7. Order 66
So in Attack of the Clones Lucas pulled a bit of a trick card with the troopers. Without going into expanded universe realms, it could have been assumed the Clone Wars was about the Empire using an army of clones to take over the universe and those clones were the stormtroopers but of course Episode II and III showed us the troopers were actually on the side of the Jedi, or rather, the Republic. Order 66 is a tricky one, especially when you take into account the Clone Wars animated series and the relationships we see formed between the Jedi and the troopers in Episode III. Is Order 66 something built into the clones as a failsafe or are they simply following orders because they are soldiers? Of course to the troopers, nothing has changed. They are still soldiers of the Republic (soon to be Empire) and its the Jedi that have gone rogue. The troopers are simply protecting the galaxy from the bad guys and what Palpatine has done is make the galaxy see the Jedi as the enemy. Order 66 is the culmination of many elements put into place ready to collapse beneath the Jedi. The people were losing their connection with what the Jedi were there for in Episode I. In Episode II the Jedi revealed a secret army ready to fight a war that largely came out of nowhere and in Episode III after a few years of all out war, the Jedi turned on Chancellor Palpatine, a leader that the people had voted in for a longer term and who had been granted higher powers for the peoples interest. Order 66 informs us that the troopers, both clone and/or storm variations follow their masters orders to the letter and going into the original trilogy this is still the case. Anakin/Vader still leads the troopers into battle and they still take on threats to the leadership, groups outside the political control, namely rebels. An interesting question is, do any troopers know who Vader is beneath the mask? Remember there were a fair few troopers present on his retrieval from Mustafar. Did this Darth Vader arrive on the scene out of nowhere? Were the troopers aware of Anakins name change during the Order 66 missions? I guess none of that really matters, but the Prequels do make sure to remind us that the Empire in the original trilogy arent the bad guys in the conventional sense. Its very much their leader whos the bad guy and the Rebellions cause is to get the galaxy back to a pre-Order 66 democracy.