Skirmish in the Senate

"At last&mdash;the Jedi are no more.''" "Not if anything to say about it, I'' have!"

- Darth Sidious and Yoda

The Skirmish in the Senate was a confrontation that took place in 19 BBY between the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Sidious and the Jedi Grand Master Yoda. The two masters of the Force engaged in a ferocious lightsaber duel, with each making liberal use of their Force powers. Ultimately, Yoda was forced to flee after coming to the conclusion that he could not defeat Sidious. Afterwards, Yoda went into exile while the Dark Lord rushed to Mustafar to rescue his apprentice, Darth Vader, who had been grievously injured by Obi-Wan Kenobi during their duel on Mustafar.

Prelude
"Destroy the Sith, we must."

- Yoda to Obi-Wan Kenobi

The aftermath of the duel between Jedi Master Mace Windu and Supreme Chancellor Palpatine--who was also Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Sidious--left the young Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker in turmoil&mdash;torn between his loyalty to the Jedi and his wish to save his wife, Padmé Amidala, from dying during childbirth, as he had seen in visions.

Palpatine, who had played the role of a mentor to the boy for many years, swayed Skywalker to his side by tempting him with the power to save his wife from death, using a power only available to him through the dark side of the Force. With no prospect of returning to the Jedi Order given his inadvertent role in Windu's death, he saw no other option for himself than to join the Dark Lord's cause. At that moment, Skywalker knelt before Sidious and was inducted into the Order of the Sith Lords as Darth Vader. Sidious then sent him to the Jedi Temple with the 501st Legion and orders to kill all the Jedi within it. The Dark Lord also enacted Order 66, a measure programed into the clone troopers fighting alongside Jedi in the Clone Wars that commanded them to eliminate any and all Jedi around them. These two actions virtually eradicated the Jedi from the galaxy.

Before leaving the Jedi Temple, Vader had used the Temple's signal beacon to transmit a repeating message that any surviving Jedi needed to return to Coruscant. Vader hoped that this message would serve as a deadly lure to the lucky few Jedi who had managed to escape the Purge. Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda, the Jedi Grand Master, both managed to survive Order 66 and discovered the message from the Temple. Suspecting that it was a trap for Jedi survivors, the two eventually made their way back to the Jedi Temple with the intention of recoding the Temple's message beacon. Upon arriving at the Temple, they encountered a clone trooper garrison that had been left there to execute any Jedi who returned as instructed by the beacon. The two Jedi eliminated the troopers and reconfigured the beacon to warn all surviving Jedi to go into hiding. On their way out, Kenobi and Yoda had looked through the Temple's security hologram footage and discovered that Skywalker, Kenobi's former Padawan, had led the slaughter. The two Jedi knew that they had to make an effort to destroy the two Sith Lords for the sake of the galaxy. Kenobi volunteered to take on Sidious while Yoda would fight Vader, unable to bear the thought of striking down his "brother." However, Yoda pointed out that Kenobi was not powerful enough to fight Sidious. Kenobi, on Yoda's orders, left to find Vader on Mustafar while Yoda entered the Chancellery Secretariat undetected, determined to kill Sidious, who had proclaimed himself ruler of a new Galactic Empire.

The duel
"You will not stop me; Darth Vader will become more powerful than either of us.''" "''Faith in your new apprentice, misplaced, may be&mdash;as is your faith in the dark side of the Force."

- Darth Sidious and Yoda

Inside the Galactic Senate Chamber Holding Office of the Senate Building, the Grand Master came face to face with the Dark Lord of the Sith after Force pushing his guards to the ground. Yoda then mentioned that Palpatine, or rather, Darth Sidious had recently gained a new apprentice, while mockingly addressing him as "Emperor." Realizing that a battle between two masters of the Force was imminent, Senate Vice Chair Mas Amedda promptly left the office.

The battle started when Sidious blasted Yoda with Force lightning, sending him flying across the chamber and slamming into a wall. Yoda quickly recovered, and ignoring Sidious' taunts, retaliated with a powerful Force Push that sent the Dark Lord flying over his desk. Yoda declared that Sidious' reign was over, and not a moment too soon. Not wanting to take any risks at his moment of triumph, Sidious attempted to flee but Yoda blocked his way, igniting his lightsaber. Realizing he would have to fight the Jedi Master blade-to-blade, Sidious ignited his hold-out lightsaber. He declared that Darth Vader would become far more powerful than either of them, although Yoda stated that his faith in Vader and the dark side may have been misplaced. With nothing left to be said, the duel began.

Their battle raged through the office, with neither opponent able to gain an advantage. As the fight moved to the Chancellor's Podium, the platform rose through the retractable ceiling into the Grand Convocation Chamber itself. As the duel continued, Sidious found that his movements were being hampered by the small size of the Podium, while Yoda's Ataru style and diminutive stature allowed him to easily jump around the Dark Lord. Pressed, Sidious decided to change tactics and took the high ground by jumping to one of the Senate pods above him. He then began to use the Force to throw waves of these pods at Yoda, but the Jedi Grandmaster used his own powers to dodge from one pod to another, avoiding Sidious's improvised projectiles. As Yoda leapt about, he attempted to re-engage Sidious in lightsaber combat, but the Dark Lord's attack was too intense for Yoda to close the distance.

It was at that very moment, during a match between the embodiments of light and dark, that Yoda realized the Jedi had lost the war before it even started. In the last millennium, the Sith had changed and adapted, becoming a new entity; while the Jedi Order, under his leadership, spent the same time merely training to re-fight the last war. Additionally, Yoda sensed that, while he was tiring, Sidious was slowly gaining strength.

Shaking away his doubts, the tiny Jedi focused himself on an oncoming pod and sent it hurtling back at Sidious. As the pod flew back at Sidious, he realized that he had spread his own powers too thinly to counter the spinning projectile with the Force. He was instead forced to leap from his perch to a lower pod, giving up the tactical high ground. Yoda immediately saw his chance to re-engage Sidious at close quarters and leaped at the Sith Lord, landing on the edge of Sidious's pod and igniting his lightsaber. However, Sidious unleashed a blast of Force lightning at Yoda before he could strike, tearing Yoda's lightsaber from his grasp. Yoda was forced to utilize tutaminis to absorb Sidious's lightning, but Sidious's power was such that Yoda began to falter. Sidious advanced on the diminutive Jedi Master, sending more lightning at him as he closed the distance between the two. However, as he was about to be overwhelmed, Yoda had a sudden realization. Through the Force, he sensed that, though the Jedi Order was broken and the Sith had triumphed, all was not lost. He knew not how or why that might be, but he knew one thing for certain; if the galaxy was to be free from the Sith, he had to survive. With this newfound knowledge, Yoda gained the strength necessary start redirecting Sidious's lightning back at him, coalescing the energy into a blue orb in front of him. However, as each combatant attempted to overpower the other, the orb of Force energy exploded, sending both of them flying.

Sidious was sent tumbling head over heels to the edge of the pod, but having been at it's opposite end when the energy orb exploded, he was not blasted clear of the pod and managed to grab one of its guardrails. Yoda however, had been standing at the very edge of the pod during the explosion, and weighed very little. As such, the blast sent Yoda flying all the way back to the Chancellor's Podium, situated high above the Senate floor with nothing in between but empty space. Yoda struck the Podium too hard to control his landing, and he rolled off the main portion to the edge where he desperately attempted to climb back up. But, exhausted and holding onto a smooth edge, Yoda lost his grip and fell several stories to the Senate floor. Battered and weary, Yoda knew that re-engaging Sidious would be fruitless, and knew through the Force that he needed to escape if the galaxy was to have a chance at freedom. Yoda instead chose to retreat as Sidious cackled in triumph above him. Yoda crawled through the ventilation shafts and eventually dropped into Senator Bail Prestor Organa's airspeeder, escaping into exile.

Aftermath
"Into exile, I must go; failed, I have."

- Yoda, to Bail Prestor Organa

Shock troopers led by Commander Thire were not able to recover Yoda's body, and Mas Amedda was convinced that the Jedi Grand Master had escaped. Sidious assigned Thire and a squad of clones to search for the Jedi, even giving them permission to blow up the Senate building if they wished. Sidious himself had far more pressing matters to attend to, as his unease had progressed to a near-certainty that Vader was in mortal danger. On Mustafar, the Dark Lord found his apprentice near death due to the recent duel where Obi-Wan Kenobi dealt him what seemed mortal wounds. However, Sidious ultimately managed to save his apprentice.

The magnitude of damage in the Senate Rotunda caught the eyes of the Senators. Rumors circulated in the Senate that Jedi Grand Master Yoda had led an attack on Emperor Palpatine himself, and that the ancient Jedi Master had been killed. Through Wookiee Senator Yarua, the rumor found its way to Kashyyyk, including the ears of Chewbacca and Tarfful. Eventually, the rumor reached Olee Starstone and her team of fugitive Jedi.

Having not been able to defeat Sidious, Yoda chose self-imposed exile to the swamp planet of Dagobah, where he would wait until Anakin's twins, Luke and Leia, would be of age to turn their father back from the Dark Side. Years later, on Dagobah, Yoda would train Luke in the ways of the Force. Luke would ultimately go on to rescue his father from the dark side and inspire the latter to defeat Palpatine, bringing balance to the Force.

Behind the scenes
This lightsaber duel in the Senate Rotunda was created for the 2005 film, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. It was unnamed in the film, but an official Hasbro Star Wars Miniatures pack that depicted the duel identified it as the Skirmish in the Senate. According to The Making of Star Wars Revenge of the Sith, Senate hovercams were meant to broadcast the duel across the galaxy on the HoloNet, but this idea was later dropped.

In the novelization, Yoda entered the office from another direction, so no Royal Guards attempted to stop him. Mas Amedda left the office before any exchange was made. Palpatine's Force lightning was deflected by Yoda which blasted the guards into unconsciousness instead of himself being knocked across the room. Yoda then knocked Palpatine to the floor with his physical body instead of a Force Push. At the end of the battle, the lightning energy ball did not explode. Sidious safely leaped to a nearby podium and Yoda followed. Sidious then turned around and blasted Yoda, who was still in the air, back against another podium who fell down to the bottom. Sidious was not knocked over by any blast, but he was described as "a very old, very tired man" after the epic battle. In the novelization, Yoda apparently does not lose his lightsaber in the battle, as he is described slicing his way through the ventilation shafts in his escape from the Senate Building. In the comic, the first half of the duel is a combination of scenes in the movie and the novelization. Yoda entered the office the way he did in the novel, but was blasted by Palpatine as shown in the movie. The Red Guards and Mas Amedda mysteriously vanished after the battle started, and Yoda knocked Palpatine down with his body as shown in the novel. The duel in the comic ends after Yoda disarms Darth Sidious and gets blasted into the air.

In a DVD commentary, Rob Coleman stated that the Emperor's use of Senate pods as weapons was a metaphor for the fall of freedom and democracy brought about by Palpatine's victory.

There is a contradiction between two official sources about whether Yoda truly fainted or was merely playing weak when Sidious shot him with lightning and sent him flying across the office; the screenplay described Yoda as "stunned," while the junior novelization stated that Yoda faked it to surprise Darth Sidious. As the screenplay is G-canon, it is the official version.

Appearances

 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith novelization
 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith junior novelization
 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith comic
 * Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader
 * Star Wars: Purge
 * Robot Chicken: Star Wars