Why Did Anakin Kill the Younglings?

Anakin killed the younglings because Palpatine told him it was the price of saving Padmé. Minutes after he pledged himself to the Sith, his new master sent him to the Jedi Temple with one instruction: show no mercy, because only then would he be strong enough with the dark side to stop his wife from dying. (Revenge of the Sith)

The order came straight after he turned#

The scene that leads to the Temple is short. Anakin has just cut off Mace Windu's hand and watched Palpatine throw him out of a window. He kneels, asks for help saving Padmé's life, and is named Darth Vader. (Revenge of the Sith)

Palpatine then gives him his first job. He says the Jedi will try to kill them both, that every Jedi, Obi-Wan included, is now an enemy of the Republic, and that if they aren't all destroyed it will be civil war without end. The Temple comes first: "Do what must be done, Lord Vader. Do not hesitate. Show no mercy." He adds that only then will Anakin be strong enough with the dark side to save Padmé. (Revenge of the Sith)

What the film actually shows#

Vader marches into the Temple at the head of a column of clone troopers. Inside the Council chamber a group of younglings come out from behind the chairs. One of them says, "Master Skywalker, there are too many of them. What are we going to do?" Vader ignites his blue lightsaber. The film cuts away before anything else is shown. (Revenge of the Sith)

The rest comes from the people who find what's left. Yoda and Obi-Wan sneak back into the burning Temple. Obi-Wan realises that not even the younglings survived, and Yoda finds a Padawan who was killed by a lightsaber rather than a clone's blaster. Obi-Wan replays the security recordings and watches his former apprentice cut down Jedi and kneel to Sidious. (Revenge of the Sith)

He then goes to Padmé and tells her he has seen a security hologram of Anakin killing younglings. She doesn't want to believe it. On Mustafar she tells Anakin what Obi-Wan said, and he doesn't deny it. He says Obi-Wan is trying to turn her against him. (Revenge of the Sith)

Why he went through with it#

He thought it was the only way to save Padmé. Everything Anakin does that night is about the dreams of her dying in childbirth. Palpatine ties the order directly to that fear, and Anakin had already shown he'd cross any line for someone he loved. (Revenge of the Sith)

He'd done something like it before. When Anakin finds his mother dying in a Tusken camp in Attack of the Clones, he kills the whole tribe. He tells Padmé he killed the men, and the women and the children too, and that he slaughtered them like animals. The Temple isn't the first time his grief turned on children. (Attack of the Clones)

He believed the Jedi had turned on the Republic. Anakin had just watched Windu try to kill an unarmed Chancellor instead of arresting him. Palpatine tells him he's the only Jedi with no knowledge of the plot, and from then on Anakin repeats the line that the Jedi are traitors. On Mustafar he tells Padmé the Jedi turned against him and that he has brought peace to the Republic. (Revenge of the Sith)

Interpretation: Palpatine wasn't only clearing the Temple. Sending Anakin there first, rather than leaving it to the clones, made sure his new apprentice could never go back. The film doesn't say this in words, but it's the effect: once he had killed children in the Jedi's own home, there was nothing to return to. (Revenge of the Sith)

The canon epilogue#

Yoda's line suggests no one got out, but the canon series Obi-Wan Kenobi adds a survivor. The Inquisitor Reva turns out to have been one of the younglings in the Temple that night. She says they thought Anakin had come to help them, and that she lived by playing dead among her friends' bodies. Her hunt for Vader, years later, is revenge for that night. (Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Part V")

Everything on this page comes from canon: the films and the Disney+ series. Older Legends tie-ins retell the Temple attack, but the core of it, the order, the chamber and the recording, all comes from Revenge of the Sith itself. (Revenge of the Sith; Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Part V")

Read more#

For the full fall, see why Anakin turned to the dark side, and for his whole life, Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader. The Order he helped destroy is covered at Jedi Order. What happened next is in how Anakin survived Mustafar and did Anakin kill Padmé.