Star Wars Inquisitors Explained: The Dark Truth Behind the Empire’s Most Terrifying Jedi Hunters

Few groups in the galaxy far, far away carry as much menace and tragedy as the Inquisitorius. These dark side agents were an elite group of fighters tasked with hunting down the remaining Jedi after Order 66, and this twisted division of the Galactic Empire would either kill the Jedi, Padawans, and Force-sensitive people they found, or convert them to the dark side. They are among the most layered villains in the entire franchise.

What makes the Inquisitors genuinely haunting is not just their power, but their origin. First mentioned in ‘The Star Wars Sourcebook’ back in 1987, the Inquisitorius and the general concept of a group of dark side agents working for the Empire is nearly as old as the saga itself, but the specifics regarding this group and how it operates have evolved significantly since its inception. Across comics, animated series, live-action shows, and video games, their story only gets darker the more you dig into it.

The Dark Side Program Built on Former Jedi

Originally introduced in ‘Star Wars Rebels’, the Inquisitorius is the Empire’s organization of dedicated Jedi hunters, designed to ensure the completion of the Great Jedi Purge following the initial execution of Order 66. These dark side adepts are all former Jedi themselves, who have been broken and corrupted by the Empire. The idea that the best weapon against a Jedi is another Jedi is central to the program’s entire design philosophy.

Palpatine did his best to survey Jedi Knights, making sure to discover any and all secrets and hidden weaknesses they may have had. He especially targeted Knights that held grudges and grievances toward the Jedi High Council, using his guise as Chancellor to manipulate these Jedi and promise them the things that the Council refused to give. It was a recruitment method as calculating as it was cruel.

Charles Soule’s ‘Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith’ Marvel run further explores the early days of the Inquisition, and specifically Darth Vader’s introduction to the order. Palpatine then handed over the Inquisitors to Vader, who would task them with various missions to hunt down Jedi and any Force sensitives, including children, that might threaten the Emperor’s power. The program was never just about surviving Jedi. It was about total, permanent erasure.

Darth Sidious had selected those who would become Inquisitors specifically because he felt they had no chance of becoming powerful enough to challenge him, making them useful tools without being genuine threats to his own rule. That distinction kept the Sith Rule of Two intact while still providing Palpatine with an army of dark side enforcers.

How the Empire Turned Force Sensitive Survivors Into Weapons

The Inquisitorious Program was created by Sheev Palpatine, better known as Darth Sidious, during his time serving as the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Senate, and his recruitment process for the program featured two different methods. Both paths led to the same devastating result, though the journey toward darkness looked different for each recruit.

Fortress Inquisitorius was also where Jedi were taken to be corrupted by the dark side and formed into Inquisitors. If the torture tactics used to corrupt them were not successful, they were killed. There was no middle ground, no mercy, and no escape once someone entered that fortress.

The Second Sister, previously the Padawan Trilla Suduri, and her master Cere Junda survived Order 66 and hid from the Empire for a time, but Junda was eventually captured by the Imperials and subjected to torturous interrogations, finally succumbing and giving away Trilla’s location. Feeling betrayed by her master and subjected to the same torture, Trilla fell to the dark side, becoming one of the first Inquisitors.

Those Inquisitors which had been tortured into servitude were even more sociopathic and held a greater proclivity for homicidal tendencies than those that had joined willingly, with one Inquisitor described as having “something broken” about her, something unnaturally jagged left behind by the Empire’s methods. The cruelty of the program did not stop once induction was complete. It became part of who they were.

Palpatine’s plans for the Inquisitorius actually originate long before Order 66 and the fall of the Jedi Order. The animated series ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ featured one of the Sith Lord’s early attempts at creating Inquisitors in the episode “Children of the Force,” which saw Palpatine operating from a secret base on Mustafar where he intended to put Force-sensitive children who were captured by bounty hunter Cad Bane through slave conditioning. The obsession with Force-sensitive individuals ran deep, starting long before the Empire ever existed.

What Happened to the Inquisitors When the Jedi Were Gone

The Jedi were deemed by the Empire to finally be extinct, and the Inquisitors disappeared. The Inquisitors hunted the remaining Jedi for the first several years of the Galactic Empire, much to the dislike of other Imperial divisions, who viewed them as mysterious, unnatural, and obsolete. Once the threat was considered neutralized, so was the need for the hunters themselves.

The termination of the Inquisitorius Program has yet to be shown in a ‘Star Wars’ property, and there is a dark possibility that the surviving Inquisitors found themselves the victims of a mass ambush similar to Order 66. The irony of hunters becoming the hunted has not been lost on fans, and it remains one of the most compelling unanswered questions in the current canon. Three little-known Inquisitors, the Third Brother, the Third Sister, and the Fourth Sister, still have unconfirmed fates following the end of the Inquisitorius.

Marrok is evidence that Inquisitors could return in some capacity, especially since they are not all accounted for, and there is nothing to stop future storytellers from exploring Inquisitors who may have left the Empire in search of a more peaceful life. The universe has rarely been more open to telling those kinds of redemptive stories. After the death of the Grand Inquisitor in ‘Star Wars Rebels’, a subsequent power vacuum was formed among the Empire’s other Inquisitors, with several competing to fill the role, only to meet their own ends through conflict with both Jedi and former Sith alike.

The Inquisitorius remains one of the richest threads in modern ‘Star Wars’ storytelling, a program built on broken people forced to become instruments of the very evil that destroyed them. With so many fates still unwritten and so many stories left to tell, the conversation is far from over. If you had to choose one Inquisitor whose untold fate deserves its own series or special, who would it be and why?