WARNING: Spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi And Rogue One below.
Some of the nerdiest (and most wonderful) things about Star Wars are the arguments that spring up over the slightest little minutia in the storylines. Even though everyone is well aware that these movies are full of hokey religions and ancient weapons, there’s always a sense of importance for every detail.
But since The Last Jedi premiered, the internet has been afire with questions of why a cowardly janitor can now defeat someone with the skill of Captain Phasma in brief combat, or why Luke’s lightsaber in his battle with Kylo Ren on Crait was blue when his blue lightsaber was cut in half earlier in the movie (and his personal lightsaber is green). Of course, Star Wars fans are hard to please, and The Last Jedi‘s divisive reviews from its audience is proof, but one of the movie’s perceived plot holes isn’t a plot hole at all.
Quite a bit of The Last Jedi‘s backlash has been made of the First Order’s ability to track the Resistance’s ships through hyperspace. Jumping into hyperspace is something that’s gotten Han Solo out of countless binds, and it’s a technology that didn’t exist in past films. Now in TLJ, hyperspace tracking is suddenly a reality. Fans didn’t like it. To some, it made a plot point out of a plot hole.
https://twitter.com/CitedForClarity/status/942470837541769216
The plot of #lastjedi is incomprehensible. Shields protect the main ship until it doesn’t. Can’t tell Poe the plan, despite him being a hero of the resistance and a main character, tracking in hyperspace “because”, Rey is a fully fledged jedi, FOR NO DISCERNABLE REASON.
— Lono (@LonoSG) December 18, 2017
Saw #LastJedi this morning. Eh. The whole "they're tracking us through hyperspace" subplot was stolen directly from Battlestar Galactica and just filler.
— Dr. Theopolis (@StinkyEarl) December 17, 2017
People keep calling everyone that doesn’t love #TheLastJedi complainers and crybabies. We don’t have problems with the choices, or risks, we have a problem with the writing. All the movie is, is a creation of problems that never existed before. Fuel? Hyperspace tracking? 1/2
— JustinTlME (@jpbeeman) December 17, 2017
Lots of plot holes and devices created solely to make the odds more difficult, for no reason, or no explanation.
1) hyperspace tracking miraculously exists now. So no more escaping…! Done solely to make the whole movie work because of it being a long chase scene…— JustinTlME (@jpbeeman) December 18, 2017
But, it turns out hyperspace tracking was something that the Empire was working on before the first Death Star was even completed. In Rogue One, as Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor hustle to steal the Death Star’s blueprints, Erso utters a single line that pays off in The Last Jedi:
https://twitter.com/kyleauxren/status/942516563730722817
Here’s Pablo Hidalgo, who maintains Lucasfilm’s Star Wars canon, explaining further:
https://twitter.com/pablohidalgo/status/942586794595426304
https://twitter.com/pablohidalgo/status/942847365702066176
Cruel? Yes. Evil? Of course. Willing to fund their research and development teams with enough Credits to not only further technology across the galaxy, but provide jobs to engineers and scientists? Absolutely. The Empire may be dead, but their innovations live on with the First Order.