The Star Wars saga does not take its title lightly. The galaxy far, far away is a dangerous place, wrought with conflict and warfare that requires its heroes and villains to make the tough calls. From Jedi Knights to Imperial officers to Rebel pilots, the Star Wars galaxy's most prolific characters have all racked up a sizable kill count.
In a franchise as vast as Star Wars, some truly destructive instances will stand out in audiences' minds, but there are also plenty of smaller wartime victories and defeats with plenty of casualties that may be easily overlooked. The franchise also boasts a sprawling wealth of stories in novels, comics and other media that extend far beyond the scope of the Star Wars movies and TV series. But when looking at on-screen kills alone, which Star Wars character is the deadliest?
10 Wrecker
The unconventional but highly effective Clone Force 99 can probably be expected to have an impressive kill count between them. It would probably come as no surprise to fans to learn that the explosion-loving Wrecker has the highest kill count of the Bad Batch. However, it may be surprising to see his kill count is one of the highest in Star Wars, narrowly beating Anakin Skywalker for a spot in the top 10.
Wrecker has somewhere around 350,000 kills to his name. The majority of these were not seen on The Bad Batch, but in his first appearance on The Clone Wars, when Anakin Skywalker allowed him to detonate the flagship of the Separatist Admiral Trench. As it blew up, Trench's ship took out two other Separatist frigates.
9 Arvel Crynyd
Arvel Crynyd is probably not a name known to many Star Wars fans, but he plays an important -- if fleeting -- role in Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi: Arvel is an A-Wing pilot in the Rebellion. During the Battle of Endor, after sustaining heavy damage, he flies his A-Wing straight into the bridge of the Executor, bringing down the Super Star Destroyer.
Arvel's heroic sacrifice was delivered with an iconic final scream of defiance as he crashed into the Executor. He took out roughly 318,000 Imperial crew members, troops and support staff who were on board the Executor.
8 Ahsoka Tano
The apprentice of Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano followed in her master's footsteps as a daring and fearless Jedi. She played a role in the Rebellion on Star Wars Rebels, where she was seen in battle with Darth Vader, and is now preparing to face off the forces of Grand Admiral Thrawn on her own Disney+ series. However, most of Ahsoka's kills were seen on Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
During the Clone Wars, Ahsoka destroyed a droid factory in the Second Battle of Geonosis, as seen on the episode "Weapons Factory." While this mainly destroyed inactive Battle Droids, who were not yet "alive" and so cannot be considered kills, it also wiped out plenty of active Battle Droids. This brought Ahsoka's kill count to over 500,000.
7 Orson Krennic
The Director of the Imperial Military Department of Advanced Weapons Research and the original commander of the first Death Star, Orson Krennic was unsurprisingly responsible for a vast number of deaths when first testing the Empire's superweapon. As seen in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Krennic had the Death Star destroy the Holy City of Jedha, on the planet Jedha.
The exact number of deaths caused by Krennic's first Death Star blast is not known. The planet Jedha had a population of over 11 million, but this test destroyed only a single city. The canon reference book Star Wars: The Rebel Files described the death toll as being in the hundreds of thousands.
6 Amilyn Holdo
Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo took command of the Resistance fleet in Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi, when General Leia Organa was incapacitated. Holdo made Star Wars history by employing an attack that has become known as the Holdo Maneuver, in which she piloted the Resistance flagship into the pursuing First Order ships at near-lightspeed.
Holdo not only dealt some serious damage to Supreme Leader Snoke's Dreadnought, the Supremacy, but as the Resistance flagship was torn apart on impact, it also destroyed 20 Resurgent-class Star Destroyers. It's not known how many were killed on the Supremacy, but the other Star Destroyers alone give Holdo a kill count of around 1.6 million.
5 Luke Skywalker
Jedi Knight and Rebel hero, Luke Skywalker won the Rebellion one of their greatest victories during the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. Reaching out with the Force as he piloted his X-Wing to the Death Star's thermal exhaust port, Luke fired the shot that would wipe out the Empire's greatest weapon.
Somewhere around 1.9 million people were on board the first Death Star when Luke Skywalker destroyed it, earning the young Jedi an intimidating kill count. While there has been some debate over whether such an action can truly be justified, had the Rebellion not destroyed the Death Star, it would have gone on to end countless more lives.
4 Lando Calrissian
Following the destruction of the first Death Star, the Empire was quick to replace the weapon with a larger and more powerful second Death Star. In Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi, Lando Calrissian flew his beloved former ship, the Millennium Falcon, to the heart of the Death Star II and destroyed the battle station.
Although fully armed and operational, the second Death Star was incomplete at the time of its destruction, making it tricky to ascertain an exact kill count. However, it was considerably larger than the first Death Star and its population during the Battle of Endor is listed as 2.4 million in the reference book Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know.
3 Allegiant General Pryde
Allegiant General Enric Pryde of the First Order appeared in Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker. After killing the treacherous General Hux, Pryde assumed control of the First Order fleet. On the orders of the resurrected Emperor Palpatine, he sent one of the Sith Eternal's Xyton-class Star Destroyers to Kijimi and had it destroy the planet.
While Palpatine had instructed Pryde to destroy a world known to the Resistance, it was Pryde himself who selected Kijimi for destruction and gave the order to fire. The planet had a population of around 310 million, who died by Allegiant General Pryde's hand.
2 Grand Moff Tarkin
After the Death Star's power was demonstrated in the destruction of Jedha City, Grand Moff Tarkin assumed control of the battle station. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope saw Tarkin using the Death Star to destroy a planet for the first time, when he targeted Princess Leia's home planet of Alderaan.
With this act of mass destruction, Tarkin hoped to force Leia into giving up the Rebels' base, but also aimed to make a statement of power to the galaxy. Alderaan's had a population of 2 billion at the time of its destruction. Until the release of Disney's Star Wars sequel trilogy, this action gave Grand Moff Tarkin the highest kill count of any Star Wars character.
1 General Armitage Hux
General Armitage Hux of the First Order was placed in command of Starkiller Base, a weapon that dwarfed the Death Stars in both size and destructive capability. Built into the planet Ilum, which had formerly been a sacred site for the Jedi and home to the Kyber crystals that power their lightsabers, Starkiller Base was capable of destroying multiple planets at once.
In an act of war aimed at ending the reign of the New Republic, Hux ordered Starkiller to fire on the New Republic's then capital world of Hosnian Prime, along with four other planets in the Hosnian System. The combined death toll for this action, which became known as the Hosnian Cataclysm, is believed to be around 155 billion. This makes Hux directly responsible for far more deaths than any other character in Star Wars canon.