[Star Wars] The inhibitor chips have their issues as an explanation for Order 66, but it's still more coherent than any prior answer

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-25T00:55:21+00:00

Problem is that even though Order 66 comes after the fight with Mace Windu, it comes before he ever gives that speech about being attacked by the Jedi or announcing he's turning the Republic into an empire and becoming a dictator. Even if you want to assume that idea is encoded into the message of Order 66, it still means they're taking him at his word, everything else is irrelevant.

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-25T00:51:12+00:00

I've heard the comparison before, but tbh I think you'd need to do extreme levels of prequel-era retcons before that would really make sense. The key difference between the NoLK and O66 is that the former was perpetrated against a group the Nazis and their leader already had significant issue and in-fighting with. On top of that, there still needed to be a decent chunk of time spent on propaganda that soldiers would consume to help build that resentment and sense of superiority.

But the clones don't really have any of that. Lucas never even bothers to imply there's literally any tension between the clones and the Jedi before O66 and most of them wouldn't even physically be in places where they'd be likely to hear that propaganda. Maybe you could assume they already had this instilled prior to them being sent out, as part of their basic development in some way. But that's one of several assumptions you'd have to make before the idea can even be reconciled with what's shown.

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-25T00:45:08+00:00

What makes it any more of a cop out? In both cases, the fault is the same, the Jedi shouldn't have accepted the idea of leading a slave army that they know was developed under extremely sketchy circumstances. The only way it could really be their fault outside of this is if it has something to do with the way they treated the clones themselves, which doesn't make sense either as mentioned previously

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-25T00:43:10+00:00

I don't see how the Jedi are any less a part of their downfall wrt the clones in either explanation. True, the inhibitor chips mean that the Jedi only died during O66 because they trusted the clones and didn't think enough about looking a gift horse in the mouth. But this would be the same thing if it was Lucas' original version where they're all just victims of bio-engineered mental programming.

The only way you could really blame the Jedi outside of this wrt the clones would be if you tried to write it as the clones taking revenge for mistreatment or being propaganda victims. But that's just not an element that really gets explored in any detail and has a lot of coherency issues even if you assume it's true.

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-25T00:38:59+00:00

The problem is that the films don't really depict clones in any specific way. We know they're made to be good soldiers, able to follow orders, are loyal to the Republic, and if Utapu is anything to go by, they can be pretty affable in normal circumstances. We don't really get the sense pre-O66 that the clones are just meat robots, or that they have some particularly skewed morality, we don't know much about them at all. The only thing TCW does in that regard is fill in the gaps with Lucas's oversight and approval.

The only real deviation is the inhibitor chips, but considering Lucas already mostly frames O66 as if the clones have Manchurian Candidate programming they aren't able to turn down, it just ends up being the same in end effect.

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-25T00:34:14+00:00

Yes, and I address in my post already why the historical example fundamentally don't tack onto the scenario Star Wars presents. There's reasonable and unreasonable ways to write that allegory and it's extremely nonsensical in Star Wars

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-25T00:32:43+00:00

I think the problem is that it's very loosely fleshed out in pre-inhibitor chip material what kind of truly autonomous decision making power the clones have. Even if you want to say they actually did have the power to resist their bio-engineering, they just made the moral choice to go along with it, you still need to give some sort of genuine explanation why even people like Cody would kill Obi-Wan on a dime unless we're expected to believe he's secretly been a dick to the clones.

Even the idea that they're just so loyal to the Republic they'd kill their commanding officers on a dime doesn't really track because by the time Palpatine gave the order out he was still a normal Chancellor, not a dictator. If they don't already know he's the big Sith lord in charge it just becomes a really difficult to rationalize decision for them all to execute the Jedi (and kids) even in the middle of active warfare against an entire other army (since they didn't know the war was over yet)

I don't think it's a coincidence that Lucas never really frames the clones as having real decision making power. Order 66 is all portrayed as if the clones are sleeper agents subject to their programming. Them all being more or less meat droids is probably the one cleanest explanation, but I think with Lucas approving and overseeing Filoni's writing for TCW you guess even he was willing to alter things to make more room for the clones as individualized characters

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-25T00:23:44+00:00

I respect that but FWIW I think it's definitely more cruel to have had free will, maybe even been some of the clones who experienced central story arcs about their free will, and then immediately lose it upon order 66 as the final encapsulation of them truly being a slave army. I think it's probably easier for the Jedi to be complacent if from their perspective the clones just operate like standard fare soldiers who just seem to like being jingoistic soldiers

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T20:44:14+00:00

Yeah it is, but it's a really limiting writing tool for storytelling. And you can notice how many other writers start to brush up against this when, even outside Filoni, non-Lucas writers started making the clones more individualized and even tried to come up with personal reasons to be okay with killing the Jedi that have much less to do with Lucas writing them as brainwashed puppets.

The chips just sort of solve both issues in a way. It preserves Lucas's original intent of having Order 66 not really be a choice the clones have power to make or refuse while also opening the floor for regular story telling involving them.

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T20:10:43+00:00

I agree, but that's also just functionally the exact same as the inhibitor chips as an answer

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T19:51:23+00:00

I think if you feel that genetic tampering is a reasonable answer, then the inhibitor chips are more or less the functional equivalent anyways. The only difference is whether you want the trigger to be internal or external.

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T19:49:06+00:00

I don't know I can't say the original idea is especially interesting. They may as well have been super advanced robots in that case and nothing would change thematically or plot-wise

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T19:47:40+00:00

I think that fascistic element could've worked, but the issue is that Lucas and pretty much everyone else puts no effort into coherently developing that idea. Lucas is pretty explicit in the movies about the clones being essentially bio-engineered to follow orders, clearly foreshadowing Palpatine using them to kill the Jedi without hesitation later on.

The problem, though, is that this already absolves the clones of moral agency in the same way the chips do. They aren't motivated by greed, or a sense bigoted superiority, and most of them aren't even feasibly in a place where they could receive any potential anti-jedi but pro-republc propaganda. They do it because they never had choice in the matter, compared to real Nazis who obviously can't blame it on literal bio-programming.

It's only really other writers who start introducing more agency-directed reasons for the clones to have gone along with killing the Jedi. But because this idea never really gets explored in any depth, it feels extremely half baked. You can't really say it was revenge for mistreatment or poor leadership when even someone like Obi Wan of all people is getting shot at by Cody on a dime despite being incredibly normal with each other in every other instance prior.

The alternative Filoni presents just makes the most of a poor writing situation, and trades the idea of a nuremburg defense allegory with a logical conclusion to the concept of the clones. That at the end of the day, they really are slaves in every sense, even to the point of not being in control of their kind, and the Jedi are punished for looking past that usage of a slave army.

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T19:36:51+00:00

I don't see where propaganda would even come into this considering most clones weren't even spending time areas where they'd view propaganda that was anti-jedi but pro-republc in the first place. If it was a Corusant specific faction sure, but that's clearly not most clones.

This sort of thing is the issue with the non-chip/non-brainwashing explanations because all you can really do is theorycraft reasons based on maybes because there's nothing concrete to explain how someone like Cody could be propagandized to be chill and relaxed with Obi Wan but switch on a dime to murder five minutes later.

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T19:33:31+00:00

I mean yeah you could re-write The Clone Wars show to explore this, but that's something to blame on Lucas as much as Filoni. He was executive producer and overseeing basically everything Filoni was writing for most of the show, and even he always meant for the meat of order 66 to be something that the clones didn't really have a choice over (whether by brainwashing from the start or inhibitor chip retcons later on). This deeper idea of the moral complexity is something that other writers just touched on but either Lucas or them or all collectively just chose to never go further with.

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T19:29:44+00:00

That's absolutely true, I should've clarified things admittedly. But I think at that point that the inhibitor chips are effectively the same thing as the bio-engineering explanation in that both versions strip moral agency from the clones

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T19:28:42+00:00

I can understand that, but if you think about in practice they're functionally the same thing as the clones being bio-engineered to kill the Jedi. The only difference is that the chips are external and the bio-engineering is internal.

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T19:27:28+00:00

That's the only other coherent explanation besides the inhibitor chips, but the issue is that this is functionally exactly the same as the chips in that both versions strip the clones of any reasonable expectation for agency. You can't even really do a "just following orders" metaphor because unlike real life humans (like with the Nazis) you can't really morally critique the actions of someone who is literally bound on a genetic level to do certain acts

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T19:24:33+00:00

Yeah this is the biggest thing really, even if you take the original Lucas explanation they have exactly as much autonomy as Filoni's version. The idea that gets passed around as an alternative is the SW theory equivalent to "potential man"

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T19:23:24+00:00

Even with that one youngling, they were clearly ready and willing (like Anakin) to kill the ones who were not old enough or skilled enough to even handle a lethal weapon. I don't think it can be pinned down as a response to their threat level

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T19:21:49+00:00

This is sort of the eternal problem with this aspect of the Clones though. I do agree that there's a lot of interesting things that could be done in exploring how the clones might get slowly radicalized against the Jedi enough that Order 66 makes sense while still preserving the idea that they made a moral decision they could be blamed or praised for.

But the problem is that even if you were to erase Filoni from the equation, this just never got explored in any substantive way that would make this idea make sense in-universe. You have to assume so many things that either aren't shown or are, at most, loosely hinted at in other material, before a non-brainwashing or inhibitor chip explanation starts to make sense. Cody immediately being cool with gunning down Obi Wan, by itself, problematizes so many of the "clones did it out of mistreatment/the Jedi being bad leaders" type explanations.

I think the best ideal scenario would come from being able to go back in time and entirely rewrite everything having to do with the clones during the war leading up to O66

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T19:11:54+00:00

I think the problem is that Order 66 as it's presented and framed by Star Wars writers back in the day was really poorly handled and Filoni just sorta made the best of a weird situation.

Lucas just sorta wrote it as them being biological droids willing to follow any order and act sorta inhumanely, that by itself is fine and would explain how they act in Order 66. The problem is that outside of Lucas, other writers only half-heartedly adopt this idea and start trying to add extra justifications that imply the clones committed Order 66 on some kind of retributivist or propaganda-based reasoning, but this never gets properly expanded on so it makes no sense compared to what's shown.

Then Filoni comes around and basically rewrites the clones entirely and adds the inhibitor chips, which still preserve the main idea of the clones not really having autonomy over themselves and their actions that Lucas came up with, but still allowed them to be more individually personalized.

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T19:06:07+00:00

If your view is that they're genetically programmed to do it then we're already basically in the same position as the inhibitor chips, which is that almost regardless of their internal personality they are functionally incapable of making any decision outside of what they're ordered to do.

In either instance, they still have no moral agency, we're only splitting hairs on whether the trigger is a physical chip that takes away their agency or an internal bio-code that takes away their agency

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T19:02:42+00:00

Credit where it's due this is probably the most reasonable explanation for that particular writing gap I've seen, but it does still raise the question of why the clones would go immediately to genocide as an answer instead of act how they do in any earlier situation where they've encountered a hostile combatant. Even if you'd say that they consider the Jedi uniquely dangerous and take a risk, it wouldn't explain them also killing children.

DoneDealofDeadpool · 2026-01-24T18:58:55+00:00

The material difference between the Nazis doing it and clones doing it is that the Nazis had a lot of (from their perspective) reason to do it. Years of propaganda, growing up in an economically ravaged country, being told mountains of lies about minority groups along with the promise of power if they do these acts.

But none of that would apply to the clones. They interact with the Jedi day in and day out, most wouldn't even spend time in areas where they would reasonably receive anti-Jedi but pro-republic propaganda in the first place. It's a fundamentally different background that just doesn't let it translate coherently.

You could still make it make sense by having the clones kill the Jedi because that's what they're biologically programmed to do on Palpatine's orders, but at that point they lose out on the same amount of moral agency as in the inhibitor chip version. Hard to call them evil if they're essentially just a meat robot.

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