Star Wars: Here’s How Many Jedi General Grievous Killed
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One of the things that we know about General Grievous is that he hated the Jedi with every fiber of his entire robotic body, which was why he even became a cyborg. He wanted to be strong enough to fight or kill a Jedi, so he allowed the Separatists to turn his body into a killing machine. Of course, this allowed him to match the prowess of the Jedi in battle. So, how many Jedi did General Grievous kill?
The unofficial tally of the Jedi that General Grievous killed is 16. In ‘Lair of Grievous,’ it was shown that he had previously killed 13 Jedi before killing the young Jedi General Nahdar Vebb. In the comics, he also killed two more Jedi, totaling the tally to 16. However, he was strong enough to defeat Jedi Masters.
General Grievous may have been a Jedi killer, but the thing is that we never actually saw him killing a true Jedi Master. In that regard, he was strong but not strong enough to overwhelm some of the strongest Jedi in the storyline of Star Wars. Still, Grievous proved himself strong enough to defeat younger Jedi, which is why he was still formidable. Now, let’s look at how many Jedi General Grievous killed.
General Grievous, the Jedi killer
General Grievous was one of the most dangerous assets that the Separatists had in their battle against the Republic during the Clone Wars. Of course, that’s because he was created to be superior to a droid and any ordinary biological organism. In fact, he was a combination of both because he was a cyborg.
But Grievous wasn’t always a cyborg. He was a Kaleesh warrior who became the strongest of his kind. The Kaleesh were rather primitive warrior people who loved wars and battle, and the strongest among them were the most respected. As such, Grievous earned the respect of his people due to how he rose up as the strongest of his kind.
However, the Jedi had to intervene in one of the Kaleesh wars with another race. The Kaleesh were utterly defeated as Grievous learned firsthand that not even the strongest of his kind were a match to the Jedi and their ability to wield the Force.
Due to the penalties that the Republic imposed on Grievous’ people, he learned to despise both the Republic and the Jedi. He was quick to allow the Separatists to turn him into a cyborg so that he could become strong enough to match the skills of a Jedi.
Grievous trained in the ways of lightsaber combat under none other than Count Dooku. With his new robotic body and lightsaber skills, he could fight the Jedi on par and was one of the strongest assets that the Separatists had. And that’s because he was one of the few people in the Separatists’ droid army capable of fighting and killing a Jedi.
Grievous killed a lot of young Jedi
As General Grievous proved to be a very strong warrior for the Separatists during the Clone Wars, he could kill many Jedi. He was often sent to deal with the Jedi on several different missions because Count Dooku would rather trust the job of hunting and killing Jedi to him. But while that may be true, we never really got an exact number of Jedi he killed.
We know that he made a habit out of collecting the lightsabers of the Jedi that he killed. He even had a vast lightsaber collection of his own. And the worst part was that he also had a habit of collecting something else from the Jedi he killed, especially if they were Padawans.
In ‘Lair of Grievous,’ which is a ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ episode, we saw Jedi Master Kit Fisto and his former Padawan, Jedi Knight Nahdar Vebb, infiltrating Grievous’ lair after thinking that one of the Separatist leaders were hiding there.
The truth, however, was that Count Dooku led them to Grievous’ personal base so that he could hit two birds with stone as he could test Grievous’ skills and possibly take out two Jedi. And if Grievous was not up to the task, Dooku would be allowed to save time in dealing with the failure of one of his generals.
While Fisto and Vebb were investigating the lair, they saw several Jedi Padawan braids. From the different braids and lightsabers that Grievous had in his collection, we can assume that he killed around 13 young Jedi in the past. But this was never shown onscreen.
Then, as the episode progressed, Fisto and Vebb took on Grievous with the help of the clone troopers that they were with. However, Grievous eventually got the upper hand after nearly dying at the hands of the Jedi duo. Vebb got overconfident and decided to take on the cyborg general on his own as Grievous killed him using a blaster. In that episode alone, it was revealed that Grievous had killed a total of 14 Jedi.
Meanwhile, in the comics entitled ‘Age of Republic – General Grievous,’ Grievous killed two more Jedi. The first was an unnamed Mikkian Jedi. The second one was a human male Jedi Padawan. As such, Grievous’ total Jedi kill count was at 16. And this also proves that Grievous was known for killing young Jedi Padawans and unproven Jedi Knights.
The fact that Grievous was able to kill a lot of young Jedi also proves that the Jedi Order was losing its touch as it was sending unproven Jedi into war, only for them to die at the hands of a cyborg.
Did Grievous ever kill a Jedi Master?
While it may be true that General Grievous was able to prove himself by killing younger Jedi, it was clear that he had his hands full when dealing with a true Jedi Master. And there was never an instance wherein he could actually kill a Jedi Master.
This was one of the reasons why Count Dooku wanted to test Grievous in ‘Lair of Grievous’ as he wanted to know whether or not he was skilled enough to kill a Jedi Master. Grievous may have succeeded in killing Nahdar, but he allowed Kit Fisto to escape.
Of course, he also often struggled against Jedi Masters and Jedi who were at the level of Jedi Masters in terms of skill. Grievous could never find a way to defeat Obi-Wan Kenobi, and he even struggled against Ahsoka Tano during the latter portion of the Clone Wars.
Grievous’ inability to kill a Jedi Master is one of the reasons why fans believe that the CGI version of the character was inferior to the original Grievous featured in the 2003 Clone Wars series that is no longer canon. In that series, Grievous took on several Jedi Masters, Knights, and Padawan simultaneously, as only a few Jedi survived that battle. But the canon Grievous was not as strong as his 2003 version.
However, there were also instances wherein Grievous proved himself strong enough to defeat a Jedi Master. He dueled Eeth Koth, who proved himself too skilled for Grievous to take on all alone. As such, the cyborg needed the help of his MagnaGuards as they were able to overwhelm and defeat Koth. But Grievous didn’t kill him because Koth became his prisoner instead.
Twice during the Clone Wars, Grievous encountered and defeated Depa Billaba, the very same Jedi Master who taught Caleb Dume/Kanan Jarrus everything he knew. Billaba was left in a coma after their first duel. Meanwhile, in their second duel, Grievous nearly finished the job before he had to run away. But he left Billaba’s back severely burned by his lightsaber.
General Grievous also dueled Jedi Master Adi Gallia during the Clone Wars. This time, a one-on-one fight allowed the cyborg to defeat Gallia by kicking her. Nevertheless, he failed to kill her as Plo Koon came to Gallia’s aid.
Ultimately, Grievous died in the hands of one of the strongest Jedi Masters of that era. Obi-Wan Kenobi ultimately killed Grievous in their duel on Utapau. But Grievous was able to pressure Kenobi into using a blaster as he had no other choice. There would have been a good chance Grievous would have killed Obi-Wan had there not been a blaster for the Jedi Master to use.
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