The Jedi's Knowledge of Events Prior to Order 66

I was planning to add this to the thread about the Yoda arc, but when i realized how much i had to say and that it wasn't all related I thought it best to start a new thread.

Firstly i just want to say I absolutely loved all of the new episodes from the last season, but the Yoda arc was definitely the best, arguably the best of the whole show, So don't take what i'm about to say as knocking the episodes at all.

But there was one thing that really bothered me about the revelations that we got from this and the Order 66 episodes:

How can the Jedi have not started to see the Clones as a potential threat and not tried to prepare themselves for a potential attack from them? I mean at first they discover the Inhibitor Chips and go the way of thinking Fives was crazy and tried to murder Palpatine, and he in his ever-so-conniving way managed to cover it up, but they still know they exist and that they can be very dangerous if they "malfunction".
You think then and there they would be a little careful about being alone with the Clones, and would have started to suspect Palpatine a little earlier, considering Fives point blank accused him of being responsible for it, even if Anakin thought it was crazy, he may have mentioned it and others may not have.

But even if it they let that slide, then in the Yoda arc they not only discover that the Sith are responsible for creating the Clone army, but by extension are directly responsible for the whole war, having orchestrated it and planned for the Clones to fight for the Republic. Then surely suddenly alarm bells would have started going off, like "Hang on a minute, first we find the clones have all got a potential kill order embedded into them, and then we find out the Sith were responsible for making these dude, maybe Tups "malfunction" was actually what the chips intended purpose was and the Sith made this army to eventually overwhelm and eliminate us". Sure i know i'm saying this in hindsight knowing full well what happens, and in-universe they didn't know the future, but anyone with a brain would have started making these assumptions, it just seems a little too coincidental to me. Plus Yoda saw soo many visions of what was to come, he basically watched Order 66 happen, and saw the Jedi being killed by clones, so that should have put the nail in the coffin for him!
At this point you cant even really excuse the Jedi anymore for being blinded by the Dark Side, i mean to not figure this out or to at least start considering the possibilities shows they must have just been a bunch of idiots.

Then there was the illusion / fantasy at the end that he gets from Palpatines Sith Sorcery, firstly i didn't quite get what the Sith were doing there. So they knew exactly were Yoda was, though I wouldn't have expected them to bomb the planet like someone else on here previously suggested, having know exactly were Yoda was and that he was all alone (and on the Sith's own planet no less where the Dark Side is incredibly strong) i'm surprised they didn't both physically go there are double team him! I know you could argue about the distance, but we don't actually know how long Yoda was there or how long it would have taken to get there from Coruscant. So on to my main point:
In this vision Yoda actually saw the LiMerge Power Building in which Dooku often met Sidious, surely after seeing this, and seeing them inside it, Yoda may have assumed it might have some importance / connection to Sidious and investigated it sooner. I say sooner because to anyone who hasn't read it, the book Labyrinth Of Evil was a direct prequel to Episodes 3, and centered around the Jedi conducting an investigation after finding Nute Gunray's Holochair which eventually lead them to the LiMerge Building right before the invasion of Coruscant. (I realize the EU books may no longer be considered canon, but as they have not officially been announced one way or the other I will still included it in my statement, and even if they are ruled out as canon, to me they will still be what really happened as there is too much history and back-story and what not for it ALL to suddenly not count, but that's beside the point, this isn't about story continuity), But my point still stands regardless of the novel, they could still have investigated earlier, which is an important fact due to it leading the Jedi to discover an underground tunnel leading directly to the Senate Offices building, proving the Sith is someone in the Senate, which would further fuel the suspicions of Palpatine being the culprit.

Also as a side-note, Yoda saw in this illusion basically the EXACT way Anakin would eventually really kill Dooku (with some minor differences, like I don't actually remember seeing him cut his hands off like he did in the movie, but that's kind of irrelevant). So i'm not saying there and then that would have necessarily meant anything to Yoda, but after Dooku was eventually killed, if he had discovered / or was told the details of the kill, surely he would have started to see the truth in these visions he was having.
I know the only flaw in this is that Palpatine was the only witness to Dooku's death and Obi-Wan was unconscious at the time, and Palpatine probably would have lied about it if directly asked and not given the exact details, so Yoda may not have had any way of knowing the precise details of Dooku's death, but still if he had!

And i didn't quite see the point in their Dark Side induced illusion to Yoda, why when he is is on the Gunship at the start and they enter the LiMerge Building, why does he see Sidious & Dooku around the Ritual bowl doing exactly what they really were doing in the now, I know Yoda has no control over that, he was just seeing what they were projecting, but i don't see why they would show in their vision their actual position and actions and the their exact location, they were basically inviting Yoda to come and search for them! Sure they may not have anticipated Yoda breaking the illusion, but it was still a risk to show their greatest enemy their secret hideout.

So yeah ultimately I think after the events of these episodes the Jedi should by no means have been so surprised and blind to what was coming in E.3. They should have started being suspicious of both the Clones and of Palpatine a lot earlier.
As I said at the beginning i'm not at all criticizing the episodes or the show or the writers skills, as I realize that's the main problem when writing something set in between existing material in which the outcome is already predetermined and the ending is set, but the writers seemed to have made it so the Jedi knew too much to still be as ignorant as they were in Episode 3.

Wow, that was a long post. I didn't expect to go on that long lol. Kudos to anyone who read it all.

 

Well I skimmed your massive post, but I'll say this. The only people who hears Fives rant, were Rex and Anakin.. Two people who are utterly loyal to the Chancellor, and would never suspect him of wrongdoing. We see that when Anakin immediately dismisses Fives claims as groundless.

"The Chancellor is incapable of what you speak."

 

We know the Jedi submit reports and/or have debriefings. It doesn't matter if Anakin thinks if the Chancellor is incapable of such betrayal of the Jedi, it's still a cop out if Filoni is going the route of "Anakin left that detail out of his report."

Even if he thought it was all baseless accusations from a psychologically unstable clone, he should have made a detailed report of what happened in those last moments before Fives was gunned down, and made mention to an anti-Jedi plot.

That two clones made reference to having orders to kill the Jedi is conspicuous enough that it's beyond absurd IMO that the Jedi would so easily buy into the parasite BS that Palpatine fed them.

And this seems like a retroactive alteration to the Order 66 plot made late in the game. Lucas originally said it was a contingency order. And in the early seasons, we see characters like Slick and Cut that Filoni had referred to as "going Jango," meaning that they were more independent than they were supposed to be. Dooku even hints at there having been more than one clone turn coat, meaning the clones are perfectly capable of turning on the Jedi WITHOUT having some kind of programmed order temporarily blocked by some kind of bio-chip.

But if the bio chip suppresses aggressiveness and independent thought (what the Kaminoans told the Jedi these chips did), then that really shouldn't add up, since the cases of Tup and Fives were nothing like that of Cut. If the Jedi trust the Kaminoan, then they should believe that Cut and these other alluded to turncoats all had faulty chips. But at least in the case of Cut, he was still very much coherent, and unless he was executed, he'd still be available to examine/interrogate. This was not like the case of Tup, who seemed in a stupor and explicitly made reference to following orders and wanted to kill Jedi. While Fives also seemed in a stupor (though due to being drugged), but again mentioned a plot/orders to kill Jedi, though this time attempting to warn the Jedi.

With the Jedi being all about knowledge and trusting their instincts, etc. Let alone looking at the evidence. The story from Palpatine and the Kaminoans should not have sat well with them.

And EVEN IF the Jedi were convinced that what Palpatine was saying was true... in AOTC the Jedi did not want to tell the Senate that their ability to use the Force had diminished because, if made public, that information would cause the enemies of the Jedi to "multiply." So, even if the Jedi are convinced that this anti-Jedi behavior was the result of parasites in the drinking water, they should be concerned about what should happen if the Sith decide to take advantage of this information and infect the water supply.

But this all ignores the biggest elephant in the room that Yoda (and all of the Jedi) is a fool for dismissing. The enemy gave them an army. That doesn't make sense.

If Dooku was a political idealist that wanted to secede from the Republic and have his own government, he could have easily achieved that had he not given the Republic a clone army. So, it doesn't make sense for Yoda's genius (said with the utmost sarcasm) plan to be to end the war swiftly, with the clone army. The clone army was given to the Republic by the Sith. The only reason that the Republic has any chance of winning, is because Dooku gave them that army. Period. Why would the Jedi be convinced that winning using the clone army can yield good results.

That's like if Japan attacked the US in WWII. The US has an incredibly small military. Mercenary forces then are hired by the US to boost its military strength, with it eventually coming to light that the mercenary forces were ordered to do offer their services to the US by the Japanese government.

...Yeah, let's put those guys on the front lines. Yeah, let's win this war quickly, because that makes sense, when the CIS could have had the Republic surrendering within the first year had Dooku not given them an elite army. That's obviously not what Dooku wants though. And instead Dooku says that the Republic is being controlled by a Sith, which at first was something that was understandably dismissed by the Jedi as an attempt to create mistrust, but given the reality that the Sith provided the Republic with an army that is benefiting the Republic at the CIS' expense, that idea should have been revisited with a vengeance. Because the Sith's army given to the Republic turned what could have been a very short war into something long and drawn out, with Palpatine gaining an extended term and growing executive powers, while Dooku's strategy makes no sense for his own benefit.

After the Order 66 arc and the Yoda arc, everything was really laid out for the Jedi to see, and they were really just too dumb. And I don't like how Lucas/Filoni have turned the Jedi into victims of their own stupidity like that. The Jedi should have never found out that Dooku was Tyranus, IMO. That was the biggest misstep of the whole series to me, because in one swift stroke, the Jedi go from being deceived and outplayed, to seeing the Sith's hand and still losing.

 

I never realized before the Order 66 arc that the Jedi didn't know Dooku was Tyranus. He fights them in Ep. II so they know he's a Sith. I don't get what the big difference is.

 

There was nothing to indicate that Tyranus was a Sith. The only mention of the name was Jango saying he was hired by a man named Tyranus, not Sifo-Dyas. And when Obi-Wan expresses interest in Tyranus, Jango changes the subject.

Tyranus could have been anybody from Obi-Wan's perspective. There was nothing indicating him to be a Sith. And as of the beginning of the Order 66 arc, the Jedi seemed to give up on caring who Tyranus was, until the name came up again along with mentions of Sifo-Dyas not traveling alone in his final mission. It seemed like the Jedi attributed the Clone Army entirely to Sifo-Dyas until Plo Koon's discovery of Sifo-Dyas' shuttle.

 

I have big post about how the Jedi are stupid, or the plot made it that way, but cannot be bothered typing it right now. Basically: they had all the pieces to realise something was terribly wrong in serving with the clones.

 

TaradosGon

It seems like the TCW writers tried too hard to give the Jedi knowledge of what's going on just to make them seem superficially less like chumps. Unfortunately, the only reason why their betrayal by the clone troopers makes sense to the viewer of AOTC and ROTS is because the viewer knows that Dooku is Tyranus while the Jedi do not know this. Giving them this knowledge and then not having them do anything with it is makes them bigger dupes than they might have seemed previously. A temporarily hard-hitting line in a single episode (eg. one of the Jedi Council reiterating that the clones were masterminded by the Sith) is not worth this. It's for this reason that I'm tempted to consign that part of The Lost Ones to a non-canonical status in my personal canon, no matter what Lucasfilm insists.

There is one way that this could have been rectified. Let's say the Jedi Council do begin to suspect a nefarious purpose behind the clone troopers. Despite initially dismissing him, they follow up on the lead that Fives gave them. They follow AZI-3's medical logs and extract the chips from a variety of clones. When they analyse them, they see evidence that suggests that the clone troopers could have been built to kill the Jedi. They then begin a surreptitious mass-removal effort through the GAR's medical corps and replace the identified chips with duds. However, as was strongly hinted at the end of the Order 66 arc, Palpatine has already made these chips redundant with a new means to guarantee Order 66's execution (the "inoculation"). The critical juncture is that Fives went to Palpatine with his concerns rather than solely to the Jedi. Palpatine has time to adapt his plan. By the time of ROTS, the Jedi Council think they have tamed the clone army that was possibly built to kill them, so they trust the clone troopers implicitly. Order 66 still comes as a surprise, since the Jedi Council has kept this plotting and counter-plotting confidential.

Something similar may have been in some other arcs planned. Perhaps this was meant to be part of a longer running plot in the later seasons. As it stands, the way they've presented Order 66 and the Jedi knowledge of it is far from ideal.

Though to be fair, the EU did make a similar albeit less damaging move with the GAR Contingency Orders. The wording of Order 65 (to overthrow the Chancellor) is far more open-ended and enforces more accountability than Order 66 (to kill the Jedi). Given that the Chancellor needs the Senate to send the GAR after him, with lethal force only used if necessary, and the Jedi need only the Chancellor to order the GAR to kill every last one of them, Order 66's potential for abuse is damn obvious. However, the EU never gave the Jedi the knowledge that the clone troopers were created by the Sith. That's something that shouldn't have been revealed to them unless the story now bends over backwards to explain why they still trust the clone troopers until the end.

 

If the Clone Wars were still ongoing, i would say they should just animate a 2 hour movie and make it an alternate version of Episode 3, where the Jedi don't look so dumb and don't get wiped out, and Anakin gets around Palpatine's lies and seductions and in the end, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Mace, Anakin, Plo Koon, Ki-Ad-Mundi, Kit Fisto, Saesee Tiin, Agen Kolar and whatever other badass Jedi they can muster all storm the Chancellors chamber and rip him a new one! Then they can have the happy ending Yoda saw in his vision, minus the people who were already dead.

 

Yoda probably figured out the exact way things were gonna go by the time he was done with the Sith Homeworld. But he was just too much of a sucker for the idea of unalterable destiny, unavoidable fate, to even think of trying to do anything about it.

If some other Jedi... say Anakin or Quinlan Vos or the like had had those same visions... those guys are much more "No fate but what we make" kinda people. They wouldn't just sit there and shut up and wait for the unalterable predestined future to come to pass. They would try to take it in hand. Change the future. Make up history as they went along.

 

I actually find it really easy to believe that Anakin would not tell the rest of the Jedi what Fives said about Palpatine. Anakin already knows they don't trust each other and since he is so loyal to Palpatine he would not want to make the Jedi even more suspicious of him. He's obviously already in practice with not telling the Jedi stuff he doesn't want to.

Yoda sees a bunch of stuff that would seem crazy to him all in a flash, most of which were scenarios that never came to pass. There's nothing that happens in his arc that gives him absolute confirmation of what is going on. If he were to go by that then there would be a bunch of stuff from his visions he'd be way off on.

 

I think a lot of the issues with what the Jedi knew were going to be explained as TCW went on, but the cancellation of TCW ruined that.

 

It really doesn't matter if the Jedi knew Dooku is Tyranus, and that he and Sifo-Dyas illegally ordered the clone army. The Jedi probably figured whoever ordered the clones had intentions of starting a war with the Republic, but were glad that they discovered this secret army in time and took command of it before it could be used against them.

 

Interestingly, in the ROTS novelization, the Jedi think that Pestage is Sidious.

 

I actually thought this explained Obi-Wan knowing that Dooku was Tyranus in ROTS when facing Greivous, because up until now i've never been sure where he learned that. The entire Tyranus thing seemed to have been completely forgotten about until then.

 

Cancellation of TCW has left too many unanswered questions. The show was meant to lead right up to RoTS. Not finishing the story creates many problems; Ahsoka not appearing or being mentioned in RoTS is the biggest issue now. Next is the possibility of Maul still being alive.

 

I agree on Darth Maul since he was just captured by Palpatine last time we saw him on the show and I somehow doubt even the comic book they have coming out based on what would have been his next TCW arc will cleanly wrap his story up. But I totally disagree on Ahsoka. She's gone from Anakin's life without having altered his views on death and in a way that any and all negativity from the experience can be placed squarely on the shoulders of the Jedi Council. I think it's so perfect as-is that the only good thing about TCW ending is they were going to bring her back and now they can't.

 

Is that building that Sidious and Dooku in supposed to be some instantly recognizable structure on Coruscant. The planet is "one big city." I'd think there are people living in NYC that are not familiar with every single skyscraper in their own city, let alone building. Is this building supposed to be something that Yoda instantly is able to recognize out of all the buildings in a planet-sized city?

 

True looks like a rundown industrial area which should not be recognizable.

 

He only knows that in the novelization. In the movie, Grievous says "Count Dooku" instead.

Interestingly, in the YA RoTS novelization, Obi-Wan only puts the final piece together - that Tyranus was "Darth Tyranus" - after seeing the recording of the massacre and Anakin's conversation with Sidious.

 

I'm surprised by the revelation that the Jedi possessed pivotal knowledge of the Sith plot. Its execution was characteristically clumsy, but I agree with Filoni's ultimate sentiments that the Jedi were already screwed at that point.

 

If you watch the bonus features on the RoTS DVD, Lucas was concerned that several scenes made the Jedi too weak. The Lost Missions from TCW were probably designed to correct a few aspects of Episode III

 

After watching The Lost One for the third time I've decided I'm also not a huge fan of the Jedi finding out the clones were ordered by the Sith. I agree with Filoni that at this point they can't do anything about it anyway and I really like their discussion of what the reaction would be if the public and Palpatine found out, but I feel it is extremely awkward for that to go unmentioned by the Jedi for the entirety of Ep. III. That is a pretty big deal. And this is coming from someone who thinks not mentioning Ahsoka is fine.

 

Yeah, I agree. I still like this arc, but this is the second big problem I have with it (the first being the existence of a chip in the first place, vs. "the time has come" and "following orders without question").

If the Jedi had gained as much knowledge as this arc implies, then the only Jedi reaction in the ROTS Order 66 montage that makes any sense is Yoda's; he immediately senses something is wrong and reacts swiftly. In ROTS I just chalked it up to his heightened Force sensitivity (same reason he drops his cane and holds his head, knowing something is wrong), but it could be because he realizes this is related to what they learned about earlier. But then how to explain the complete look of shock and unpreparedness on the part of all the other Jedi?

 

In Labyrinth of Evil, they get to that building by tracing one of Sidious' holocalls to Nute Gunray. It is called the LiMerge power building, and I don't necessarily think it's something Yoda would recognize at this point in time. Later on, when he finds out that the signal came from LiMerge, maybe he puts 2 and 2 together. But for the time being, no, he's probably not supposed to recognize it. Ultimately they find out that Sidious (who they believe at the time to be Pestage, Amedda, or one of Palpatine's other lackeys) chose the LiMerge building because it has underground tunnels connecting it to 500 Republica, which is where Palpatine's private residence is.

 

The thing is, why would Jango Fett tell Obi-Wan that Tyranus was the one who hired him, knowing that he was a Dark Lord of the Sith? I mean, why not just say Sifo-Dyas hired him instead, so it hides the fact that the Sith didn't?