Lucasfilm executive Pablo Hidalgo is explaining why the First Order didn’t blow up Coruscant in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. After being absent from the original trilogy, the planet of Coruscant made its live-action debut in The Phantom Menace (1999). As the capital of the Galactic Republic and location of the Jedi Temple, Coruscant was one of the most prominent locations in George Lucas’ prequel trilogy.

After the start of the Clone Wars, Coruscant became a corrupt and dangerous place due to the conflict between the Jedi Order and the Sith. In Revenge of the Sith (2005), Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious, with more than a little help from Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, ended the Republic and formed the Empire. While the 1997 Special Edition of Return of the Jedi implied Coruscant fell under the control of the New Republic following the Battle of Endor, Disney’s sequels make no mention of the once-capital. When the First Order annihilated the New Republic in J.J. Abrams' The Force Awakens (2015), Starkiller Base blew up the galactic capital Hosnian Prime rather than Coruscant.

Related: Star Wars: What Happened To Coruscant After The Prequels

Lucasfilm executive Hidalgo was recently asked on Twitter about the decision to make Hosnian Prime the capital in Episode VII. According to Hidalgo, Abrams and company at Bad Robot wanted to blow up Coruscant while Lucasfilm wanted to preserve the legacy planet. Hosnian Prime was the compromise. The tweets have since been deleted, but check out the comments below:

Basically BR (Bad Robot) wanted it blown up; LFL (Lucasfilm Ltd.) didn’t. Hosnian Prime was the unsatisfying middle ground. It happens.

(I should say ‘some folks at’ because it’s not like companies have points of view)

The Coruscant landscape populated with tall buildings in Star Wars

This has all been adequately explained in the years since The Force Awakens. Season 2 of Disney+’s The Mandalorian revealed that Chandrila became the capital of the New Republic following the fall of the evil Empire. However, it was not a permanent seat of the senate as the Republic chose to rotate its capital world based on elections. As for Coruscant, between the prequels and the sequels, opposing sides continued to fight even after the New Republic reinstituted the Galactic Senate on Chandrila. When Imperial remnants finally ceded control of the planet, Coruscant became a hub for criminal syndicates. The rebellion against the First Order in the sequel trilogy was actually what prompted citizens to take back control of Coruscant.

Originally, Coruscant was going to show up in Colin Trevorrow's Duel of the Fates script for Episode IX before the powers that be abandoned his story. Many view the decision not to include Coruscant as Disney/Lucasfilm’s way of distancing the sequels from the divisiveness of the prequels, and that may have been the case. However, while one could argue destroying Coruscant in The Force Awakens would’ve had more of an emotional impact than Hosnian Prime, it wouldn’t make sense for the First Order to destroy a historic hub of civilization vs. the New Republic’s makeshift capital.

More: Palpatine Turned Coruscant Into A Giant Anti-Rebel Computer (Before The Death Star)

Source: Pablo Hidalgo/Twitter