Will the Death Star Laser Be Fired in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story?

The newest trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story debuted from overseas in Japan yesterday, and it came with plenty of new footage. There were new shots of Darth Vader, an intriguing gift given to the main character and leader of this band of Rebels Jyn Erso (Felcity Jones), and some real looks at how the story is going to play out. But there was something specific story wise that’s a blink-and-you-might-miss-it – and pretty spoilery – moment. Yup, Spoilers ahead.

Sometimes when we ask a question in a headline, it’s merely to start discussion and speculation, but this time, we can answer it.

Will the Death Star fire its superlaser in Rogue One? Yes, yes it will.

In a deliberate sequence in the trailer, one of the weapons operators reaches down and presses a button, and the next shot is from the planet’s surface, as the laser fires down into it.

It’s not the instant and total destruction that we saw in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, but rather seems to set off a catastrophic failure within the planet, causing its collapse to begin (and giving our heroes a chance to escape). From context clues: the desert surface and the fact that we see temples collapsing later in the trailer, it sure seems like this is Jedha, the planet that serves as a focal point for people who worship/believe in the Force in the Star Wars galaxy. Described as a “Mecca” of sorts that people would make pilgrimages to, in the last trailer for the film we also saw a massive statue of a Jedi, ancient and worn, collapsed in the sand. Maybe a more overt metaphor than usually used in Star Wars but significant none-the-less. Indeed, the idea of the Death Star’s first test target being a Jedi and Force epicenter trades nicely on the dialogue of the more skeptical members of the Empire like Grand Moff Tarkin in the original trilogy.

So we will see the Death Star fire in Rogue One, and we’ll see its effects ravage a world from a boots-on-the-ground point of view. The only question that remains is: was that Rian Johnson pressing the button to fire? After all, the Star Wars: Episode VIII director did cameo (alongside his assistant) as weapons operators on the Death Star. Click through the gallery below for a closer look at the firing scene.

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits US theaters December 16, 2016. 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.”