The Death Star Is Not The Scariest Superweapon In Star Wars
What’s scarier than a weapon capable of blowing up a planet? How about a weapon designed to wipe out an entire solar system with one shot? While canon Star Wars tech hasn’t progressed beyond blowing up five planets at once, Legends had a device that could erase the Milky Way in a matter of hours: The Sun Crusher.
The Sun Crusher
Where the Death Star adhered to the “Go Big or Go Home” mentality of interplanetary superweapons, the Sun Crusher followed the old adage, “Less is more.” The spacecraft was barely bigger than an X-Wing and yet a million times more powerful. Despite its size, it was nigh indestructible thanks to its quantum-crystalline armor exterior.
The pseudo-scientific sounding material was really just a bit of Star Wars technobabble to explain how the Sun Crusher could withstand a Death Star blast and keep on truckin’.
Commissioned By Grand Moff
Abandoning the lasers used by most Star Wars superweapons, the Sun Crusher instead relied on resonance torpedoes to spread destruction. These torpedoes would burrow into a star’s core and release dense bursts of energy, forcing the star to go supernova. The resulting explosion would create waves of deadly energy potent enough to eradicate all matter in their path—living or otherwise.
The Sun Crusher was a super-secret project commissioned by Grand Moff Tarkin before he died in Star Wars: A New Hope. The weapon was developed and manufactured by the Maw installation— a secret Imperial research base surrounded on all sides by black holes. The installation’s secluded location kept it hidden from even Emperor Palpatine.
The Demise Of The Deadly Device
Unfortunately, it was so secluded that the scientists and Imperial officers stationed there didn’t quite realize the war had ended until about seven years after the events of Return of the Jedi. As a result the Sun Crusher was never actually used during the Galactic Civil War.
The Sun Crusher was, however, used once after the war by one of Luke Skywalker’s Jedi apprentices, Kyp Durron. Durron—under the influence of a long-dead Sith Lord at the time—used it to destroy the Carida system. Upon breaking free of the ancient Sith Exar Kun’s influence, Durron destroyed the Sun Crusher by flying it into a black hole.
A Lazy, Uninspired Empire
The genesis for the Sun Crusher really goes all the way back to George Lucas. When Lucas introduced a second Death Star into the Star Wars galaxy in Return of the Jedi, he set the precedent that the Empire is lazy and repetitive in developing weapons. This is how we got the Darksaber—a Death Star that’s just the laser—and the Sun Crusher in the EU, and the Star Killer base in canon. Oh, and those Star Destroyers equipped with Death Star lasers from Rise of Skywalker, but the less said about them, the better.
School-Yard Starkillers
At least the Sun Crusher tried to differentiate itself from all the other planet-destroying lasers. If we’re being honest, though, it sounds like what a bunch of elementary kids would come up with at recess.
The Sun Crusher is at least a better idea than the Starkiller Base from The Force Awakens. Oh well … nobody ever accused J. J. Abrams of originality.
