As the audience, we can see the slow slide. Anakin is haunted by visions of losing Padmé, and that fear is the crack Palpatine uses to pull him into the dark side.
But from the Jedi point of view, especially the two survivors who actually watched it happen, it’s a real question. Did Obi-Wan and Yoda ever know the real reason Anakin switched sides, or did they only see the aftermath and the obvious truth that he’d become Vader?
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What Obi-Wan and Yoda Knew for Sure
From the film, it’s clear that Obi-Wan and Yoda return to the Jedi Temple and investigate, and that’s when they discover Anakin has fallen to the dark side.
Through the hologram recordings, they watch what Anakin did inside the Temple, leading the attack and killing Jedi. Worse, they realize that Anakin Skywalker is now Darth Vader. But Yoda still doesn’t know the full “why” behind it. He frames it as Anakin being consumed by Vader, and that’s basically what he and Obi-Wan focus on in that conversation.
Did Obi-Wan Know It Was Because of Padmé
But after the investigation, Obi-Wan goes to Padmé because he needs to know where Anakin is. He asks her, “I’m looking for Anakin. When was the last time you saw him?” and then follows up, “Do you know where he is now?”
And throughout that conversation, Obi-Wan still doesn’t frame Padmé as the reason Anakin fell. He tells her the conclusion first: “Padmé, Anakin has turned to the dark side.” When she refuses to believe it, he gives the proof that convinced him: “I have seen a… a security hologram of him… killing younglings.”
So when Padmé is trying to understand why, Obi-Wan’s explanation stays focused on deception and Palpatine, not on Padmé. “He was deceived by a lie. We all were,” Obi-Wan says. Then he points straight at the Chancellor: “It appears that the Chancellor is behind everything, including the war. Palpatine is the Sith Lord we’ve been looking for.”
Did Yoda Know It Was About Padmé?
If Obi-Wan never fully understood that Padmé was at the center of Anakin’s fall, then Yoda did not know the full truth either.
In Revenge of the Sith, the closest Yoda comes to understanding Anakin’s real fear is during their private conversation about death and loss. Anakin tells him he is having visions of someone close to him dying, but he never says that the person is Padmé, and he never reveals their secret marriage. Because of that, Yoda can only answer him in general Jedi terms. He understands that Anakin is afraid, but not the exact personal crisis underneath it.
Yoda could see that Anakin was struggling with fear and attachment, but he had no way of knowing how deeply Padmé was tied to it all. So when he tells Anakin to let go of everything he fears to lose, he is responding like a Jedi Master to the emotion in front of him, not to the hidden reality behind it. He is giving the right advice in the abstract, but not to the full truth of Anakin’s situation.
And once Order 66 begins, that question stops mattering in the same way. Yoda’s attention shifts completely to the collapse of the Jedi and the urgent need to confront the Sith before Palpatine’s new Empire fully takes hold. By then, the issue is no longer whether Yoda understood why Anakin was afraid. The tragedy is that Anakin has already made his choice.
