Rise of the Red Blade reveals how two Inquisitors survived Order 66

Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade by Delilah Dawson has revealed how two Inquisitors survived Order 66. The Inquisitorius are Dark Side Force users who serve Darth Sidious and Darth Vader. They are primarily tasked with finding and killing Jedi who survived Order 66, along with hunting and kidnapping Force-sensitive children.

After making their canon debut in Star Wars Rebels, more details have been gradually revealed about the mysterious Inquisitors. In addition to Rebels, the Inquisitors have been explored in stories, including the Obi-Wan Kenobi television series, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and the Darth Vader comics by Charles Soule.

Rise of the Red Blade tells the story of Iskat Akaris, a Jedi who falls to the dark side and becomes an Inquisitor. The novel shows how Iskat and another eventual Inquisitor survived Order 66 despite being Jedi at the time.

Warning: There are major spoilers ahead for Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade. 

When Order 66 occurs in Rise of the Red Blade, Iskat is on a mission with two fellow Jedi, Tualon Yaluna and Sunghi Silpari, along with a group of Republic clone troopers led by Captain Spider.  The mission from the Jedi Council is to investigate the planet Frong, one of many Outer Rim planets attacked by General Grievous and the Separatist droid army at the end of the Clone Wars.

The Jedi don’t realize that the seemingly random attacks in the Outer Rim are meant to draw many of their ranks far away from Coruscant and the Jedi Temple, making the Jedi more scattered and vulnerable when their clones unexpectedly turn on them.

After receiving the command for Order 66 in the middle of the mission, the clones shoot and kill Sunghi. However, the clones do not kill Iskat. Instead, Captain Spider presents Iskat with a holomessage of Darth Sidious, who asks Iskat if she still questions the Jedi Order and longs for freedom and for answers about her past.

When Iskat confirms that she does, Sidious tells the clones to bring her to him. She complies and leaves Tualon to be killed by the clones. It is later revealed that despite being repeatedly shot and left for dead by the clones, Tualon’s deep anger and need for revenge against Iskat and the Jedi prevented him from dying as he turned to the Dark Side to stay alive.

This is exactly how Reva/the Third Sister and the Grand Inquisitor survived in Obi-Wan Kenobi and how Maul survived after being cut in half by Obi-Wan in The Phantom Menace. Reva should’ve died from the wounds inflicted by Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber during the attack on the Jedi Temple and after being run through by Darth Vader’s lightsaber on Jabiim. The same is true for the Grand Inquisitor after Reva plunged her lightsaber through him. Reva, the Grand Inquisitor, and Maul were so consumed by anger and revenge that the Dark Side kept them alive.

While most of the Inquisitors are seen or at least mentioned in Rise of the Red Blade, the novel only shows how Iskat and Tualon survived Order 66. That being said, they seem to provide the template of how most of the Inquisitors likely survived.

Some, like Iskat, were intentionally spared from Order 66 because Sidious knew how they resented the Jedi and that he could use that to make them his servants. Others, like Tualon and Reva, were supposed to be killed alongside all of the other Jedi during Order 66, and were only chosen to become Inquisitors after embracing the dark side to stay alive.

Between Jedi: Fallen Order, The Clone Wars season seven, The Bad Batch, The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and The Mandalorian, there certainly haven’t been a shortage of Order 66 stories in recent years. Yet, Rise of the Red Blade still manages to shed new light on Order 66 while also making it feel shocking and devastating in new ways.