Still: Disney / Lucasfilm
The First Order may have surprised the Resistance, as well as the audience, with its latest rebel scum-stopping device. But if Rogue One was any indication, it was a technological development we should have seen coming from light years away.
The Resistance spends most of Star Wars: The Last Jedi fleeing just out of reach from the First Order’s cannons when they realise they can no longer escape using lightspeed, as the First Order has figured out how to track ships in hyperspace. This was pretty shocking, for both the rebels and the series. Normally, Star Wars puts the Rebellion on a planet until they get attacked.
But here, director Rian Johnson chose to have them engaged in a tense movie-long chase sequence akin to Mad Max: Fury Road or the first few episodes of Battlestar Galactica.
However, as one Twitter user pointed out, it isn’t actually all that shocking, as the Empire had already been working on developing that technology.
During a scene in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story where Jyn Erso is searching the Empire’s archives for the Death Star plans, there’s an important file she’s heard briefly mentioning:
Y’ALL pic.twitter.com/tWysfnOzbX
— Des (@kyleauxren) December 17, 2017
Resident Star Wars expert Pablo Hidalgo later confirmed on Twitter that this wasn’t a coincidence, sharing a passage from his latest book, The Last Jedi Visual Dictionary, which came out on December 15.
The next technological terror in Hux’s arsenal is ready to be deployed — active hyperspace tracking. Originally explored in its infancy by the secret Imperial think tank known as the Tarkin Initiative, it has now evolved from theory to reality. Hux’s engineers have perfected the system.
It’s a cool Easter egg that connects Rogue One with the newer franchise in more ways than one, since Finn and Rose’s infiltration plan mirrors Jyn and Cassian’s. Plus, it gives us an indication of how the hell the First Order came up with this technology — but I am curious why the Empire hadn’t already finished making this technology themselves. I’m assuming they hadn’t because otherwise they would have tried to use it earlier on the Millennium Falcon.
Granted, the Death Star was a huge project, but you’d think being able to find any ship at any time would be something to commit a few scientists to for some ASAP work.
The only explanation would be if the destruction of the Imperial base on Scarif destroyed the files, meaning the First Order had to start from scratch, but I can’t imagine the Empire wouldn’t have back-ups somewhere, right?
Comments
6 responses to “Rogue One Teased The First Order’s New Gadget From The Last Jedi”
Na. Still going with Finn is a top tier stormtrooper (Per the books) and was sent to the Rebels as a spy.
Well he did succeed in getting most of the rebels killed in TLJ.
Cause it’s not like they need to research it, create it, build it, test it, manufacture it, equip it, then teach everybody how to use it.
Moderation hell
The thirty plus years between Rogue One and Episode 8 isn’t enough??? I mean cmon we know how this will play out, in Episode 9, they’ll come out with a bigger, universe destroying version of hyperspace tracking!
Well in Return of the jedi the imperials knew the rebels were massing to raid the death star and laid a trap (akbar voice) for them.
Maybe that could be explained as the tech in operation?
I won’t say that’s not possible, but according to the Emperor, he was the one who let the Bothans survive to get the data out, so he know that *eventually* they’d try an attack. And since the emperor assumed he’d survive the attack, I doubt he had a reason to be deceptive, unlike Kylo and his “You’re a nobody” story to Rey. He is outright lying to our Kenobi-child.