Star Wars: Rogue One's Death Star Retcon Was Unnecessary
The Death Star’s vulnerability was retconned for the Star Wars canon continuity in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and while the film excellently tied into the franchise’s 1977 debut, the battle station’s retcon was unnecessary. Rogue One created an all-new cast of characters, each of whom joined the Rebel Alliance and participated in the climactic Battle of Scarif for different reasons. In the case of Jyn Erso, one of her motivations was to finish her father’s work of sabotaging the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the Death Star, despite A New Hope succinctly explaining its weakness.
The Death Star, infamously, had a small thermal exhaust port that led directly to its main reactor. Rebel fighters exploited this weakness in A New Hope, with Luke Skywalker guiding a pair of proton torpedoes through the port and into the reactor, destroying the station. For years, viewers have questioned the logic behind a small and seemingly easily-exploitable weakness being the downfall of a moon-sized mobile space station that can destroy an entire planet, which likely motivated Rogue One’s retcon.
Jyn Erso’s father, Galen Erso, helped design the Death Star’s superweapon, but secretly sabotaged the station by making the main reactor unstable. Erso paved the way for the Rebellion’s victory in A New Hope by designing the reactor to cause a catastrophic chain reaction if subjected to any pressurized explosion. The problem with this retcon is that reactors have always had catastrophic results when damaged or destroyed in the Star Wars franchise, so while Rogue One told an exciting story with compelling characters, it didn’t need to alter the Death Star’s weakness.
Throughout canon and Legends Star Wars material, knocking out a structure’s main reactor, especially that of a powerful warship, typically results in its destruction. Aside from the two Death Stars, this was also the case in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, when a young Anakin Skywalker destroys a Lucrehulk-class Droid Control Ship by hitting its reactor with a pair of torpedoes, similar to the way that Luke would destroy the Death Star. In Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the Resistance destroyed Xyston-class Star Destroyers by hitting their reactors as well. In both cases, the reactors were not sabotaged beforehand.
As revealed in A New Hope, the Empire was fully aware of the exhaust port’s direct connection to the station’s main reactor, so they protected it with a ray shield, necessitating proton torpedoes to bypass it. Due to this measure, the Rebel fighters had an extremely slim chance of successfully hitting the reactor via the exhaust port, even with their targeting systems guiding the torpedoes. If Luke Skywalker wasn’t guiding his ordnance with the Force, the Rebellion would most likely have failed to destroy the station and been wiped out at the Battle of Yavin.
The real weakness of the Death Star wasn’t its exhaust port or its main reactor, it was the way its defenses were designed. The Empire was overconfident, not believing that starfighters could pose a threat to the Death Star, so they didn’t design the station’s defensive turrets and other countermeasures for repelling fighter squadrons. Instead, they were meant to counter large-scale assaults. Even with this in mind, the Rebellion’s chances of success against the station were paper thin, so while Rogue One: A Star Wars Story told an incredible story, it didn’t need to change anything about the Death Star’s weakness.