Did any Jedi Younglings survive Order 66? This article answers that question, along with their eventual fates. This will contain spoilers for multiple materials.
Jedi younglings hold the lowest rank in the Jedi Order. They are children who have been taken from birth to live and train with the warrior monks in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant and are taught by some of the sharpest minds in the Order, such as Grand Master Yoda and Jedi Master Tera Sinube, where they will one day advance to become a Jedi Padawan.
But their downfall came about with the rest of the Jedi Order. In Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, when Palpatine activated Order 66 and ordered that the clone army turn on their Jedi generals, the younglings weren’t spared. Anakin Skywalker, now christened as the Sith Lord Darth Vader, was sent to the Jedi Temple with the 501st Legion to wipe out any Jedi there, including the younglings. A now widely memed moment of Vader killing Jedi children followed.
And while most younglings died at the hands of Darth Vader and his clones, some survived. This is something that goes all the way back to Star Wars Legends, the continuity that existed before Disney took over the franchise, but canon has been slowly and recently reintroducing the idea that some younglings avoided Vader’s blade.
Did any Jedi Younglings survive Order 66?
In Star Wars canon, there are currently only four younglings that are known to have survived the infamous Order 66 and Darth Vader’s slaughter, while in Legends, there are 20 known survivors.
It’s likely that in the future, Star Wars will keep showing us more and more younglings that managed to escape Order 66 and may even re-canonize some of the younglings from Legends.
Which Younglings survived Order 66?
Sticking with Star Wars canon, the four younglings that are known to have survived the Jedi Purge are an unidentified Rodian youngling from the video game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Grogu from The Mandalorian, Reva Sevander from Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the Wookiee youngling Gungi, who originated in the fifth season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars but showed up in Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2.
The Rodian was one of several younglings that were hiding with Jedi Knight Cere Junda and her Padawan Trilla Suduri during Order 66 but got captured by the Empire. It isn’t clear what happened to the other younglings they were with, but they likely perished or got captured.
Grogu, or Baby Yoda as he is more well known, was taken from the Jedi Order during the Purge and hidden. Who took him from the Temple is yet to be answered, and so is where they hid him.
Reva was at the Jedi Temple when Darth Vader and the 501st Legion entered and executed any Jedi or youngling that they found. She watched as her friends were slaughtered around her, and avoided a similar fate by playing dead. She would see that the face of Vader was the former Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, who she would develop a hatred for.
How Gungi survived Order 66 isn’t known, though at some point in the months after Order 66, he would be captured by the criminal organization Vanguard Axis.
What happened to the Younglings after Order 66?
While we don’t know the full fates of any of the four younglings mentioned above, some facts about them are shown:
- The unidentified Rodian youngling that was with Trilla Suduri and Cere Junda at the time of Order 66 was captured by the Empire, and it so far hasn’t been mentioned again in Star Wars, so it’s likely that it was killed or turned into an Inquisitor. Obi-Wan Kenobi showed audiences a rather morbid image of a dead youngling preserved in stasis in Fortress Inquisitorius, so it’s possible the Rodian ended up there.
- Grogu’s story is still being told, but after the fall of the Empire, he was found by the Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin. Din was supposed to give him to an Imperial Remnant led by Moff Gideon, but he refused, instead forming a bond with the baby. Season two of The Mandalorian saw Din Djarin give Grogu up so he could be trained by Luke Skywalker, but in The Book of Boba Fett Grogu chose to go back to his adoptive dad.
- Reva’s story was shown in Obi-Wan Kenobi. After she survived Order 66, she became an Imperial Inquisitor, Jedi that have fallen to the dark side that hunt down surviving Jedi. She also developed an intense obsession with the Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. This is because she blamed him for his failure to stop Anakin from falling to the dark side. Eventually, in 10BBY, she would confront Obi-Wan Kenobi, and reveal to him that she also wishes to kill Darth Vader, the man who attacked her in the Jedi Temple.
- She would get her wish on Jabiim, attacking Vader, but was left for dead by the Sith, her Inquisitor title stripped from her. Reva would find a comlink from Obi-Wan with a message about a boy on Tatooine called Luke Skywalker and travel to the world to kill him. But ultimately, she wouldn’t go through with the act, taking advice from Obi-Wan to move on from the past. Having been redeemed from the dark side, she would go to places unknown, where her fate is currently a mystery.
- Gungi’s fate isn’t fully known either. He showed up in episode six of The Bad Batch season two, with Cloneforce 99 saving him from Vanguard Axis. From there, they took him to his home planet of Kashyyyk, helped him defeat a group of Trandoshans backed by the Empire, and took him to a Wookiee village. His fate after this is left ambiguous, but the Empire does increase their forces on Kashyyyk and enslave the native population. Gungi’s future is therefore quite bleak.
So that completes our discussion on “did any Jedi Younglings survive Order 66”. What are your theories? Comment below.
