That Famous Death Star Design Flaw Was Probably on Purpose

A new excerpt from the forthcoming Rogue One prequel novel — Catalyst — suggests that Galen Erso created the Death Star’s fatal design flaw on purpose, allowing it to be exploited by Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: A New Hope. That two-meter wide exhaust port was put there intentionally!

On Friday, EW posted an excerpt from the book, which depicts Jyn Erso as a young girl, talking about one of her favorite “bedtime holo,” which seems like a holographic version of a bedtime storybook. Throughout that partiuclar story, a Jyn admires a heroine who is able to descend into a spiral staircase that brings her home. And tellingly, EW’s resident Star Wars expert Anthony Breznican speculates that this story might inspire Galen to create a “portal” which will allow the Death Star to be destroyed. While this could be wild speculation from Breznican, EW often does know about certain Star Wars things before the rest of the world. So, there’s some big credibility to that speculation.

Plus, if Galen Erso did help design the Death Star, and he was a “good guy,” it makes sense he’d slip in a massive design flaw which could be exploited by the Rebels. In fact, the entire stealing of the Death Star plans in Rogue One is ostensibly about everyone eventually locating this design flaw.

So, with that in mind, Rogue One actually confirming that Galen pre- sabotaged the Death Star seem suddenly seems pretty likely. That two-meter exhaust port which leads directly to the main reactor of the Death Star was put their on purpose by a Rebel sympathizer with a vision.

Rogue One: Catalyst hits bookstores next week.