‘Rogue One’ Set Up A Major Twist In ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’

The Star Wars franchise is known for planting seeds in movies that will pay off down the line, with the new films benefitting from contributions from the Lucasfilm Story Group.

Now executive Pablo Hidalgo has confirmed that a seemingly throwaway line from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story set up a major plot point in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, advancing technology in the franchise in an unexpected way.

Warning: Spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi below.

When the Resistance escapes the First Order after fleeing their old base on D’Qar, they jump into hyperspace and land, as Finn himself puts it, in the middle of nowhere. But it doesn’t take long for their enemies to catch up, revealing they have figured out how to track their ships through lightspeed.

It is a huge deal because no one has been able to track through lightspeed until then.

It might seem like a contrived plot development out of left field for some, but it actually was set up in the final moments of Rogue One, when Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor are searching for the Death Star plans in the Scarif data banks.

In the scene, Jyn is looking up the names of various projects, looking for the blueprints for the Empire’s devastating superweapon. She mentions some interesting projects in the Imperial archives, including “hyperspace tracking.”

This shows that the Empire had been working on the technology used in The Last Jedi during the time of the Rebellion, and that the First Order implemented it during their campaign against the Resistance.

Hidalgo himself confirmed when someone tweeted the revelation.

Jyn also mentions other interesting projects, such as “navigational systems” which could point to the Empire’s retreat to the Unknown Regions. She also mentions projects with codenames such as Stellarsphere, Mark Omega, Pax Aurora, War-Mantle, Cluster Prism, and Blacksaber.

These are all intriguing projects that could probably be further fleshed out in comics or novels (seriously, what the heck is Blacksaber?), but we doubt they’ll have payoffs in future films quite as significant as this one.

It’s a pretty deft touch from writer and director Rian Johnson and the Story Group, showing how well their contributions bring the Star Wars galaxy together.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is now playing in theaters everywhere.