10 Most Brutal Star Wars Movie Deaths

3. The Younglings (Revenge Of The Sith)

Cause Of Death: Killed off-screen by Anakin and his lightsaber.

The fact that George Lucas chose to even imply the deaths of a group of defenceless children is a bold move, and that's without even considering the act itself.

In a way, the effect of the scene is heightened because we're shown nothing - like all those great monster movies that use their central beast sparingly - and instead, we're left to fill in the horrifying blanks ourselves, imagining what the children felt as they were struck down, and imagining Anakin painting the room red with their blood. Thanks, George.

This slaughter takes place toward the end of Revenge Of The Sith after Order 66 has been executed and the Jedi are being purged. Unfortunately for the Younglings, they're Jedi-in-training so they're next on Anakin's hitlist, and he presumably shows no mercy as he wipes them out one by one.

It was an incredibly dark moment that cemented Anakin's turn to the Dark Side, showing that nothing was off-limits in the Empire's quest for dominance, and it took Star Wars to a place that not many family-friendly franchises would dare go.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!