Captain Rex

Rex was a clone trooper who served as a captain in the 501st Legion of the Grand Army of the Republic during the Clone Wars. He fought alongside Jedi General Anakin Skywalker and the commander Ahsoka Tano, becoming a mentor and close friend to the young Padawan. When Order 66 compelled the clones to turn on their Jedi, Rex struggled against the inhibitor chip implanted in his brain, and after being freed of its control he helped Tano escape. He survived into the era of the Galactic Empire and eventually lent his experience to the growing rebellion.

Captain of the 501st#

Rex served as a clone captain in the 501st Legion, fighting under General Anakin Skywalker across the campaigns of the Clone Wars. At the Battle of Bothawui he commanded a hidden line of AT-TE walkers among the asteroids, opening fire on General Grievous's fleet on Tano's signal and destroying the bulk of it. When Skywalker was caught in an ambush during the search for the missing droid R2-D2, Rex and Tano were forced to rescue him.

His record spanned the breadth of the war. He fought alongside Tano and Skywalker to evacuate the Jedi Aayla Secura after the Battle of Quell, helped uncover Doctor Nuvo Vindi's Blue Shadow Virus laboratory beneath the swamps of Naboo, and led surviving clones in the assault on a Geonosian fortress during the Second Battle of Geonosis. On Orto Plutonia he commanded cold-assault troopers investigating the deaths of a Republic outpost's garrison. Late in the war, during the campaign on Anaxes alongside Mace Windu and Skywalker, it was Rex who recognized that the Separatist droids had learned the clones' own battlefield strategies, prompting the mission to infiltrate the enemy's Cyber Center.

Mentor to Ahsoka Tano#

Rex formed a strong bond with Ahsoka Tano, who found in the captain a mentor as she grew into a commander in the Grand Army of the Republic. The two fought together repeatedly, from the rescue of slaves on Kadavo in the campaign against the Zygerrian Slave Empire to the training of the Onderon rebels against their Separatist occupiers. Tano respected the clones as individuals and got along well with them, telling war stories with the troopers and learning a great deal from them over her years as their commander.

That trust carried through to the war's final operation. During the Siege of Mandalore, Tano relied on Rex's scouting reports as they hunted Maul through the city of Sundari, and he warned her that if Maul could not be found, the entire siege might be playing into the Sith Lord's plans.

Order 66#

In the command center on Mandalore, as Tano sensed that something terrible had happened to Skywalker, the clones around her suddenly turned their blasters toward her in accordance with Order 66. Rex raised his own blasters and asked the troopers to lower theirs so that he could kill her himself, a tear rolling down his face as he fought against the inhibitor chip, an organic brain implant that compelled every clone to comply with the directive.

Tano helped free Rex from the chip's control, and the two fought their way clear of the remaining troopers. With the escape pods destroyed, they took a shuttle, and Tano revealed that she had freed Maul as a diversion. To disappear from the Empire, Rex and Tano faked their deaths, burying a clone trooper in Rex's armor along with her lightsabers before he departed the gravesite.

Service to the rebellion#

Rex survived into the era of the Galactic Empire. Years later, Tano suggested that the crew of the Ghost seek him out, believing he could help their rebel cell. She had been sending him transmissions that went unanswered, and had heard he might be in the Seelos system. After the crew won him over on the desert planet Seelos, Rex supplied them with a datacard listing Republic installations across the Outer Rim and Mandalore, and after fighting off an Imperial assault he agreed to join the Rebellion. Reunited with Tano after many years apart, he remarked that she had grown old, and she replied that it "had to happen sometime" before the two embraced. When the rebels later prepared for the mission to Malachor, Rex contacted Tano and offered to join them, though she declined his help.