Death Stars and Star Killers: New Insight from Rebels?

Hello Star Wars fans! The news is coming fast now, for Rebels, Rogue One, and Episode VIII! This is the exciting part, when we have just enough information to start speculating. One thing is clear, there are a lot of opportunities for connections on all of these, plus with The Force Awakens. In particular, there is a specific line of events that has the potential to connect a great deal of the Star Wars saga, and it goes from the “Sith Temple” seen on Rebels, to the Death Star, to Star Killer base, connecting the PT, the OT, and the ST all in one fell swoop if done right. As usual with our site, spoilers are the norm, so consider yourself warned. Now let’s get into it.

Most of today’s post have to do with the new Rebels Mid Season 2 trailer. We have a lot to chew on in this trailer, but I want to focus on a couple of shots. First, we have our heroes entering what has been confirmed to be an underground Sith Temple. Here is the shot as Ahsoka, Kanan, and Ezra walk up to it:

SithTemple
Lucasfilm/Disney 2016

This is just the beginning. We are certainly wondering what ancient Sith powers lurk in this temple, such as the holocrons that we see Ezra pick up. However, what really caught my attention was a red laser blast shoot up from the ground. This has to be connected to the temple some how:

SithLaser
Lucasfilm/Disney 2016

The temple is underground, and it looks like this laser is shooting out of the ground. Could be wrong. What intrigues me, is the idea that this red laser blast is an ancient Sith prototype of the Star Killer base seen in The Force Awakens, just on a smaller scale. Could the blast be made from some sort of red kyber crystals as part of some ancient Sith weapon?

You see, as we recently reported, the Star Killer base was likely built on the planet Ilum, because it is loaded with kyber crystals. The Star Killer base’s weapon is likely due to energy amplified by the caves loaded with kyber crystals. It’s possible that the planet’s core is nothing but crystal. We don’t really know at this point, other than it was chosen for it’s rich crystalline deposits.

StarKiller
image credit: The Force Awakens Visual Dictionary by Pablo Hidalgo, Lucasfilm, Disney

So given that Rebels is taking place early in the saga, before ANH, we have to wonder if we could see this ancient Sith Temple’s laser technology being developed into the Death Star. In fact, it is possible that Vader finding our heroes in this temple gave the Imperials the idea. After all, we know from the Tarkin novel both that the Death Star used kyber crystals, and even at the time of the book, they still hadn’t figured out how to build a weapon with the crystals yet. From the Tarkin novel, we have this:

Tarkin
source: Tarkin by James Luceno

Why is the Death Star relevant? It’s particularly intriguing because we’ll have Geonosis in Season 2 of Rebels! This is an amazing opportunity to tie it all together. We know from this shot, that they’ll land on Geonosis:

RebelsGeonosis
Lucasfilm/Disney 2016

And as we know from AotC, the Geonosians designed the plans for the Death Star. Perhaps our heroes go back there to find out more information about the weapon? Even better, some clues in the Sith Temple lead them to Geonosis, because they figure out that someone else has taken the information from the Temple on how to build a weapon. Geonosians, perhaps?

This is too good to pass up! Not only that, we have a recent report from MakingStarWars that the character Galen is to play the Imperial scientist that is responsible for the Death Star. If they play their cards right, they can bring this character into Rebels. At that point, everything would be interwoven, and the pay-off would be great.

Follow me on twitter @davestrrr and stay tuned for updates MWF on SpoiledBlueMilk!