Warning! This article contains spoilers for Star Wars #34 Emperor Palpatine’s unparalleled villainy within Star Wars canon truly knows no bounds, as he is willing to commit the most heinous atrocities in the name of power, including destroying an entire ancient Jedi science for the sake of creating the ultimate weapon of cosmic evil: the Death Star.
The Death Star was the main focus of the Rebellion leading into the original trilogy, as it was a weapon that could decimate an entire planet with a single blast. The Rebels were obsessed with getting their hands on the Death Star plans to figure out how to destroy it. While they were eventually successful, the Rebels didn’t stop the Death Star in time to save the home planet of Princess Leia, Alderaan. The loss of Alderaan was unparalleled, and still holds significance in Star Wars lore to this day. But, as it turns out, the Death Star’s ability to destroy entire planets wasn’t the only source of its evil. Just creating something so dark and monstrous as the Death Star took a toll on many seemingly unexpected facets of the galaxy, including one that is linked directly to the Jedi: the science behind Kyber Crystals.
Palpatine Erased the Study of Kyber Crystals
In Star Wars #34 by Charles Soule and Madibek Musabekov, Luke Skywalker is reeling after his yellow lightsaber was destroyed during his team’s mission in No-Space to retrieve fuel cells for the Rebellion. While the mission was a success, Luke was left without a lightsaber, as it was crushed in the hand of a Kill-Droid. So, Luke decides it’s time he built a lightsaber himself, and to do that, he knew he needed to find somewhere that had Kyber Crystals. Kyber Crystals are what power the lightsaber. During the time of the Jedi Order, each Jedi would choose their Kyber Crystal through the Force (or, rather, the Kyber Crystal would choose them), and they’d build a lightsaber that complemented the exact type of Force-user they are–hence the different colored blades. Unfortunately, during the age of the Galactic Civil War, the Emperor made all Kyber Crystal trade illegal, which meant no surviving or arising Jedi could build any more lightsabers. However, that wasn’t the only reason the anti-Kyber legislation was passed, as Palpatine did something far more sinister.
Palpatine Scoured the Galaxy of Jedi Culture
The Death Star’s laser is so powerful because it is made up of Kyber, meaning the green blast fans saw in A New Hope might as well have been a giant lightsaber stabbing into the planet before becoming unstable and exploding. In order to pull this off, Palpatine recruited every Kyber expert in the galaxy to work on the Death Star, and those who refused were murdered. Of course, those who accepted were later killed as well, either by the Empire or when both Death Stars were destroyed by the Rebels. By collecting everyone in the galaxy associated with Kyber, and killing those who refused him, Palpatine single-handedly obliterated the entirety of Kyber study in the galaxy, as now there is hardly anyone left to pass on the knowledge to future generations.
This revelation is truly a horrendous one as it expands upon just how great of an evil presence the Death Star had on the galaxy. Not only did the Death Star have the power to obliterate planets when it was fully built, but the process of building it alone wiped out an entire facet of the galaxy’s history, effectively destroying an ancient Jedi science–and it was all so Emperor Palpatine could have his perfect, sinister weapon.
Star Wars #34 by Marvel Comics is available now.