Anakin’s Star Wars timeline is full of heinous actions and bloodshed, some of which predate his fall to the dark side. Most notable prior to his fall was his slaughter of the Tusken Raiders, an act which he not only committed but then doubled down on, telling Padmé that the Tusken Raiders were “animals” so he “slaughtered them like animals.”
Yes, Anakin went on to cut down the younglings and countless other Jedi during Order 66, but by that point, he was fully corrupted by Palpatine. With the Tuskens, however, Anakin was still technically on the light side of the Force, and he didn’t exhibit any remorse for what he’d done. However, as horrific as the Tusken Raider slaughter was, it shockingly wasn’t Anakin’s first mass killing.
The Tusken Raider Incident Wasn’t Anakin’s First Massacre
In The Phantom Menace, Anakin was a sweet young boy who was far from the Sith Lord audiences knew he would eventually become. Despite that innocence at the time, however, the first time Anakin killed a mass group of beings was during the Battle of Naboo.
Although Qui-Gon had told the young not-yet-Jedi to stay put in the ship in which he was hiding, Anakin was already pushing boundaries and challenging authority. On a technicality, he decided that he could enter the Battle of Naboo by operating the ship, therefore, not exactly leaving it.
While Anakin largely didn’t seem to know what he was doing, and instead benefited from his exceptional luck due to his connection to the Force, it was in this battle that Anakin blew up the Trade Federation’s battleship, killing everyone on board. It’s worth noting, too, that the little boy didn’t exactly seem hung up on the mass casualties. Actually, he celebrated.
This Attack Was Largely An Accident, But It Foreshadowed Anakin’s Fall
There is, of course, a massive difference between Anakin wiping out this battleship in The Phantom Menace and Anakin’s brutal, rage-filled slaughter of the Tusken Raiders in Attack of the Clones. In terms of the latter, Anakin chose to murder the Tuskens one by one, and he did so in a much more personal way, by cutting them down with his lightsaber.
As Anakin himself verbalizes in that movie as well, he did this because he hated them; they had killed his mother, so he wanted revenge. In that sense, Anakin’s slaughter of the Tuskens is still the most clearly defined first step on his path to the dark side. However, it shouldn’t be overlooked that Anakin killed so carelessly even as a child.
There’s little doubt that, to Anakin, this moment with the battleship was essentially a game. At no point during this battle did he seem afraid or convey any sense that he understood the gravity of the situation. In that sense, as destructive as his actions ultimately turned out to be (and, realistically, these actions were on the “good side”), he wasn’t acting maliciously.
Yet, this begs the larger question: Was this not indicative of the person/Sith Anakin would become all the same? After all, this attack on the battleship happened before Anakin had even started his Jedi training. That means he entered the Jedi Order with a higher kill count than even most adult Jedi would have had at that time.
The extent to which Anakin’s actions in The Phantom Menace were evil is highly debatable, and it seems most fair to say they weren’t. Even so, the fact that Anakin Skywalker had already committed one mass killing before he even entered the Jedi Order makes his later Star Wars slaughters a little less surprising.