Duel in the Senate

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Battle before: Raid on the Jedi Temple
Battle after: Duel on Mustafar

Duel in the Senate

Conflict

Great Jedi Purge

Date

19 BBY

Place

Coruscant

Result

Sith victory, retreat of Yoda

Combatants
Yoda-Jedi	Palpatine-Sith
Commanders
Yoda	Palpatine
Strength
The Force	Dark Side of the Force
Casualties
None	None

You will not stop me. -Emperor Palpatine

Yoda, the Jedi Grand Master, managed to enter the Chancellery Secretariat undetected, determined to kill the new Emperor, Palpatine, who was revealed to be the shadowy Darth Sidious. Inside the Chancellor's holding office of the Senate Building, the Jedi Grand Master came face to face with the Dark Lord of the Sith after making short work of his guards. Realizing that this would not be a political dispute but a battle between two masters of the Force, Mas Amedda left the office. This marked the beginning of the Duel in the Senate.

1 The Battle
2 Aftermath
3 Behind the scenes
4 Appearances
5 Sources

[edit] The Battle

The Emperor struck down Yoda with Force lightning and Yoda retaliated by throwing the Sith backwards with a very powerful Force push. Palpatine attempted to flee, but Yoda blocked his way and ignited his lightsaber. The Emperor realized he would have to fight the tiny Jedi Master blade-to-blade. He ignited his own lightsaber and the two engaged in a lightsaber duel.

Darth Sidious utilizing Dun Möch to overpower Yoda.

The battle moved on to the Chancellor's podium that rose through the retractable ceiling into the Grand Convocation Chamber. It was there that the Dark lord realized he and the grand master were equal in saber combat, and and further dueling would be useless. In realizing this, Darth Sidious put his weapon away and leapt into repulsorpod while Yoda jumped and landed on a lower pod, and it was at that part of the battle that the Dark Lord got the upper hand. In one of the most extreme examples of Dun Möch ever seen, Palpatine tried overpower Yoda with an avalanche of Senate pods while he himself levitated on one, seeming to grow more amused as the battle progressed. Sidious almost defeated the Jedi Grand Master who, on the other hand, seemed to grow tired.

Yoda deflecting Palpatine's Force lightning.

The tiny Jedi held one pod with the Force and sent it back to Sidious, who avoided it and retaliated by hurling Force lightning at him so intense that it knocked Yoda's lightsaber from his hand. Again finding himself attacked with great intensity, Yoda used the same method to overcome the attack: he turned his enemy's weapon's against him. The Jedi Master reflected the Force lightning back to Sidious in a blast so powerful that it pushed the two masters apart. But while this may have saved Yoda's life, it cost him his last chance of obliterating the Sith. He fell down to the holding office while Palpatine held on to the pod they were on.

Yoda looked up, and heard the Emperor cackling. It was at this very moment of the ultimate clash between light and darkness that Yoda finally saw the truth: he had lost before he started, he had lost before he was born. In the last millennium, the Sith had changed, grown, adapted, become new; while the Jedi Order, under Yoda's leadership, spent the same millennium merely trained to refight the last war.

Yoda understood that this new Sith could not be destroyed by merely a slash of lightsaber or a shout in the Force. He understood that war was not the way to defeat darkness, because war itself had become the weapon of darkness.

With this new insight, and without any power left to continue the fight, Yoda understood that he could not fall right there. He had to share this discovery, and so he fled, crawling through the ventalation shafts and eventually dropping into Senator Bail Organa's airspeeder(It is presumed that some time after that Palpatine had either used the force or his clones to retrieve his lightsaber, which he later would either carry with him or keep it saftly hidden).

[edit] Aftermath

Into exile I must go. Failed, I have. -Yoda

Shock troopers led by Commander Thire were not able to recover Yoda's body, and Mas Amedda was convinced that the Grand Master escaped. Emperor Palpatine had no choice but to assign Thire for the search, as he had to leave for Mustafar immediately—he sensed that his apprentice, Lord Vader, was in mortal danger.

The magnitude of damage in the Senate Rotunda caught the eyes of the Senators. Rumors circulated in the Senate that Jedi Grand Master Yoda led an attack on Emperor Palpatine himself, and the ancient Jedi Master was 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.

[edit] Behind the scenes

During the animatics stage, Steven Spielberg participated in the production of this duel.

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. This idea was later dropped.

The movie does not explain the whereabouts of Palpatine's lightsaber when he starts applying Dun Möch. The following part in this description of the duel is a presumed guess on what happened during scenes.

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 leapt 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, he was described as "a very old, very tired man" after the epic battle.

In the novelization, it looks like Yoda did not lose his lightsaber in the battle, and the book described Yoda "sliced" his way across the service accessway.

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 mysterious 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, the podiums struggle and further engagement is omitted.

After being knocked across the office, whether Yoda truly fainted or merely playing weak is unclear. The Screenplay described Yoda as "stunned", while the junior novelization stated that Yoda faked it to surprise Darth Sidious.