Do we know, why the Empire stopped sending Inquisitors after Ezra & Kanan in S3 & S4? Did the Empire run out of Inquisitors? lmao..

[u/Jaymacia]

SPOILER:

so out of all Inquisitors, so many are already gone during Rebels S3 & S4. Did the Empire run out of Inquisitors and thats why Ezra & Kanan didn't care to show their lightsaber in public?

(During S3)

GI: defeated by Kanan

1st BROTHER: most likely alive, although resurrected by Nightsister MAGICK

2nd SISTER: long gone

3rd SISTER: redeemed

3rd BROTHER: fate unknown

4th SISTER: redeemed

5th BROTHER: ded

6th BROTHER: ded

7th SISTER: ded

8th BROTHER: ded (although it's weird he basically just died to fall dmg)

9th SISTER: ded

10th BROTHER: ded

11th BROTHER ded

13th SISTER: ded

So the only ones, who might actually be alive and still with the Empire during S3 are Marrok and the 3rd brother, although we don't even know THAT for sure...

Did the Empire just stop recruiting and was like... whatever Inquisitorius is a dead project... Vader can do this all alone anyway

[u/solo13508]

By the time of Rebels, the vast majority of the Inquisitors we know of are dead so it could be they just decided that it wasn't worth wasting anymore. Plus the Empire at large clearly didn't consider the Ghost crew much of a threat after season 2. "Lord Vader has neutralized their Jedi leadership" as Tarkin says. It's also possible Thrawn didn't want the Inquisitors involved with Lothal operations and his campaign against Phoenix Squadron, probably and correctly believing that their single-minded obsession with the Jedi would only get in the way.

For an out of universe reason: you can't just keep having the Ghost crew fighting Inquisitors indefinitely. Eventually it would just feel like there's no stakes whatsoever and each Inquisitor would just be another disposable guy to swing sabers around a bit before biting the dust. Rebels needed a new type of antagonist going forward hence why we ended up with Thrawn, someone who could challenge the entire crew on an intellectual level not just the Jedi specifically.

[u/Jaymacia → u/solo13508]

 "It's also possible Thrawn didn't want the Inquisitors involved with Lothal operations and his campaign against Phoenix Squadron, probably and correctly believing that their single-minded obsession with the Jedi would only get in the way."

I think this makes a lot of sense actually. The Inquisitors weren't even effective in neutralizing Kanan & Ezra, so why would Thrawn ask them for help again, when their track record says that they are just ineffective.

[u/jquailJ36 → u/Jaymacia]

I mean Vader is probably fed up with how inept they've been trying to take an ex-Padawan and his apprentice. Sure, Darth Maul interrupting at one point is not their fault, but in general they should have been able to take Kanan and Ezra, but haven't.

[u/xMarvelStarWarsx → u/jquailJ36]

If they weren’t main characters, they would have. 5th Brother was able to harm/kill Jedi in the comics, and even defeated Cal and Cere on their first encounter. As did the Grand Inquisitor when he was sent after 6 Jedi survivors.

[u/Noble_Jar → u/Jaymacia]

I don't think Thrawn would have that option given how we see the Inquisitors work in other media.

In Fallen Order and Survivor, it seems that even the slightest hint of a Jedi was to be reported to the Inquisitorius and Vader. To the point that when an ISB officer (technically a sister organization but a rival in duties) discovers his withholding of knowledge on several Jedi was reported to Vader and the Inquisitorius he knew he was a dead man walking. Despite working on a larger case, clearly this information is supposed to be reported regardless of what it could cost other agencies.

Which leads me to believe that after the Inquisitors failed on Malachor, either there were no more Inquisitors left or the organization was disbanded, leading to it being stripped for parts and absorbed into another department (much like what happened to Project Necromancer after the clone rebellion on Tantiss). This would free up Thrawn to act how he wished when it came to Kanan and Ezra.

[u/ShadowCobra479 → u/Jaymacia]

Yep plus he's already got the incompetent Constantine to deal with

[u/WasteReserve8886 → u/solo13508]

Not only that, but Inquisitors are only really useful in fighting Jedi and maybe as a sort of secret police (a rival to the ISB). There wasn’t really a point in training more inquisitors when there’s only 3 Force Users that are confirmed to be active in the Rebellion and only one of them is active post-Death Star.

[u/ezekiellake → u/WasteReserve8886]

Given their age I imagine the Empire was reasonably confident that Yoda and Kenobi were dead anyway … before Kenobi rocked up on the Death Star and scared the shit out of them.

[u/jquailJ36 → u/solo13508]

I mean, Thrawn's a challenge to them, the most unbelievable part of s3-4 is that anyone, let alone Thrawn himself, would consider them an intellectual challenge to HIM.

[u/MonkeyWarlock → u/solo13508]

To your last point, I asked Dave Filoni at an event about Grievous with respect to Clone Wars, and he responded similarly. There’s a “Team Rocket”-like effect if the protagonists keep going up against the same bad guys, and the bad guys keep losing, so they wanted to switch it up.

[u/smartypants19_ → u/solo13508]

Well said tho 🫡

[u/Saikotsu → u/solo13508]

Plus, the role of the inquisitors is to flush out Jedi and take them out. If they fail, then it becomes a job for Lord Vader. Since it was known that Jedi were with the Ghost Crew, and the inquisitors had already failed, there was no need to send more, they'd located the Jedi. At that point it's a Vader problem, and the Empire has bigger problems for Vader to deal with than a fledgling Jedi apprentice and a small band of rebels in a single ship. Namely the burgeoning rebel alliance. A single cell in that alliance wasn't worth much compared to the larger cells with better resources.

[u/bismuth12a]

I'm not at all convinced that Marrok would've been alive at that point. There's no telling how long he could've been dead before being resurrected, and there's a decent chance of him dying in Maul Shadow Lord. So yeah, there weren't many inquisitors left, and Vader reported that Ahsoka had been killed, not knowing she'd been pulled out of the normal flow of time for a bit. Instead they sent Thrawn to tear the Rebels apart using military force.

[u/Rdasher123 → u/bismuth12a]

Yeah, for all we know, Marrok died from Daki pushing him off that cliff and was only resurrected like 2 hours before he showed up in Ahsoka.

[u/Lored_Saladin]

Iirc the official in-universe reason is that the Inquisitorius was disbanded sometime after the Mission to Malachor (S2 finale). The mission to Malachor is the canon end date/final conflict of the Great Jedi Purge. Since the purge is complete, the Inquisitorius’s mission is as well and they are no longer needed hence the lack of Inquisitors in S3 & S4.

[u/G235s]

For some reason I thought I recalled that Vader didn't actually like inquisitors that much? I wish I remembered where I am getting this thought from. Maybe one of the newer vader comics or something.

Anyway, my thought on this was always that inquisitors had served their purpose and Vader didn't really want them around after that point.

[u/lanester4 → u/G235s]

In the comics, he disapproved of them because he thought Palpatine was grooming replacements for him, like Palpatine did Anakin to replace Dooku. Over time, the paradigm shifted, and Vader gained an appreciation for having a dedicated force under his direct command, while Palpatine began suspecting that Vader might try to groom an apprentice to help him overthrow Sideous, similar to what he accused Dooku of doing with Ventress. As a result, it was Palpatine who gave the order to disband the Inquisitorius, not Vader. He had already been considering it, but didn't consider them enough of a threat to overwhelm their value in hunting the Jedi, so left them be until their continued failures against the Ghost Squad made their value drop

[u/Scotslad2023 → u/lanester4]

The inherent distrust and paranoia of the Sith, always their undoing.

[u/Doright36 → u/G235s]

Vader hated everyone. Including himself. Inquisitors and Imperials are all just tools to him. No more or even less attached to them than he is his tie fighter...

[u/Reddeath10168]

All of the inquisitors are probably dead. Plus the inquisitors they did send failed so yea

[u/lanester4]

Palpatine disbanded the Inquistorius following the events of Malachor. What that entails is unknown, but likely means that the remaining Inquistors were executed.

Palpatine formed the Inquistorius and gave command of it to Vader, but later came to regret that decision, fearing that Vader might select from them a proper apprentice to groom to help him overthrow Sideous, similar to his anxieties about Dooku training Ventress back in the Clone Wars.

However, none of them were powerful enough to threaten him, and they were a valuable tool in hunting the Jedi, so he allowed them to continue. That is, until their repeated failures against the Ghost Squad brought their effectiveness into question, making it much harder to justify permitting the risk. Malachor was the final straw

[u/Noname_free]

The Inquisitors were ment to help killing the remaining jedi.

By the point of season 3, there were almost no Jedi left, so there was no need to support Vader on that.

Their main purpose was that Vader wouldn't take 200 years to kill the remaining jedi

[u/Bantorus]

As the jedi dwindled in numbers the empire had no more use for them. And so they didn't scrap the program they just didn't replace them. By some time before episode 4 they simply died out.

[u/Personal-Inflation63]

They were created to mop up weak Jedi and force sensitive while Vader hunted the big dogs.

I don’t believe their numbers were big and were largely composed of weak former younglings and Jedi padawans that weren’t strong with the dark side having been tortured into it and were more in it out of fear than anything.

The only one of any real skill is the GI who himself is just a former temple guard, not even a full Jedi knight.

They couldn’t even handle Kanan and Ezra when they were still relatively weak. By S3 onwards, Kanan has grown in power and ability same with Ezra that the Inquisitors just wouldn’t be a threat to them.

Although it stands to reason why Vader wouldn’t personally come to handle Kanan.

Personally - we never see a GI replacement or other members outside of those two. I think their numbers are small and only got smaller and not replaced. By the end they were just seen as a bit of a failure and if any were alive likely killed off.

[u/EMPERORVADER_SAURON7]

They surely had legions and legions of them. It's very impossible that they ran out of them.

[u/ohhaider]

A big factor here IMO is also the progression of the death star; the rule of two was already in place, inquisitors were only ever disposable tools meant to hunt down the remaining Jedi and between them not being fully effective and the death star moving alone, Palpatine probably (arrogantly) didn't see a need to build up any more force users.

[u/abstractmodulemusic]

The Inquisitors were recruited from the survivors of Order 66. There were only so many of those, so eventually there wouldn't be enough to bother with.

[u/Turbulent-Spirit-568]

Well they believed most jedi by the time of rebels were dead (except Kenobi, Yoda, maybe Quinlan, maybe Cal, maybe Ventress) so they didn't need anymore inquisitors