Star Wars: Every Time The Jedi Temple Was Attacked In Canon

The Jedi Temple on Coruscant has been hit many times on-screen and on the page – with memorable consequences for the greater Star Wars mythology.

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Despite its appearance in Star Wars as an impenetrable fortress, the Jedi Temple on the Galactic Republic’s capital world of Coruscant has been the victim of a surprising number of attacks and infiltrations over the years. Each of these incidents is told all across the franchise’s canon – from films and television episodes to novels and comic books – and though each is different, each also has some striking resemblances and, even, important interconnections.

Even more importantly, however, each of these temple assaults also ended up playing a small but important role in Star Wars’s overarching mythology, helping to either plant seeds for future stories or directly influencing their eventual outcomes. For instance, both the rise of the Rebel Alliance and the First Order can trace their origins, at least in part, back to these scenarios – the former because Ahsoka Tano would never have been spared from the Jedi Purge if not for a terrorist bombing against the temple, and the latter because Darth Sidious was able to get his hands on some, essentially, genetic information that was stored in the building’s holocron vault.

These, then, are the five times that the Jedi Temple was invaded, taken from The Clone Wars, Revenge of the Sith, one novel, and one comic-book series. The story they collectively tell is the Star Wars narrative in a microcosm: deceptions, betrayals, disillusionment, destruction, and, ultimately, hope and redemption.

1. Grand Master Yoda’s Abduction from the Jedi Temple

The first assault on the Jedi Temple in Star Wars canon occurs in the young-ages book Choose Your Destiny: An Obi-Wan & Anakin Adventure, which, as the name implies, is an adventure novel in which readers get to make choices, when prompted, and see if they can successfully make it to the story’s conclusion. In the years leading up to Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, Masters Yoda, Mace Windu, and Bant Eerin, a Mon Calamari Jedi who is a long-time friend of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s, watch Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker engage in petty squabbling instead of a routine practice session. Severely displeased, they leave the training chamber – and the temple is immediately attacked by a small contingent of battle droids, aided and abetted by a rogue Temple Guard who is instrumental in taking Yoda hostage.

It’s up to Skywalker and Kenobi to track down the abducted grandmaster, a hunt that ultimately leads them to the water planet of Glee Anselm (the homeworld of Master Kit Fisto). Only by working together can the two Jedi successfully rescue their friend – and unmask the perpetrators, who end up being Masters Bant Eerin (disguised as the Temple Guard) and Mace Windu (who had assumed the identity of an interstellar crime lord). The pair needed to be taught that they cannot “argue every step of the way,” so a time-honored test was unleashed on the two, one that even Mace himself had to undergo back during his Padawan years. Now, having successfully completed their task, Obi-Wan and Anakin begin to act like friends – brothers, even. While this attack on the Jedi Temple may have been a ruse, it was real enough for the main characters involved, and for the readers who went along for the adventure.

2. Cad Bane’s Holocron Heist at the Jedi Temple

The first time that the Jedi Temple on Coruscant is actually infiltrated within the canon arrives in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and it comes with an easy explanation: Darth Sidious provides the means to do so to the infamous bounty hunter Cad Bane, granting him the complex’s blueprints as well as all the technical data pertaining to its security systems. The mercenary gets another leg up when he murders and then replaces a Jedi Knight, using a shapeshifting compatriot to tap into the Jedi’s computer system and help guide him through everything while on the inside.

Although Bane’s arrival is potentially thwarted when Master Yoda (perhaps ironically) receives a Force premonition of the imminent attack, the resourceful bounty hunter still manages to prevail in his mission, sneaking through the temple’s ventilation system and deploying both misdirection and a few well-placed bombs. In the end, Cad has Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, and Ahsoka Tano running in circles, and he’s able to waltz right out of the building disguised in a Jedi’s robes with his prize in hand: a Jedi Holocron, a Force-activated device that contains sensitive information or instructions. Lord Sidious ultimately uses the artifact’s contents to abduct children from throughout the galaxy that could potentially be molded into future servants – a foreshadowing, perhaps, of the Sith Inquisitors that would later show up in Star Wars: Rebels and the videogame Star Wars: Jedi – Fallen Order.

3. The Successful Bombing of the Jedi Temple

The Clone Wars, three years later in its television run, also offered audiences the second real assault on the vaunted Jedi Temple – the attack that was the deadliest, by far (for a few months, at least, until Darth Vader would come calling), claiming the lives of six Jedi Knights and several clone troopers and civilian maintenance crewmembers.

Padawan Barriss Offee, having become disillusioned with the Jedi Order, the Galactic Republic, and the ongoing Clone Wars, decides to make a statement, perhaps in the hopes of getting the Jedi to renounce their newfound martial ways and return to their traditional role as peacekeepers. After secretly recruiting to her cause a radical anti-war activist – whose husband, incidentally, was an employee at the temple, working with munitions – Barriss manages to plant a potent bomb in the Jedi Temple’s hangar. When it detonates, it tears through the space, taking with it at least one Republic Attack Gunship – and stoking even further anti-war and, even, anti-Jedi sentiment among the local population on Coruscant.

But the biggest damage the incident provoked was targeted specifically at Ahsoka Tano, Offee’s fellow Padawan Learner. When the disgruntled apprentice learned of Ahsoka’s passionate response to the bombing, Barriss decided she would be the likeliest scapegoat, framing her for the murder of Barriss’s civilian accomplice. Although Tano was ultimately exonerated of the various crimes, the unwillingness of the Jedi Council to stand up for her against the ever-encroaching office of Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine left her similarly dispirited; she leaves the Jedi Order altogether, placing her on a path to survive Order 66 and help with the eventual formation of the Rebellion.

4. The Attempted Bombing of the Jedi Temple

During the very last days of the Clone Wars, right before the events of Revenge of the Sith, a captain in the Separatist army by the name of Rackham Sear seeks to do the unthinkable: plant a bomb at the base of the Jedi Temple’s main tower, thereby toppling it and proving to the galaxy at large that the Jedi – and the Republic they serve – aren’t invincible. He believes it will change the course of the war, and General Grievous is in no mood to dissuade him from what will probably prove to be a suicidal mission.

The second (and final) story arc of the short-lived Star Wars: Kanan monthly comic book, called “First Blood,” shows just how close the Kage warrior came to fulfilling his goal. After paying a “hefty sum” to Cad Bane to acquire the blueprints and technical specs of the temple, Sear successfully manages to slip inside the building’s air ducts – no outside help needed (perhaps the still-recent bombing by Padawan Offee helped in this regard, although Rackham himself invokes the Order’s continuing arrogance to explain why they’ve “barely upgraded their security”). From there, the Separatists’ top explosives expert uses a slew of tiny, spherical, remote-controlled drones, directing them to certain locations within the temple and then detonating them. They provide the perfect distraction, luring most Jedi to the lower levels of the compound while he attempts to deliver the killing blow to the main spire.

Fortunately, youngling Caleb Dume and the still-recuperating Master Depa Billaba, fresh from a defeat at the hands of General Grievous, are on the scene, and they singlehandedly fend off the Kage infiltrator. Rather than be apprehended, however, Rackham Sear flings himself off the temple’s roof, falling to his death. In the process, the two Jedi manage to bond, becoming master and apprentice – setting the stage for Star Wars: The Bad Batch and Rebels.

5. Darth Vader’s Invasion

The last attack on the Jedi Temple is, of course, also the most (in)famous – and the only one to be depicted on the big screen, as a key turning point in Revenge of the Sith. Once Anakin Skywalker has successfully become Darth Vader, the newest Dark Lord of the Sith, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine can at last invoke the long-dormant Order 66, making all of the clone troopers across the galaxy turn on and kill their Jedi generals. But while this works to cull the vast majority of Jedi Knights out on the battlefield, that still leaves the hundreds, if not thousands, of Order members who remain in the temple itself – which includes the masters stationed at the building, all the scores of younglings and Padawans training there, as well as those Jedi who had non-combat roles, such as archivist Jocasta Nu.

Thus, Lord Vader is given, as his first dark-side assignment, the task of leading clone troopers into the ancient compound, invading it and mercilessly hunting down every last Jedi contained within. In a way, Anakin comes full circle, being the benefactor of the first temple “attack” and, now, the perpetrator of its last assault, and reflects the manipulations of both the Jedi Council and the Sith Lords. It also foreshadows the horrible events suffered by Vader’s son Luke Skywalker watches as his own new Jedi Temple was destroyed in the events portrayed in the Star Wars sequel trilogy.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/star-wars-jedi-temple-attacked-canon/