Star Wars: Order 66 Plot Hole Explained

Star Wars: The Clone Wars‘ last season progressed the series through the events to Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. The show revealed how Ahsoka Tano managed to be an Order 66 survivor. Ahsoka also helped Captain Rex escape the programming that had been embedded in his brain. That scene caused a problem with continuity. The events depicted in Star Wars: The Clone Wars didn’t match those described by Rex when he resurfaced in Star Wars Rebels. In that series, Rex told another Order 66 survivor, the former Jedi Padawan Kanan Jarrus, that he and two other clones, Wolffe and Gregor, had removed their inhibitor chips before Emperor Palpatine sent out Order 66. But The Clone Wars saw Ahsoka using the Force to find the chip in Rex’s brain and then getting medical droids to perform surgery to remove the device.

Dave Filoni, who developed Clone Wars and co-created Rebels, helped clarify that discrepancy during an interview with Nerdist while discussing how Ahsoka and Rex learned to live with their parts in the fall of the Republic.

“I think when you reach [Rex] in Rebels and he says, ‘I took out my control chip’ to Kanan as a way of explaining that we all can make a choice,” Filoni says. “I think he sees that as true and I think it’s one way that he’s coped with things. He did get it removed. Kanan doesn’t need to know the minute details of Rex’s life.

“I think that’s where you can get hung up on continuity so much that you don’t actually tell a story that’s about real people. So Rex at that moment tells Kanan the point of view Kanan needs to understand who Rex is and what he’s really about. Later on, do they have a scene where they get into the truth of it that was a lot scarier? Probably, but I think Kanan also knows that. So I think it takes them [Ahsoka and Rex] a long time to cope with everything. The life they knew is gone. It’s tough. It would be hard because with The Clone Wars, I know where it ends. I don’t get to have the parade in this one unless it’s the ‘Imperial March.’

“I do hope that the audience took heart in the fact that Rex and Ahsoka came through largely intact as far as who they are as people trying to help other people. I think that could be a positive out of this. You know that if you watch other series that they can go on to do great good as well. That they can be an inspiration to others and help. That they are both actionable people to do good.”

Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels are both streaming now on Disney+.