10+ Tragic Fates of Inquisitors Worse Than Death

We all remember the Inquisitors as lightsaber-spinning Jedi hunters, cold, ruthless, and loyal to the Empire. But if you’ve looked past the surface, you know their stories aren’t that simple. Behind the masks and the violence were broken people, former Jedi, lost Force-sensitives, and victims of Palpatine’s system, all reshaped into weapons.

But here’s the thing: the Empire doesn’t care about loyalty. It uses you until you’re no longer useful—and then it discards you.

Some of these Inquisitors were killed in action. Others were hunted down by the very master they served. And a few? They lived on—but what was left of them wasn’t really living. Their endings weren’t clean. They were cruel, messy, and in some cases, far worse than death.

In this list, we’re not just talking about who died. We’re looking at the Inquisitors whose fates were brutal, tragic, and unforgettable—the ones whose ends tell us everything we need to know about what it really meant to serve the Empire.

1. The Grand Inquisitor

Let’s start with the highest-ranking Inquisitor that all of us know—the Grand Inquisitor. He was a former Jedi Temple Guard, and I think we all remember that shocking moment when the Rebels series revealed his real identity to us. What really gets me about his story is what the Star Wars canon comics tell us about why the Grand Inquisitor chose to betray the Jedi and join the Empire—he desperately wanted access to the Jedi knowledge from the Temple’s archives that had been denied to him by Chief Librarian Jocasta Nu.

In Rebels, we see the Grand Inquisitor meet his apparent end during his duel with Kanan and Ezra aboard the Sovereign. Rather than be captured, he lets go and falls into an explosion, choosing death. But before that, he warns Kanan with a haunting line: “There are some things far more frightening than death.”

At the time, it felt like a mysterious threat—but it turns out that line meant more than we realized.

As it turns out, the Grand Inquisitor’s fate in the Rebels series wasn’t the end. We learn more about what happened to him when Darth Vader later used his spirit to try to capture Luke Skywalker in the comics—specifically Star Wars (2020) issue #6, written by Charles Soule. In this issue, we finally see the Grand Inquisitor once again, but here’s the terrifying part: at this point in the Star Wars timeline, the Grand Inquisitor is actually dead, but his spirit is still being used by Vader. Vader bound his essence to an ancient High Republic–era Jedi outpost on the planet Tempes, turning him into a guardian trap for anyone seeking Jedi knowledge.

Later in the comic issue, we discover that Luke was on his way to find a new lightsaber after his devastating battle with Darth Vader on Cloud City that we witnessed in Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. When Luke enters the abandoned Jedi outpost, his first encounter is with the Grand Inquisitor’s burning spirit. After Luke defeats him in battle, Darth Vader arrives to check on the scene, and we get to witness one of the most haunting exchanges in Star Wars. The Grand Inquisitor, desperate after serving as a tormented ghost for so long, pleads with Vader: “I have served…for so long. Will there never…be a chance…of release?”

But you know what’s truly chilling? Vader’s cold response: “You are but a tool, shaped to serve my purposes. You will…continue.”

However, Vader denied any hope of freedom, and the Grand Inquisitor accepted his fate as being an eternal ghost servant for Vader. In his final moment before disappearing, he repeated those haunting words we first heard in Rebels: “There are worse things… than death.” It gives me chills every time I think about how right he was about his own fate.

2. First Brother (Marrok)

After the fall of the Empire, the Inquisitorius was believed to be dismantled. But one of its remnants survived—Marrok, a masked warrior once known as an Inquisitor. Though his official rank was never stated in canon, many have speculated that he may have held the title of First Brother, making him one of the few known Inquisitors still active in the New Republic era.

According to StarWars.com, Marrok had once been a Jedi before falling to the dark side and joining the Empire’s secret Jedi-hunting division. Long after the Empire’s defeat, he resurfaced as a mercenary in service to Morgan Elsbeth, aiding her mission to locate Grand Admiral Thrawn. Armed with a double-bladed spinning lightsaber and clad in black armor, Marrok was deployed to eliminate Ahsoka Tano and Sabine Wren.

On the world of Seatos, Marrok confronted Ahsoka in a quiet duel beneath the forest sky. The fight was short. Ahsoka, composed and precise, broke through his defense with a clean strike across the torso. As Marrok staggered and fell, a cloud of dark mist escaped his body, suggesting he had been kept alive—or reanimated—through Nightsister magick rather than natural means.

Whatever his true identity or title, the end was the same. Stripped of purpose, hollowed by sorcery, and discarded by the masters he served, First Brother died without legacy or redemption.

3. Second Sister (Trilla Suduri)

We first met the Second Sister in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, but her story goes deeper—and darker—than most Inquisitors. Before she joined the Empire, she was Trilla Suduri, a Jedi Padawan trained by Cere Junda during the Clone Wars. When Order 66 was executed, Cere and Trilla went into hiding, but they were eventually captured by the Empire. Under torture and isolation, Trilla was broken. She turned against the Jedi and became one of the earliest and most lethal members of the Inquisitorius.

As the Second Sister, Trilla hunted Force-sensitive children across the galaxy. She was ruthless, calculating, and fueled by a sense of betrayal—believing that Cere had abandoned her to the Empire. Her pursuit of Cal Kestis was relentless, and despite the darkness she embraced, glimpses of pain and doubt still surfaced.

Eventually, Cere confronts her, trying to reach the person she once knew. But it’s too late. Trilla’s emotional defenses falter, and in that moment of hesitation, Darth Vader arrives. He doesn’t give her a chance to speak. He calls her weak and kills her without mercy. Her final moments aren’t just tragic—they’re hollow. After everything she did for the Empire, she’s discarded the moment she hesitates.

4. Third Sister (Reva Sevander)

We saw just how far the Empire would go when they took someone like Reva Sevander and turned her into the Third Sister. She wasn’t just any recruit—she was a survivor of Order 66, a youngling at the Jedi Temple who played dead among the bodies of her fellow initiates after witnessing Anakin Skywalker slaughter them.

She grew up with hate burning inside her—not just for the Jedi who failed to protect her, but for Darth Vader himself, the monster who killed her friends and left her for dead. When the Empire found her, they didn’t see a victim—they saw potential. Reva became an Inquisitor, and she used the position to get closer to Vader, hiding her true goal: revenge.

In the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, we watched Reva rise through the Inquisitorius ranks through cruelty, manipulation, and raw ambition. She hunted Obi-Wan relentlessly, hoping that delivering him to Vader would earn her a chance to strike when he least expected it. But when she finally tried, Vader saw it coming. He toyed with her, disarmed her without ever drawing his own weapon, and left her wounded and broken.

Somehow, she survived again. But after that failure, she was finished as an Inquisitor. Cast out, humiliated, and bleeding on the floor, Reva could’ve stayed down. Instead, she went after the next target: Luke Skywalker. Not because she wanted to kill him, but because she didn’t know what else to do with her pain. In the end, she couldn’t go through with it.

She returned the boy to his family and walked away from the Empire, no longer an Inquisitor, but not exactly redeemed either. Her fate after that remains uncertain. But what’s clear is this: the Empire twisted her pain into a weapon and then discarded her the moment she cracked. She survived death twice—but never really escaped it.

5. Fifth Brother, Seventh Sister & Eighth Brother

We saw the Empire send three Inquisitors to Malachor: the Fifth Brother, the Seventh Sister, and the Eighth Brother. Each one had hunted Jedi survivors before—but none of them were prepared for what waited in the ancient Sith temple.

The Fifth Brother was pure brute force, always the first to charge in. The Seventh Sister was cunning, skilled in close combat and interrogation. The Eighth Brother, by contrast, was quieter, more agile, more evasive, using stealth and mobility rather than overwhelming power. His original mission wasn’t to kill Jedi—it was to hunt down Maul, the former Sith Lord who had re-emerged on Malachor.

But once all three Inquisitors were drawn together, they became prey instead of hunters.

Maul killed the Fifth Brother first, with a single devastating strike. The Seventh Sister tried to defend herself, but he disarmed and executed her with ruthless efficiency. Then came the Eighth Brother. Cornered and outmatched, he tried to escape using his spinning lightsaber as a rotor to fly off the temple’s upper platform.

It didn’t work. The blade mechanism was damaged during the fight. As he lifted into the air, it failed—and the Eighth Brother fell to his death in silence.

Three Inquisitors sent to do the Empire’s will—all dead within minutes.

6. Sixth Brother

When the Inquisitorius was formally introduced to Darth Vader by Emperor Palpatine, the message was clear: they were not equals. In Darth Vader (2017) #7, Vader is tasked with training the Inquisitors in the ways of the dark side—and his first lesson is brutal. During a live sparring session, he cuts off the Sixth Brother’s lower left arm without hesitation.

The Sixth Brother survived the lesson, outfitted with a cybernetic replacement, and continued serving the Empire as a Jedi hunter. But his arrogance remained intact—until he encountered Ahsoka Tano.

In the novel Ahsoka by E.K. Johnston, set about a year after Order 66, the Sixth Brother tracks Ahsoka to the moon of Raada, where she’s living under a false identity. When he senses a Force user among the settlers, he believes it’s his chance to make a clean kill and impress the Empire.

But Ahsoka doesn’t run. When the Sixth Brother confronts her in the forest, she uses the Force to destabilize the unstable crystal in his spinning lightsaber. It explodes in his hands, killing him instantly. She then recovers the surviving kyber crystals, purifies them, and uses them to forge her new white lightsabers—a symbol of who she’s become outside the Jedi and Sith.

The Sixth Brother was shaped by pain, trained through fear, and ultimately destroyed by someone who had walked away from both. He died alone, overconfident, and unremembered—just another broken tool of the Empire.

7. Ninth Sister (Masana Tide)

The Ninth Sister, once a Mirialan Jedi, was turned into one of the Empire’s most physically imposing Inquisitors. Towering in height and strength, she stood out not only for her brute force but for her twisted sense of humor and psychological tactics. She enjoyed hunting Jedi—and took pleasure in making them suffer.

She played a major role in the comic Darth Vader (2017), helping Vader track down surviving Jedi across the galaxy. She survived ambushes, sabotage, even direct confrontations with rebellious Force-sensitives. But her most well-known role came in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, where she was sent to hunt down Cal Kestis.

Their conflict spanned across the forests of Kashyyyk, where she attempted to overpower and manipulate him, but Cal wouldn’t break. Eventually, the two faced off in a final duel. The Ninth Sister underestimated him, believing that his inexperience and trauma made him weak. She was wrong.

Cal defeated her in single combat, and in the final blow, he severed her hand and sent her plummeting from the Origin Tree’s heights. The game leaves her fate ambiguous, but the Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars novel, set between Fallen Order and Survivor, confirms what many suspected: she survived the fall.

But surviving didn’t save her.

By the time she reappears in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, the Ninth Sister is changed. More machine. More rage. What’s left of her mind has decayed into cruelty and fury. Cal finds her again—this time on Coruscant—and they fight one last time. She’s even more dangerous now, but she’s lost the edge she once had. Cal doesn’t hesitate. He kills her, ending what remained of the Inquisitor she had become.

8. Tenth Brother (Prosset Dibs)

Before he became the Tenth Brother, he was Prosset Dibs, a Jedi Master who served during the Clone Wars. But Dibs was disillusioned by the Republic, seeing it as corrupt and unworthy of Jedi loyalty. During a mission alongside Mace Windu, he questioned the Jedi Council’s role in the war and attacked Mace. For that, he was arrested and sentenced—later falling to the dark side and joining the Inquisitorius.

As the Tenth Brother, he retained a degree of tactical discipline, commanding Purge Troopers and deploying them with precision. He appears prominently in the Darth Vader (2017) comic arc “Burning Seas,” where Vader and the Inquisitors are sent to the planet Mon Cala to flush out Jedi survivors.

That mission is where everything unraveled.

The Jedi they were hunting was Ferren Barr, a survivor who understood the Inquisitors better than they expected. Using the Force and a deep knowledge of their pasts, Barr didn’t fight them directly. Instead, he turned their own clone troopers against them, reawakening Order 66 protocols embedded deep in their programming.

In the chaos, Tenth Brother is caught off guard. The Purge Troopers he commands suddenly see him not as an Inquisitor, but as a Jedi. They open fire.

Prosset Dibs, who had once turned on his Jedi brothers, dies at the hands of clone troopers carrying out the very order he now enforced. He had abandoned the Jedi. Embraced the Empire. Killed for them. But in the end, Order 66 didn’t care. It killed him anyway.

9. Eleventh Brother

The Eleventh Brother was one of the last active Inquisitors we’ve seen chronologically, and his death marked the closing chapter of the Inquisitorius during the height of the Empire. By the time we see him in the short episode Resolve from Tales of the Jedi, he’s already alone—no backup, no support from the Empire, and no fellow Inquisitors at his side.

His mission was to track down Ahsoka Tano, who had vanished after the Clone Wars. Living under a false identity on a remote farming world, Ahsoka had chosen isolation over conflict. But when she used the Force to save a fellow villager, word reached the Empire—and the Eleventh Brother arrived.

He came expecting fear. Instead, he found resolve.

Burning the village to the ground, he tried to draw Ahsoka out with cruelty. It worked—but not the way he intended. Ahsoka confronted him with no lightsaber, no armor, and no allies. He activated his spinning red blade and went in for the kill.

She disarmed him in seconds. No spectacle. No prolonged duel. She took his lightsaber and killed him with one clean, decisive motion.

10. Thirteenth Sister (Iskat Akaris)

The Thirteenth Sister, known as Akaris, was part of the Inquisitorius during Darth Vader’s hunt for Jedi survivors after the rise of the Empire. Alongside her partner Tualon Yaluna, she participated in a mission to kill Jedi Master Koth Vahado and recover his Force-sensitive child. The mission was a success—but what followed wasn’t a celebration. It was an execution.

After returning to the Inquisitorius headquarters, Akaris and Yaluna shared a rare moment of connection. They spoke about what might happen after the Jedi were gone, what their future could look like. But Vader saw that connection as weakness. Without warning, he ignited his lightsaber and attacked both Inquisitors. The Grand Inquisitor questioned whether this was another test, but Vader gave no answer.

The two fled, realizing they were now targets. Akaris called it plainly: Vader didn’t need a reason to kill—he just did. And Yaluna had stepped in to protect her. That moment of defiance sealed their fate. They tried to run, hijacking airspeeders and even fighting Vader mid-chase through the city.

Remarkably, they managed to injure Vader—hurling a crashed speeder into him and sending him through a building. For a moment, they believed they had succeeded. Akaris even stood over him, lightsaber in hand, ready to finish it. But Vader was still alive.

With the Force, he froze them both mid-strike. In a single, cold act, he impaled them with each other’s lightsabers, killing them instantly.