...which could mean nothing.

Nick Gillard interviewed by IGN / Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith Novelization written by Matthew Stover / Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

Bonus:

Kanan and Cal, who almost certainly knew each other (to me), are circling the galaxy around each other. They both know Saw Gerrara. Gungi goes back to Kashyyyk. YODA IS STRAIGHT CHILLING. Ahsoka is running an intelligence agnecy. And like, that's what, 5 people? I know there's a handful of more, but even if there's a hundred? Instead of 10000? It's not much, its obviously about their decimation, but they're all, at least for awhile, under the impression that they are lone survivors. They all have to shed everything that identifies them as Jedi, they see their temple desecrated as the palace of a tyrant. They cut their braids and shed their robes, they hide their lightsabers. They find new families, new roles, all assuming the Jedi are extinct.

AND YET. They are all pulling in the same direction. They all remain true to the Jedi they are. Most are involved in the rebellion, some train students, all of them shine in the galaxy even though it's an offense punishable by death.

It never mattered to the Emperor to get every last Jedi ever. It was about destroying their culture, it was about scattering them, breaking their will, and making sure they FELT alone.

It works, for awhile. But as we are shown over and over, being a Jedi is not about any of that. Being a Jedi is about hope, about goodness, about the peace and light that you carry with you, that sustains you and supports you, it's about offering yourself up as a vessel for that peace and hope to manifest itself around you no matter the consequences.

Imagine the survivor of a genocide. A Jedi on the run, desperate and hungry and grieving, running into a little kid just as lost as her and seeing that LIFE in him. Feeling the FORCE in him. What would that have done to her after feeling everyone she knew and loved ripped away from her. But here is this kid and he needs help and maybe she does, too. Maybe they can help each other. And so she folds him under her wing just as any Jedi would have done. She teaches him the ways of her people, knowing that their way of life lives on in her and that she is passing it on to a new generation. And that probably hurt. It probably hurt SO much. Because she can’t give him what she could have if the Order was still alive. And he’ll never understand what it means to be part of something so beautiful and long-lasting. But she does what she can, and they maybe never would have met if Order 66 didn’t happen. And it’s an awful thought, the worst kind of thought, but she can’t help but be relieved they found each other. Because she loves this lost little kid and maybe they’re broken together, but they’re more whole together, too. And maybe without Jod she could have run and hid forever. Maybe she couldn’t have, plenty Jedi were caught and murdered. But she knew the risk and she took it- and the way Jod talks about it (“they made me watch”) makes me think that he feels he’s responsible for her getting caught. And it makes me wonder how she felt when she was caught. Knowing she was one of the last of her kind, and that this kid was going to be alone again. Orphaned in a completely new, terrible way.

And I wonder, too, if looking after the kids reminded Jod of his old Jedi Master. And maybe he thought “I can’t get attached because then they’ll catch me too and I’ll die just like her.” And you know what, Jod? It did happen that way. You got caught because of those kids. But only because you forgot what it means to be a Jedi, which is to say that after your Master died you tore out that softness within you. Abandoned love for fear. Exchanged generosity for greed. And it’s true grief and trauma changes people. That a little kid alone in the galaxy does what they can to survive. But Jod isn’t a little kid anymore and it doesn’t excuse the choices you make. It’s a wretched world, one without a Jedi, and Jod suffered all the more for it.

Look at what happens directly before he does it: he's beat to shit, leg in complete fucking agony, losing the fight with Vader and there's no two ways about it. He's given it his all, his aggression and his rage and his desperation and all his tricks, and Vader just keeps meeting him head to head and stopping him in his tracks. Vader holds back Maul's blade with his bare hand, and Maul may do the same, but then Vader gets his metaphysical hand around Maul's windpipe and absolutely ragdolls him. He and Daki are only barely holding back the inevitable—the full-force fucking tide of the Dark Lord of the Sith. If he keeps fighting, he dies, and Maul is above everything else a survivor.

But look at what else he does. He looks back at where he knows Devon is fighting the remaining Inquisitor; he's hearing her cry out, and he's hearing her lose; he's running the numbers and knows there's no winning this now. He says "no", a whisper under his breath, not desperate but resolved. He makes the decision.

It's a chess move: sacrifice the knight to save the queen (or the pawn he's planning to get to the other side of the board, at least).

And then again, when Vader catches up to Devon and is wailing on her, Maul says "no" and visibly overexerts himself bringing those ruins down on Vader so they can escape. He even hands over a piece of himself, of his old life, maybe even of his soul, to Devon when she loses her Jedi saber fighting the Inquisitor just before.

But honestly, I think it may even go deeper than the utility of it all.

In some small way, even if it's something that doesn't even really make a difference to the outcome, I think Maul needed to have a hand in Daki's death rather than just letting nature (or rather Vader) take its course. Maybe it's remnant Sith bullshit, betraying and killing Masters and taking apprentices, or maybe it's something buried in his psyche. If he has a hand in Daki's death, then if Devon ever finds out, that betrayal will be more fodder for her to use the dark side with. As ever, that pathological need to always have a hand in his own downfall—self-sabotage disguised as proaction.

Anakin was never meant to be likable in the traditional Hollywood way. He is a tragic hero. He was supposed to fuck up everything—especially himself. But the idea that Anakin needed “fixing” to be a good fictional character is as old as the prequels themselves. It’s usually tied to the audience’s inability or unwillingness to see Anakin Skywalker as a tragic hero, as a victim, as an emotional wreck, or simply as someone who is not a classical hero—or someone they don’t see themselves as.

Let’s not forget that before the prequels, all we really knew about Anakin was that he was Luke’s father and Darth Vader. Some people expected Anakin to be the ultimate badass male fantasy type, or a little psychopath from the womb. That’s why the prequels were such a hard swallow for some fans. The truth of who Anakin really was clashed hard with the fantasy and expectations they had built around him.

All that being said, I’m glad George had the courage to have Anakin slaughter everyone. Not only does it make sense when you look at everything he does later as Darth Vader, it also illustrates that one action—no matter how horrible—did not prevent Anakin from being good and heroic afterward. It’s as if he’s saying: look, a person capable of committing these heinous acts is also capable of committing selfless, heroic deeds. That’s why Luke ends up saving both his father and the galaxy. In that scene, George plants the seed for Darth Vader’s most cruel atrocities, but also the seed of Luke’s faith in his father.

In the end, the Anakin who married Padmé, who trained Ahsoka, who cared for the clones, who freed slaves, and who fathered Luke and Leia is also the Anakin who slaughtered women and children. In the same way, the genocidal Darth Vader is the one who killed Palpatine and helped save the galaxy.

IMHO, if Anakin hadn’t killed everyone—if the Tusken massacre had never happened just to keep him likable—the character would have lost so much of his impact and complexity.

It’s like the people who claim Padmé cheating on Anakin with Obi-Wan would have been a better motivation for his turn to the dark side.