Star Wars Fan Finds Perfect New Connection Between Rogue One and A New Hope

12/21/2016 05:11 pm EST

It's one of the oldest questions and sources of speculation for Star Wars fans: What's with the empty seats at the table on the Death Star? When Darth Vader is addressing the Imperials, there are some mysteriously empty seats. Some fans have assumed those may belong to Imperials who have already been made an example of by Vader. Some have said they're merely officials who are off on their own ships or other missions.

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But the more fun version of speculation is that those seats belong to characters from stories that are just being told now, and Director Orson Krennic, from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, certainly fits that bill. The character, after all, is the director of the special weapons division, and in charge of making the Death Star weapon operational. It would make perfect sense, then, as Andy from RebelsReport.com pointed out, for him to have that empty seat right next to Grand Moff Tarkin.

What makes this even more fun is the rivalry between Krennic and Tarkin. It's touched upon in Rogue One, but really fleshed out in Catalyst, the novel that directly precedes the film. You can just see them being placed directly next to each other at this table, but Tarkin taking the seat closer to a position of power - or a perceived one, anyway.

This sort of thing is just speculation, of course, but it's part of the fun for Star Wars fans, seeing the connections both overt and perceived between all their properties. Whose to say another seat can't at one time have belonged to Grand Admiral Thrawn, for example, or one of the characters from the novels?

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is in theaters now. Directed by Gareth Edwards, it's the first of the new standalone features from Lucasfilm and Disney, which take place outside the core "Skywalker Saga" of films noted by an Episode number. Rogue One tells the story of the small band of rebels that were tasked with stealing the plans to the first Death Star. The story spins directly off the opening crawl from the original Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. In that crawl, it read: "Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet."

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