Star Wars Explains How Luke Learned About Order 66

In the original trilogy, we watch Luke go from moisture farmer to Jedi Knight, but there’s a big piece of history the films never spell out: how he learns what actually happened to the Jedi before he was born.

He grows up in a galaxy where the Jedi are gone, the Empire calls them traitors, and even Obi-Wan and Yoda don’t sit him down and explain the full story.

So when does Luke actually hear about Order 66 by name? Who tells him that the clones turned on their generals, and that Vader led the hunt for the survivors? And what does that moment look like for him?

How Luke First Hears About Order 66 From Verla, Acolyte of a Jedi Survivor (Canon)

After The Empire Strikes Back, Luke is in a bad place. He’s lost his hand and his lightsaber, he’s been told Vader is his father, and he’s realized Obi-Wan and Yoda left a lot out. That’s the version of Luke we see in the comic Star Wars (2020) #5, wandering the galaxy and reaching for anything that might point him toward the Jedi.

He follows a Force vision to an ocean world called Serelia, looking for a hooded woman he thinks might be a Jedi. Instead, he walks into a trap. The woman, Verla, is a former acolyte who survived the Jedi Purge by hiding. When she senses Luke, she assumes he’s another hunter. She snares him with nets, lures him into a cave layered with defenses, and watches how he reacts before she even tells him her name. 

Only after she’s sure he isn’t working for the Empire does she start talking. Luke says he wants to become a Jedi. Verla’s response is basically, you have no idea what you’re asking for. From her point of view, calling yourself a Jedi is a good way to get killed.

That’s when she finally gives him the missing history.

She tells him that near the end of the Clone Wars, when Palpatine took full control, he issued a secret command: Order 66. With that one order, the clone army turned on their Jedi generals and cut them down across the galaxy. Knights, Padawans, even younglings — most of them died in a single sweep. The few who survived did it by running, changing their names, and never drawing a lightsaber in public again.

But for Verla, the worst part isn’t just that the Jedi fell. It’s that the killing didn’t stop there. She explains that after the war, the Empire created a group of dark side hunters called the Inquisitors and sent them after any Jedi who might have escaped. Their boss, she says, was “the monster of monsters… pure, true evil: Darth Vader.” 

Much later in the timeline, we see Luke guide Grogu through a similar kind of memory in The Book of Boba Fett, helping him relive the night the clones stormed the Jedi Temple. That scene is framed from Grogu’s point of view, but it also quietly suggests something else: if Luke can walk a youngling back through that trauma, there’s a good chance he’s seeing those images with him. It’s never stated outright, but between Verla’s story and Grogu’s memories, Luke may have ended up witnessing Order 66 not just as history he was told, but as flashes of the purge itself through someone else’s eyes.

In Legends, Luke Learns About Order 66 Through R2-D2’s Memories

In Legends, the moment comes much later. Luke doesn’t learn about Order 66 between Empire and Jedi. He finds out years after the Empire falls, when he’s already leading a new generation of Jedi and finally starts asking what R2-D2 has been hiding from him.

In Dark Nest II: The Unseen Queen, R2 starts “freezing up” and acting wrong whenever certain topics come up. When Luke digs into his memory, the droid projects an old recording of a young man and a pregnant woman talking in an apartment on Coruscant. The man is Anakin Skywalker. The woman is Padmé Amidala. It’s the first time Luke has actually seen his parents together, alive and talking about the future.

Later, aboard the Millennium Falcon, Luke forces R2 to open another locked file. This one isn’t a private apartment. It’s a wide chamber full of water and rock formations, seen from high above. Threepio points out that R2 isn’t that tall, and the droid admits he copied the footage from the Jedi Temple’s internal security system back when his master stopped speaking to him and was preparing to leave for Mustafar. Luke recognizes the place from his own research: the Room of a Thousand Fountains.

At first the room is empty. Then the shooting starts. Clone troopers in early stormtrooper armor rush in and open fire. Blue bolts slam into stone and water. Younglings and Padawans in training robes run for cover. Some of them try to fight back with blasters or newly built lightsabers, but they’re outnumbered and pushed down under the barrage. 

A Jedi Master steps in to defend them and is cut down by a figure in a dark cloak with a blue blade. He lets the clones move past him and continue the work. When he finally turns toward the security pickup, Luke sees his face clearly: Anakin Skywalker, leading the clones into the Temple.

The recording never uses the words “Order 66,” but Luke doesn’t need the label. What he’s watching is the purge inside the Temple walls: clones turning on young Jedi, and his father at the front of the attack. For him, that’s how the abstract idea of “the Jedi were wiped out” becomes real—troopers firing into a room that was supposed to be a sanctuary, and Anakin walking among them as their commander.