Summary

• Over the years, various Star Wars stories, from books to video games, have depicted different versions of how the Death Star plans were stolen.
• The Star Wars Expanded Universe was declared non-canon, allowing filmmakers the freedom to reshape the narrative in Star Wars movies.
• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story established a definitive version of the Rebels stealing the Death Star plans in canon, simplifying the complex history.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story expanded upon the opening crawl of the original Star Wars movie by retconning how the Death Star plans were stolen. While A New Hope outlined the premise for how the Rebels acquired the plans, the original Star Wars Expanded Universe of books, comics, and video games offered a more detailed account, adding specific characters and locations. However, things became complicated as multiple Star Wars stories told different versions of how the Death Star plans were stolen, with some Star Wars authors attempting to reconcile the various accounts.

Following Disney's purchase of the Star Wars franchise, the Expanded Universe was declared non-canon and rebranded as "Legends," giving filmmakers more freedom when telling new stories. Rogue One kept things simple by having one definitive version of the Rebels stealing the Death Star plans while adding twists that never appeared in Legends. From A New Hope to Rogue One, over a dozen Star Wars stories have chronicled the Rebels' attempt to acquire the Death Star plans, each with its own unique spin.

Star Wars (AKA "A New Hope") (1977)

The basic story

The Death Star was essential to the plot of Star Wars almost from the beginning, with every version of Lucas' treatment culminating in its destruction, and various rewrites made the plans crucial. By the third draft - then titled The Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Starkiller - the Death Star plans were being placed in R2-D2. In the final film, they're the central MacGuffin, bringing all the characters together, but the only hint at their origin comes in the opening crawl.

The text states that the Death Star plans were stolen during the Rebellion's first victory against the Empire, and Darth Vader says they were beamed to Princess Leia's ship, the Tantive IV. Since Star Wars was conceived as an homage to the Flash Gordon serials, with the first movie being Part 4, it’s possible that "Episode III" was intended to be about that first Rebel victory. Of course, the trilogies were eventually separated by decades, and the theft of the Death Star plans was left to non-movie adaptations.

Star Wars: The Radio Dramatisation (1981)

The Rebels' first victory

Most early Star Wars books and comics took place after the film, with Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Leia Organa as a team, so little backstory was given. The only real mention of stealing the Death Star plans came from some elaborate, in-character monologs Lucas wrote that were cut from the released film, one of which was Leia’s account of her pre-movie actions. These were later expanded for the radio dramatization in 1981, which went back to the unedited shooting script and vastly expanded the story, especially regarding the data tapes.

They told of Leia using her position as Senator as a cover to assist various resistance groups, during which she learned about the Death Star, forcing her and her father to renounce Alderaan’s pacifist stance. Leia embarked on the mission to intercept the plans from the planet Toprawa during a Rebel assault but was spotted by Darth Vader, leading directly into Star Wars. Although this only adds a few details, this remained the only official account of the Rebels stealing the Death Star plans for over ten years.

Star Wars: X-Wing (1993)

The Rebels' first victory (in more detail)

The Star Wars franchise expanded rapidly in the nineties through books, comics, and video games like Star Wars: X-Wing, the iconic PC flight sim, and one of the great early games from the franchise. The second of the game’s “Tour of Duty” mission groups was "The Great Search", which detailed the space battles surrounding the Rebel’s acquisition of the Death Star plans - from learning of the space station to beaming them to the Tantive IV. Everything here followed the basic logic of the radio drama’s Battle of Toprawa, just with expansion, including the mission's name - Operation Skyhook.

This basic continuity was carried over into several books around that same time, most notably Star Wars: Jedi Dawn by Paul Cockburn. It also had a passing impact on the Han Solo novel Star Wars: Rebel Dawn by A.C. Crispin.

Star Wars: Dark Forces (1995)

The other Death Star plans

An alternate version of this story served as the opening mission of Star Wars: Dark Forces, with Kyle Katarn, a newly defected Imperial, running missions for the Alliance, one of which saw him breaking into an Imperial compound on Danuta and stealing the Death Star plans. It’s treated more as a preface for the main game (about the Death Trooper program, the series’ early flirtation with Battle Droids), but establishes Kyle, who went on to become a Jedi in later games, as a key figure in the Star Wars pantheon.

Being on a different planet, it did clash with the Toprawa account from previous Star Wars stories. However, Star Wars: Dark Forces - Soldier for the Empire by William C. Dietz, was the first in a book trilogy that bridged the game and its sequel. It expanded the events and made the Danuta plans a smaller but essential part needed to understand the main Death Star plans.

Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)

The origin of the Death Star plans

With the timeline now solidified around the plans being stolen, that was the end of its expansion for about five years. In the meantime, a much bigger shift was happening in Star Wars: the prequel trilogy. The Empire, Rebellion, and the Death Star took a backseat, until Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones unexpectedly revealed the Death Star plans were a creation of the Separatists. The Geonosian design was taken by Count Dooku to Darth Sidious and acted upon once the Republic fell. While surprising, it still aligned with much of the Death Star's history in other stories.

Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005)

The alternate ground battle

As part of its campaign, Star Wars: Battlefront II charted Darth Vader’s 501st Legion from the early days of the Clone Wars to the fall of the Empire. The game dramatized a new version of the stealing of the plans defined by the playable maps, with the plans stolen in a heist on the Death Star itself, then transmitted from another location directly to the Tantive IV. It made no sense in the context of Operation Skyhook and was widely accepted as an alternate telling.

Star Wars: Empire at War (2006)

The wider context (and Han Solo)

Star Wars: Empire at War also had its plot structured around the Death Star's construction. However, the story plays out differently from the established continuity and is more difficult to consolidate than Battlefront II. The Rebel side fleshed out the discovery of the space station, with a questionable appearance from Han Solo, and the Empire's quest focused on hunting down the Moff who helped leak the key information (instead of the traditional spies). This culminated in the Emperor torturing Bothans (known for their part in the second Death Star coup) before detailing Leia’s possession of the plans to Vader.

Star Wars: Lethal Alliance (2006)

An alternative Dark Forces

Over ten years after Dark Forces, Star Wars games returned to Danuta with the PSP/Nintendo DS exclusive Lethal Alliance. Set at the height of the Empire’s reign, its later missions take the player to the Imperial planet at the same time as Kyle Katarn, with hero Rianna Saren somehow also stealing the plans. It makes little sense, and even though Katarn appeared in the game, the Death Star elements don't mention him. It felt like a straight-up retcon, but an attempted explanation suggested that the plans she grabbed were an updated version of Kyle's.

Star Wars: Death Star (2007)

The consolidation attempt

What once started as a simple story became increasingly complicated, with the Rebellion’s “first” victory the latest in a long line of attacks. Although it was more concerned with the Imperial bureaucracy, the 2007 hardback novel Star Wars: Death Star by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry attempted to consolidate the various threads. Toprawa, Danuta, the Geonosians, and the Battlefront II attack are all factored into it.

There's even a subplot explaining the presence of a weakness in the first place, with an Imperial discovering the exhaust port, but unable to fix it due to restrictions. It was an admirable attempt at balancing the contradictions that had come up in the previous thirty years, but the retcon is still rather vague and requires a real smudging of previous sources. Things would become more complicated with the Death Star's inclusion in another Star Wars video game.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (2008)

The discovery

Although the selling point was being able to wield all manner of Force powers, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was also focused on providing an exciting, new Star Wars story. The game followed the adventures of Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, Starkiller, who later betrayed his master and became a key founder of the Rebellion, with his family emblem becoming the Alliance’s logo. The final mission was set on the Death Star itself, where Starkiller freed Mon Mothma and Bail Organa from Imperial captivity, which doubled as their discovery of the space station.

Almost honoring the work of Death Star, this was the first time in over a decade that a game hadn't contradicted the base canon set up by the radio dramatization and X-Wing. It was set before all previous events and thus served as motivation for everything else that had been shown so far. However, Senator Garm Bell Iblis' presence on the Death Star contradicted the novella "Interlude at Darkknell" by Timothy Zahn and Michael A. Stackpole, where the Senator helped steal the Death Star codes years earlier.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

The Disney Rewrite

On April 25, 2014, the various explanations of the Death Star plans were made non-canon and relegated to "Legends" status, giving Disney and Lucasfilm freedom to redefine the battle station's history. One of the first novels published in the new canon was Star Wars: Tarkin by James Luceno, detailing the future Grand Moff's rise to power and revealing how he was put in charge of the Death Star initiative. In preparation for Rogue One, Luceno returned to pen Star Wars: Catalyst - A Rogue One Novel, covering the station's history and explaining why Galen Erso fled the Empire.

These changes allowed Rogue One: A Star Wars Story to become the definitive canon version of how the Death Star plans were stolen. Jyn Erso avenged her father by leading a group of Rebels, calling themselves Rogue One, to steal the plans from the Imperial data vault on Scarif. Although every member of Rogue One sacrificed themselves, they beamed the plans to Leia's ship, who then proceeded on her mission to find Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine. Whereas before there had been dozens of explanations for the Death Star plans in Star Wars, now there was only one.

Every Version Of How The Death Star Plans Were Stolen

From A New Hope to Rogue One