Star Wars: 5 times the Jedi messed up and doomed the galaxy

The Jedi were the good guys in Star Wars. They were guardians of peace in the galaxy. That doesn’t mean they were always great at their jobs.

It’s impossible to watch the Star Wars prequels without drawing one massive conclusion— The Jedi were not at the top of their game. What a rough 13-year stretch for the guardians of peace and justice — and not just because they were dismantled by the ultimate long con devised their archenemy of thousands of years. Bad decision after bad decision from the Jedi Council put them in a bind.

Just like with any spiritual order that is put in a position to be systematically eradicated by the very entity they were sworn to protect, questions have to start at the top.

Not the best efforts by the Jedi Council. Yoda was practically sleepwalking through two and a half movies before waking up a little too late. Sorry Yoda, meditating on every tough decision wasn’t exactly the way to go.

Nine hundred years of training Jedi obviously took its toll, and everyone on the Jedi Council just sat back and enabled bad decisions. The Jedi council was legitimately concerned with Yoda’s mental state when he claimed to hear the Qui-Gon’s voice through the Force, but not when he agreed to keep using the Clone Army after one executed a Jedi general? The management skills were sorely lacking.

The extermination of the Jedi was tragic, but it’s tough to ignore the role the Jedi played in their own destruction. It really seemed it could have been avoidable if they made better decisions. Or at least paid better attention.