Operation: Knightfall

From their initial meeting, Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine, secretly the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Sidious, displayed a keen interest in Anakin Skywalker. Skywalker was a boy strong in the Force who was determined to learning the ways of the Jedi. Palpatine strategically positioned himself as a mentor and father-like figure to sway Skywalker's choices, aiming to eventually make him his apprentice. Consequently, Skywalker placed immense trust in Palpatine, sharing his deepest secrets, including his slaughter of Tusken Raiders on Tatooine. As the Clone Wars neared their end, Palpatine invited Skywalker, by then a Jedi Knight, to a performance of Squid Lake at the Galaxies Opera House. During this event, he recounted The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise, suggesting that there were Sith techniques capable of saving individuals, such as his wife, from death. Later, Palpatine confessed to Skywalker his knowledge of the dark side of the Force, leading Skywalker to realize that Palpatine was the Sith Lord the Jedi had been seeking. Stunned by this revelation, Skywalker fled to the Jedi Temple to inform Jedi Master Mace Windu, who then assembled a squad of Masters to apprehend the Sith.

Within his office on Coruscant, Sidious was confronted by Windu's team. All but Windu were quickly dispatched by the Sith. The battle between Sidious and Windu continued until Skywalker's arrival. Prioritizing Amidala's life over his Jedi commitments, Skywalker severed Windu's arm to protect the Sith Lord, after which Sidious used the Force pushed to send Windu out of a window to his demise. Skywalker then dedicated himself to Sidious's teachings in hopes of saving his wife, receiving the Sith name "Darth Vader." Sidious then carefully admitted that he did not actually know the secret to preserving life, but Vader evidently did not realize what he had said. At that moment, Sidious declared the Jedi Order an enemy of the Galactic Republic, assigning Vader the mission of attacking the Jedi Temple and eliminating the growing "menace."

As Vader prepared for his task, Sidious initiated Order 66, a directive pre-programmed into Republic clone troopers across the galaxy since before the Clone Wars, compelling them to execute their Jedi Generals and Jedi Commanders in the name of the Republic. Within minutes, many Jedi were killed by their formerly loyal troops, although some survived. For instance, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, a close friend and former mentor to Skywalker, was targeted during the Battle of Utapau but managed to escape. Skywalker's former Padawan Ahsoka Tano, though no longer a Jedi, was targeted by the 332nd Division, preventing her from assisting Skywalker after sensing his distress. On Coruscant, a battalion of troopers from Vader's 501st Legion was organized into a [garrison](/article/garrison] under his command, providing the new Sith Lord with hundreds to thousands of troops to assault the Jedi Temple.

Operation: Knightfall commenced with Darth Vader leading the 501st and an elite squad of clone commandos to the Jedi Temple gates, breaching its defenses and attacking its inhabitants. The Jedi, defending their home, fought back fiercely, inflicting casualties on the clone troopers. Vader manipulated a beacon, broadcasting a false message for all Jedi to return to the Temple, leading those who responded to their doom at the hands of the clones. As the Sith Lord advanced on the Temple steps, a Jedi temple guard recognized him as Anakin Skywalker, uttering "Skywalker" before Vader struck him down.

Vader searched the Council Chamber for survivors, finding a group of younglings. A young boy approached Vader, unaware of Skywalker's transformation into Vader and his allegiance to the Sith. The boy inquired about the Jedi's plans, to which Vader responded by igniting his lightsaber and executing the entire group. The intense battle ignited a fire that engulfed the Temple, drawing horrified onlookers who witnessed the ancient structure ablaze.

Witnessing the smoke and flames and realizing the Temple was under siege by clones, Bail Organa, the senator from Alderaan and a Jedi sympathizer, landed on a Tower hangar platform to investigate the fire. After being turned away by the clones, the retreating Senator saw Zett Jukassa, a young Padawan, attempting to escape the massacre. Jukassa, after killing several clones, was overwhelmed and killed in front of the horrified senator. As Organa tried to escape, the clones opened fire on him as well, but Sergeant Fox ordered them to stand down, letting the Senator escape. Elsewhere in the Temple, Vader personally murdered Shaak Ti by stabbing her through the back during her meditation.

During the siege, the Force-sensitive Grogu witnessed the deaths of four Jedi who were protecting him. To keep Grogu safe from the clone troopers, the Jedi sent Grogu to an elevator to meet Jedi Master Kelleran Beq. Beq and Grogu were ambushed by clone troopers to which Beq deflected the blaster fire and they soon fled from the temple on a BARC speeder. In their escape from Coruscant, Beq and Grogu sped through the skies of the city to reach a waiting H-type Nubian yacht while chased by Low Altitude Assault Transports. After a small grouping of Naboo guards held off pursuing clones, both managed to escape the planet aboard the yacht.

In another part of the temple, a group of younglings were busy in a training session under Jedi Master Minas Velti, only for several clones to storm the room and try to kill all present. Velti cut down the clones and ushered her younglings out, where they encountered more clones battling Jedi. On one of the temple's internal bridges, Velti was fatally shot in the stomach but managed to cut down all nearby clones before falling, giving the younglings, led by Reva Sevander, a chance to flee. Before they could escape the Temple, however, they ran into Vader and a group of clone troopers. The younglings, like their fellows in the Council chamber, thought he was there to help but Vader proceeded to murder the entire class of students, leaving only a mortally wounded Reva alive to hide among the bodies of her friends.

Vader also confronted Cin Drallig, the Temple's battlemaster and one of the most powerful Masters in the Temple. After murdering two of Drallig's trainees, Bene and Whie Malreaux, the Sith entered a duel with Drallig; the veteran Jedi fought hard, but ultimately fell to Vader's blade. As the fighting began to die down, Darth Sidious arrived at the Temple to check on Vader's progress, wishing to see if Vader had indeed wiped out all Jedi as commanded. Vader knelt before his master to be congratulated by the Dark Lord, who was pleased by his new apprentice's actions and ordered him to bring peace to the Galactic Empire; Sidious then ordered Vader to travel to Mustafar to eliminate the leaders of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, assembled there by Sidious under the pretense of a safe haven.

Following the Temple attack, Vader returned to his wife at her apartment. At the time, Amidala was unaware that her husband had adopted a new identity and therefore believed that he was still Anakin Skywalker. Amidala's confusion about the attack on the Jedi Temple was replaced by disbelief when Vader accused the Jedi of committing treason and rebellion. Additionally, Vader revealed that he had witnessed Mace Windu's attempt to assassinate the Supreme Chancellor. He disavowed his ties to the Jedi Order and declared his allegiance to Chancellor Palpatine, the Galactic Senate, and Amidala. Vader left his wife on Coruscant to execute the next mission for his master. Before leaving, he told Amidala that his destination was Mustafar, where the Separatist leaders were hiding, and that his intention was to bring a definitive end to the Clone Wars. Vader implored Amidala to remain in the capital and await his return.

Before the fires had been doused, a special session of Congress was called by Palpatine the day after the attack on the Temple. During the assembly, he informed the senators of the Jedi's attempt to usurp control of the galaxy and the previous night's events. He also told them of the Temple's pacification and the clones' efforts across the galaxy to wipe out the Jedi Order in the wake of that realization. To fully sway his audience to his cause, Palpatine delivered a speech claiming the Jedi had orchestrated a rebellion. He also announced that to establish order and security throughout the galaxy, the Galactic Republic would be reorganized as a unified body under his sole, absolute authority, the Galactic Empire.

Following the raid, Masters Yoda—who had managed to escape Order 66 amid the Battle of Kashyyyk and was sought out by Senator Organa immediately following his escape—and Kenobi received the message ordering all Jedi to return to the Temple and immediately recognized it as a trap. Since the emergency Senate session would make it easier to enter the Temple, the two Jedi Masters returned to the Temple during the meeting to take advantage of it. They found the Temple in shambles, fires still burning, and bodies from both sides of the conflict strewn through the halls. Coming across a group of murdered younglings, Yoda examined the body of one Padawan and concluded that he had been slain by someone wielding a lightsaber, a notion that Kenobi could not fathom.

After fighting his way through their former allies alongside Yoda, Kenobi was able to enter the beacon room. There, Kenobi reconfigured the beacon to warn Jedi away instead of calling them to the temple, which was an idea inspired by a question from the youngling Caleb Dume earlier in the Clone Wars. Dume himself had survived the initial purge thanks to the sacrifice of his master, Depa Billaba, and been on his way to Coruscant due to the false message, but received Kenobi's warning through his holocron as he was spotted by Imperial ARC-170 starfighters. Dume was able to escape the Imperial ships, and he ultimately went on to change his name to "Kanan Jarrus." Jarrus eventually became an important member of the early Rebel Alliance, and even trained his own Jedi Padawan, Ezra Bridger.

After successfully altering the beacon, Kenobi accessed the security hologram in an attempt to discover who the lightsaber wielder that led the massacre was, witnessing it recording Vader killing Cin Drallig and his Padawans before conferring with Sidious. Kenobi was shocked by the revelation that Skywalker, his former Padawan, had fallen to the dark side and massacred his fellow Jedi. In order to find him, he went to Amidala, who had been watching the Jedi Temple burn from afar, and stowed away in secret on her ship when she went to confront her husband on Mustafar. This led to a duel between the two Force users.

Before her murder at Darth Vader's hand, Shaak Ti managed to record a message on a holocron urging any future readers to carry on the Order and not let the Jedi die in vain. This holocron would end up in the collection of Grakkus, a Hutt crime lord, and the message witnessed by Anakin's son, Luke Skywalker.

The youngling Reva managed to survive her wounds and escape the Temple. Filled with rage and grief and desiring revenge for her fallen friends, she fell to the dark side and joined the Inquisitorius, serving under the rank of Third Sister with the intention of getting close to Vader and killing him for his part in the massacre. She would also hold Kenobi responsible for the terrible events of that night, failing to prevent his apprentice from falling into darkness and murdering her friends.

The elimination of the Jedi Order and Anakin Skywalker's transformation were first indirectly referenced within the Star Wars original trilogy. However, the 2005 film Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith was the first to depict this event.

George Lucas, the mind behind Star Wars, considered the segment of the raid involving the Jedi youngling and his group essential. His aim was to illustrate the extent of Skywalker's descent from being a Jedi Knight, although he never intended to show the younglings' actual deaths. Nonetheless, another child, Zett Jukassa, was killed on screen. He was played by Lucas's son Jett Lucas.

In the Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series episode "Ghosts of Mortis," the Son presented Anakin Skywalker with a vision of his future, including segments of the events from Revenge of the Sith. One of these visions showed Skywalker raising his lightsaber to strike down a child, immediately following a vision of Palpatine using Force lightning and before witnessing himself strangling Padmé Amidala with the Force just before his duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi. Interpreting these as chronological visions from the movie, and considering Palpatine's scene to be from the showdown with Mace Windu, this would identify the child as a victim of the raid.

Originally, Kenobi and Yoda were to be greeted by a squad of clone troopers disguised as Jedi in the movie. A promotional image of Temuera Morrison as one of these clones is on the second disc of the Revenge of the Sith DVD set, suggesting that they were considered for the movie. This scene can be viewed on the 2014 blu-ray release.

The sourcebook Nexus of Power, released in 2016, details the 501st Legion's siege of the Jedi Temple, but also indicates that Darth Vader ushered clone commandos inside to eliminate the Jedi Order. This implies that the 501st only surrounded the Temple, with Vader and the commandos handling the interior combat. In contrast, the film Revenge of the Sith shows standard clone troopers from the 501st actively fighting Jedi inside the Temple, which contradicts the sourcebook's account. The Disney+ series The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and The Mandalorian support this depiction, showcasing the 501st engaging in the internal battle against the Jedi. Furthermore, both Revenge of the Sith and Kenobi portray Vader leading ordinary clone troopers into the internal conflict. Therefore, Nexus of Power contains an inaccuracy: the 501st not only besieged the Jedi Temple but also participated in the assault within. Consequently, standard 501st troopers fought alongside the commandos deployed during the operation.