Bad Batch Sets Up The Death Star's Construction Immediately After ROTS

Star Wars: The Bad Batch season 1, episode 11, “Devil’s Deal,” reveals some new details of the Empire’s early Death Star construction efforts directly after the end of Revenge of the Sith. Though plans for the battle station existed before the Clone Wars even began, the finished Death Star was not made operational until more than two decades later. In The Bad Batch, the Empire is seen prioritizing the Death Star project very early on in Palpatine’s Imperial reign.

“Devil’s Deal” focuses on the planet Ryloth, which was ravaged by battle during the Clone Wars. In the wake of the conflict’s end, the Empire has constructed a massive mining and refinery complex on the planet to acquire vast quantities of doonium – a material crucial in most Star Wars spacecraft construction. However, the Empire’s interest in Ryloth’s doonium deposits go far deeper than just expanding the Imperial fleet.

Related: What Happened To Hera (& Her Parents) After The Bad Batch

Put simply, doonium is one of the most crucial components of the Death Star’s construction. The station requires huge amounts of the material to house its reactor core, and doonium was also a key resource in the Death Star’s superlaser focusing array. Rampart’s intense interest in developing mining operations for doonium on Ryloth, therefore, is actually much more sinister than it seems at first glance, as that same refinery would be a key piece in the completion of the first Death Star. In the years immediately after the Clone Wars, the Empire channeled massive quantities of doonium to the station’s construction, all through various disconnected channels so as to keep the actual project a secret.

It makes sense that Palpatine would want to expedite the Death Star’s creation as soon as possible once the Empire was established. The station was under construction in various forms during the Clone Wars, where Palpatine used a secret council within the Republic to organize the project. Various corporations were contracted to work on individual pieces of the station, with the full picture of what they were building always being kept in the dark. Due to the war and the necessary secrecy, progress was slow – an issue that would have been quickly ameliorated by the formation of the Empire.

Clearly, Palpatine’s intention was always to make democracy irrelevant as quickly as possible. The Imperial Senate isn’t formally dissolved until the events of A New Hope, after the Death Star becomes fully operational. The intervening years still saw the Emperor wield immense power across the galaxy, but nothing on the level of tyranny he would have been able to flaunt had the operational Death Star survived. In the era of The Bad Batch, most galactic citizens have no idea that many of the Imperial operations happening around them are directly tied to the construction of the greatest superweapon in the galaxy.

Next: George Lucas' Original Return Of The Jedi Plan Had Two Death Stars