The Xyston-class Star Destroyer. One of many contentious plot points in The Rise of Skywalker.
Personally, I love it. I love the parallel to The Force Awakens. The old Empire’s grave was the desert planet of Jakku, and the new Empire is rising up “out of the grave” from below the surface of the desert on Exegol. But as a fan of TROS, I have to say, for a film that provides very few answers to what’s going on, the visual dictionary does not do a good job of making the Xyston fleet (or Sith Eternal fleet, or Final Order fleet, or whatever you want to call it) make more sense. In fact, it does the opposite. It says that “the design of the Xyston-class Star Destroyer was informed by the design of the Mandator IV-class Siege Dreadnought.”
That seems… a bit backwards.
Now, as I’ve stated in previous articles, I hate the visual dictionaries. They place unnecessary restrictions on storytellers (they would have to compromise between telling their story the way they want to tell it to ensure everything lines up with whatever Pablo Hidalgo typed up), not by the Lucasfilm Story Group — who seem OK with retconning the visual dictionaries — but from fans obsessed with having a perfect universe without retcons. And, if the visual dictionaries are only canon until something else overrules it, why have visual dictionaries at all?
They also set a bad precedent. Remember when we didn’t know what the Clone Wars were for almost twenty years? We don’t need answers to everything. It’s part of the staying power of Star Wars, and it’s diluted somewhat when, in conversations with fellow fans or friends, you can just link a Wookieepedia article to “answer” anything anyone might have to wonder about. Yoda’s species being mysterious is part of what makes Yoda’s character interesting. And while JJ sometimes takes things way too far in this regard, a little mystery is a good thing.
(Yes, I realize the hypocrisy in criticizing the answer-everything attitude in an article devoted to answering everything.)
But before we get to the visual dictionary’s “answers,” people’s main beef with the Xyston fleet has to do with its size: how did Palpatine build so many ships so fast (in under thirty years; maybe even under twenty years depending on when the Mandator IV was built), and how did they recruit that many people to crew them?
Let’s assume that Thrawn’s assistance in charting the Unknown Regions for Palpatine allowed the Sith Eternal to conquer hundreds of worlds and kidnap millions of children totally unbeknownst to the New Republic. When you consider how many people there are in the galaxy (quadrillions), the Xyston fleet seems like a drop in the bucket. You have to stop thinking about the numbers in terms of human/Earth scale, but on a galactic scale. If the Xyston fleet has 10,000 ships (with 27,000 crew per ship), then that makes the total crew slightly less than the population of the U.S. In that case, the Sith Eternal would only have to have kidnapped the children from a single Earth-sized planet, and they had dozens, if not hundreds available to them out there in the Unknown Regions. (How that many humans are out there beyond the “known” galaxy doesn’t matter; pretend it’s a similar situation to how humans ended up in North America.)
So, OK, but how did they build 10,000 ships in thirty years (or twenty years)?
I can think of two “fixes” for this. But first, and this is canon: Exegol has shipwright factories buried under its surface. But that only complicates matters. They built enough dry docks for 10,000 Star Destroyers and 10,000 Star Destroyers in twenty or thirty years? What? The Imperials built a fleet 25,000 strong in less than twenty years, but they had the whole manufacturing power of the old Republic at their disposal. Second, and this is also canon: the Sith Eternal had sleeper agents on the boards of New Republic corporations (Kuat-Entralla, Siener-Jaemus, etc.) to funnel funds and resources in secret to their undead Emperor.
Now, my two reasons.
Fix #1: We can correct the visual dictionary, so it says “the design of the Xyston-class Star Destroyer was informed by the design of the Mandator line of Siege Dreadnoughts.” The Mandator I was apparently designed before the Clone Wars. Given that the Empire had the Onager-class Star Destroyer (Imperial Siege Breaker), I’m going to guess that Mandators II and III predate the Onager.
Fix #2: After the destruction of the first Death Star, Palpatine’s scientists started working on miniaturizing the Death Star superlaser. They designed the Onager as a testbed. And on Exegol, they started to build the Xyston fleet before Return of the Jedi. The second Death Star was never meant to replace the first Death Star, a fleet of 10,000 planet-killing Star Destroyers was, but they weren’t ready yet by Return of the Jedi. This fixes a minor plot hole in Return of the Jedi: the Emperor didn’t learn his lesson? But it also fixes the main issue with the Xyston: why does it look like the old Imperial-class Star Destroyers (except 2X bigger, disproving the previously prevailing theory that they were retrofitted Imperial Star Destroyers) if it’s a new design that was built or designed after the Mandator IV? Like I said, seems a bit backwards…
With this explanation, planet-killing technology could have evolved something like this: Mandator I, II and III-class Siege Dreadnought→Death Star I→Onager-class Star Destroyers→Xyston-class Star Destroyers→Death Star II→Mandator IV-class Siege Dreadnought→Battering-ram cannon
But, why build the Xyston fleet at all? A single Death Star superlaser was a disaster. Decades of work destroyed by a single light fighter. Twice. Thrawn was right about the Tarkin Doctrine being Tarkin’s Folly. Thrawn’s idea of spending all those resources on a bigger Navy, and the TIE Defender project, would have secured Imperial power across the galaxy much more effectively and for much longer. And in my theory, it would seem Palpatine agreed. The Death Star II being just a trap to lure the Rebels to their doom prematurely — buying time for the Xyston fleet to be ready for deployment was the real victory.
This theory also integrates well with another theory I have about the design of the First Order. As far as we know, the First Order only has a few dozen Star Destroyers. Enough to conquer a galaxy? I guess, in a galaxy without a Navy. Block major hyperlanes, restrict interstellar communications, and rule by fear of another Starkiller Base. A lot of people say: “Why build Starkiller Base at all? Superweapons always fail.” Except Starkiller Base didn’t fail — tactically. It wasn’t designed to rule by fear. It served its purpose, which was to destroy the New Republic Senate and New Republic Starfleet.
So, what if Palpatine (through Snoke) built the First Order to be a strategic failure on purpose, to lure the New Republic into a false sense of security, and to buy time for the completion of the Xyston fleet, and the grooming of Ben Solo? That’s my headcanon, anyways.
This gives Pryde’s line to Hux in The Rise of Skywalker a lot more of a punch, too. (“Such range and power will correct the error of Starkiller Base!”) The First Order came up as a result of younger Imperials sidelining their older, washed up Imperial officers (think Hux/Cannady’s mutual dislike and the way Peavey looks down on Hux in The Last Jedi) they viewed as imbeciles for losing the Galactic Civil War to a ragtag guerrilla army. And yet, sometime before The Rise of Skywalker (during Galaxy’s Edge), Hux loses his flagship, the Finalizer, and the Steadfast, Pryde’s flagship, becomes the capital ship for the First Order. Starkiller Base wasn’t a tactical error, but it was a strategic error, that the Xyston fleet corrects. And the older Imperials (some of them in league with Palpatine’s Final Order) begin to get their comeuppance as the First Order’s role as a tactical pawn comes into sharper focus.
Let me know what you think of this “fix” in the comments!
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