Eh given the insane population of the Republic and ease of travel its impractical to think the Empire could have dwindled their numbers to so few.

I have to disagree here. Galactic population might be huge, but we have been given through various sources, that numbers of the jedi order had been in a steady decline. In this time period we are often given the impression that the Jedi are almost a 'skeleton crew' of the order. In the past The Order fielded their own army with enough members left over to carry on business as usual. This era's Order couldn't even bolster the numbers to make an army (by this I mean multiple jedi units that could engage on multiple fronts.) instead we see all most all of The Order's attention focused on guiding and -serving in- the Republic army while trying to identify the Sith.

It really isn't a small stretch to believe Order 66 would have been more successful than it is being revealed to have been.

Thematically, I can understand what you're saying: every time another survivor shows up, what is special about Obi-Wan, Yoda and Luke feels a bit diluted as far as being "the" last of the old/first of the new or "the" only hope.

But on the logic side of things, it's largely an issue of the series running head-first into the age-old problems of "Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale" and "Writers Cannot Do Math" (both are generalizations, and some authors take time and care... but not usually in a Space Fantasy like SW, the only series to have its own individual section under Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Units on TV Tropes).

If the galaxy has the sometimes-quoted 100 Quadrillion (100,000,000,000,000,000) sentient beings, and we say that only one in every million people is a force sensitive, and even then that only one in a thousand of those actually get found and recruited by the Jedi Order, then the order would still have numbered around 100 Million individuals. You could have a thousand survivors in the EU and that would still mean that the Great Jedi Purge had successfully wiped out 99.999% of the Jedi.

But dealing with numbers of that scale is usually... difficult for making good, emotionally engaging fiction. So instead we see a Jedi Order that, on screen, seems to only number in the hundreds, maybe thousands, and are told that there are 100,000 clone "units" at the start of the Clone Wars (setting aside the entire issue of whether we're supposed to believe "unit" means an individual Clone, or a full regiment - each of which has its own problems).

And we may just have to willingly overlook some absurdities the same way we do with the idea that a thing like a lightsaber could actually exist.

Not sure that many survived. One of the protagonists in Dark Times is a Jedi Knight survived the intial Purge, the Jedi protagonist in Rise of Darth Vader; Roan Shryne was killed by Vader, as well as another Jedi Master, several Knights, and more apprentices a few weeks after his recovery from the events of Mustafar throughout that novel.

Of the High Council the only survivors who would live on would be Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Shaak Ti. Windu, Fisto, Kolar, and Tinn were killed in the confrontation with Sidious, Anakin was turned, Plo-Koon killed as well as Ayala during Order #66. Hell they retconned Evan Piell's (Jax Pavan's master and MC in the Coruscant Nights series) death from surviving a few months after the Jedi Purge to dying a year before the Empire's rise during the Siege arc in season 4 of TCW. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Quinlan Voss' death was retconned in the Revenge of the Sith comic mini-series by George Lucas who personally took an interest in several of Ostrander's pet characters, even having him name-dropped in RoTS' film. Tholme also survived as well.

Some the attested characters who actually survived the Jedi Purge aren't even contextually part of that era or time when it went down. That Dark Jedi Hutt and his human fellow Knight in Planet of Twilight were marooned on a planet and forgotten which explains their surviving by being in the far Outer Rim. Vima, a descendent of Nomi Sunrider, was still hiding for centuries. Celeste was from the time of the Mandalorian Wars and doesn't really coutn either, she was just popped of stasis during the events of Vector mini-series (crossover between KoTOR/Empire/Rebellion/Legacy comics).

Really besides major characters like Obi-Wan, Yoda, Shaak Ti, Voss, Tholme, and the Dark Lady, you have at most a few dozen Jedi surviving a purge that wiped out thousands of their numbers in the days and months following Order#66 going down. The Dark Lady would eventually be hunted down by Vader in time, Kento Marek, Galen Marek aka Starkiller's father was killed while the latter was a toddler. Some others would be converted as fallen Jedi into the Empire's Inquisitor ranks.

Its not THAT many. The problem is having TOO MANY stories focus on Jedi Purge survivors.

I'm pretty sure by the time of A New Hope pretty much only Kenobi and Yoda are the only Jedi left. Aside from like a random Whiphid or something and maybe Rahm Kota. Still a little too much, but not as much as you think.

The rest were killed either as a result of Order 66 on the ensuing Jedi Purge. However the idea that Order 66 alone could take out the entire Jedi Order seems far-fetched to me, if Kenobi survived why not others? After all its not exactly fool proof, many Jedi weren't even anywhere near clones and in RoTS we see Kenobi and Yoda change the Temple signal to warn Jedi away. The EU is merely reaching the logical conclusions of the events we see in the movies.

P.S. DarthDymond the Jedi Order is not nearly that large, I believe they numbered in 10,000 before the war. And I think that nearly 200 are documented to have survived Order 66, that's less that's less than 2% of the Order.

I'm pretty sure by the time of A New Hope pretty much only Kenobi and Yoda are the only Jedi left. Aside from like a random Whiphid or something and maybe Rahm Kota. Still a little too much, but not as much as you think.

Eh, there was a good number of them overall, you had:

• K'Kruhk (the Whiphid you mentioned) and T'ra Saa, who are both still alive in the Legacy era;
  
• Qu Rahn, Vima Da-Boda, and Emptojayos Brand who were all alive after Endor,
  
• Echuu Shen-Jon and any of the canon Jedi appearing in SW Galaxies who at least outlived Obi-Wan;
  
• several whose fates are unknown but may still be alive by A New Hope like Rahm Kota, Dass Jennir, Quinlan Voss, Jax Pavan, Zao, and the whole group of Altisian Jedi;
  
• a few who survived by truly exceptional or bizarre circumstances like Ikrit, Ood Bnar, Vergere and Callista Ming;
  
• and a number of younglings and trainees like Nichos Marr and the other "Children of the Jedi"

and that's not counting those who joined the Emperor like Tremayne or Jerec, or those who were pretty much full-blown Jedi but left the order and/or fell to the Dark Side like Ahsoka Tano or A'sharad Hett.

DarthDymond the Jedi Order is not nearly that large, I believe they numbered in 10,000 before the war. And I think that nearly 200 are documented to have survived Order 66, that's less that's less than 2% of the Order.

That's kind of my point: the numbers involved don't make a whole lot of sense if you stop to think about them.

It's a fictional universe, so if they want to say that only one in every 10 billion people is force-sensitive and that only one in every thousand of them actually was found by the Jedi, they certainly can, and that'll get them to the 10,000 Jedi number. Heck they can say the Jedi find pretty much all of the force-sensitives in the galaxy but only one in every 10 trillion people is born with it.

I'm just saying that the way the numbers play out you end up having to do some serious suspension of disbelief, the same way you do for lightsabers or Death Star lasers.

Eh, there was a good number of them overall, you had:

• K'Kruhk (the Whiphid you mentioned) and T'ra Saa, who are both still alive in the Legacy era;
  
• Qu Rahn, Vima Da-Boda, and Emptojayos Brand who were all alive after Endor,
  
• Echuu Shen-Jon and any of the canon Jedi appearing in SW Galaxies who at least outlived Obi-Wan;
  
• several whose fates are unknown but may still be alive by A New Hope like Rahm Kota, Dass Jennir, Quinlan Voss, Jax Pavan, Zao, and the whole group of Altisian Jedi;
  
• a few who survived by truly exceptional or bizarre circumstances like Ikrit, Ood Bnar, Vergere and Callista Ming;
  
• and a number of younglings and trainees like Nichos Marr and the other "Children of the Jedi"

and that's not counting those who joined the Emperor like Tremayne or Jerec, or those who were pretty much full-blown Jedi but left the order and/or fell to the Dark Side like Ahsoka Tano or A'sharad Hett.

I also expect the new movies will be more definitive on the state of the Jedi if you will post-Endor.

That's kind of my point: the numbers involved don't make a whole lot of sense if you stop to think about them.

 

It's a fictional universe, so if they want to say that only one in every 10 billion people is force-sensitive and that only one in every thousand of them actually was found by the Jedi, they certainly can, and that'll get them to the 10,000 Jedi number. Heck they can say the Jedi find pretty much all of the force-sensitives in the galaxy but only one in every 10 trillion people is born with it.

 

I'm just saying that the way the numbers play out you end up having to do some serious suspension of disbelief, the same way you do for lightsabers or Death Star lasers.

Still farfetched? Maybe, but anyway I was just giving the correct numbers.

I have to disagree here. Galactic population might be huge, but we have been given through various sources, that numbers of the jedi order had been in a steady decline. In this time period we are often given the impression that the Jedi are almost a 'skeleton crew' of the order. In the past The Order fielded their own army with enough members left over to carry on business as usual. This era's Order couldn't even bolster the numbers to make an army (by this I mean multiple jedi units that could engage on multiple fronts.) instead we see all most all of The Order's attention focused on guiding and -serving in- the Republic army while trying to identify the Sith.

 

It really isn't a small stretch to believe Order 66 would have been more successful than it is being revealed to have been.

Lucas included the scene of Obi-wan putting in the beacon warning jedi to stay away only a short time after order 66 began. I think this is his tacit approval of the amount of Jedi in EU. Yoda and Obiwan being "the last two" isn't what made their characters feel special too me. More Jedi being alive than the script of ESB and RoTJ imply isn't a negative.

As for extrapolating on the plot elements of order 66. The Republic Army, thus the clone-troop regiments, were already spread very thinly throughout the galaxy so they any Jedi not stationed with a regiment (which would have been a decent handful) wouldn't have been in harms way immediately. Not to mentioned some Jedi managed to survive the betrayal initially (Yoda, Obiwan). Surely it isn't out of the question that other Jedi managed to survive, even if they were within firing range of clone troops.

 

That's kind of my point: the numbers involved don't make a whole lot of sense if you stop to think about them.

 

It's a fictional universe, so if they want to say that only one in every 10 billion people is force-sensitive and that only one in every thousand of them actually was found by the Jedi, they certainly can, and that'll get them to the 10,000 Jedi number. Heck they can say the Jedi find pretty much all of the force-sensitives in the galaxy but only one in every 10 trillion people is born with it.

 

I'm just saying that the way the numbers play out you end up having to do some serious suspension of disbelief, the same way you do for lightsabers or Death Star lasers.

But aren't you guys over looking the Jedi Service Corps? I mean, its fairly obvious that everyone recruited isn't cut out to be a Knight, so, the Service Corps. Its makes it much more likely there are a lot of "Jedi" out there, and they simply aren't Jedi knights (or full fledged Knights). It also makes it much more likely that the Empire simply won't see it as worth their time to hunt down members of say, the Agricultural Corp (and in "The Rise of Darth Vader" the Emperor tells Vader more than once to just let them go).