate the survivors. It's just hard to swallow that they were able to kill so many, so quickly, so decisively.

It's a great moment in cinematic history, it just think it would be impossible to pull off in real life.