Star Wars has revealed the Empire never actually used its deadliest weapon - hyperspace. The Sith have always been associated with superweapons. According to Master Yoda in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, "Long ago in forgotten times, when the Sith and Jedi fought for control of the galaxy, weapons there were, of unimaginable power." Naturally, that meant the Sith's resurgence in the Skywalker saga saw the galaxy bear witness to a new age of superweapons.

The most famous of these is, of course, the Death Star, a massive battle station the size of a small moon, believed to be the ultimate weapon, which was successfully destroyed by Luke Skywalker. That wasn't the end of the Empire's superweapon projects, though, because they worked on a second Death Star in the Endor system. Meanwhile, they converted the Jedi planet Illum into Starkiller Base on the outskirts of the Unknown Regions. That particular superweapon wasn't ready until Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and it too was destroyed.

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Curiously enough, though, Lucasfilm Publishing's latest initiative - Star Wars: The High Republic - has revealed the Empire never actually capitalized on their deadliest weapon of all. Charles Soule's novel Light of the Jedi is set 200 years before the events of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, and opens with an even called "The Great Disaster." This was an interstellar accident that caused a large ship to break up in hyperspace; it caused chaos across the entire Outer Rim for months, because chunks of debris kept emerging from hyperspace. These fragments were still moving at lightspeed, meaning they could potentially destroy satellites, space stations, moons, and even planets they impacted. The Jedi narrowly averted the destruction of an entire solar system when a large cannister of Tibanna gas came close to colliding with a sun, which would have caused it to expand dangerously.

Star Wars Light of the Jedi Cover

The Great Disaster was an accident, but it's frankly surprising the Empire never considered the possibility of weaponizing hyperspace by doing something like this on purpose. Imagine a scenario where the Empire knew the Rebel Alliance was centered somewhere in a single sector of the galaxy - exactly the situation they faced between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. The Empire could simply scuttle one of their ships in hyperspace, effectively bombarding that entire sector. The Rebels would have either been wiped out quickly or forced to abandon their bases at speed. It's not hard to imagine this technique being further weaponized by sophisticated navdroids, allowing the Empire to target specific worlds. They would have been able to destroy entire planets without needing a Death Star, and just by blowing up a ship they were already planning to junk.

There are, however, probably good reasons the Empire didn't pursue this tactic. The first is that they simply may not have thought about it. Hyperspace is commonly considered as a way of getting from A to B, rather than as a weapon; it took a strategic genius like Admiral Holdo to weaponize it in Star Wars: The Last Jedi - granted, using a different approach. Even if the Empire did consider it, though, they may well have not believed it was worth the risk. With hyperspace generators so easily accessible, it would have been easy for the Rebels to duplicate the strategy. While Mon Mothma would not have considered that approach, more extreme Rebel leaders like Saw Gerrera would have undoubtedly been willing to commit kamikaze strikes on the Galactic Core, blowing themselves up in hyperspace in order to devastate Core Worlds like Coruscant and Corellia. The chance of reprisals was just too severe, meaning this particularly apocalyptic superweapon was never deployed at all in Star Wars.

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