Star Wars Reveals Where The Jedi's Hyperspace Tech Really Came From
Star Wars has revealed the origin of the Jedi's hyperspace technology in the prequel trilogy. The Star Wars galaxy is a big one, but fortunately starships can travel across its length and breadth via another dimension called hyperspace. The trip from Tatooine to Alderaan in the first movie took 16 hours, pretty slow for a 10,000 light year journey in a ship with an illegal class 0.5 hyperdrive. Han Solo must have figured he didn't need to push the Millennium Falcon too hard for a hermit and a farmboy.
When George Lucas stepped back in time to the prequel era, he revealed hyperspace technology actually developed substantially during the Dark Times of the Emperor's rule. Few smaller starfighters possessed on-board hyperdrives in the prequel trilogy, and even the Jedi starfighters were dependent on docking with hyperspace transport rings that they left in space to pick up later.
Daniel José Older's novel Race to Crashpoint Tower reveals the unexpected origin of this particular technology. The book is set during the High Republic Era, some 200 years before the events of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, at a time when the Jedi were battling a group of space pirates known as the Nihil. The Nihil possessed advanced hyperspace technology, allowing them to make precision jumps through hyperspace Republic forces couldn't duplicate, and it seems they were also the ones who invented hyperspace rings. The Jedi observe these rings in use in Race to Crashpoint Tower, and presumably adopt the technology for themselves.
Lucasfilm Publishing's Star Wars: The High Republic transmedia initiative is gradually revealing the history of hyperspace travel. It turns out hyperspace was poorly understood during the High Republic Era, with major hyperspace lanes to the Outer Rim only just becoming safe and viable, and the threat of the Nihil seems to have been a major reason for advancements. But this was the height of the Republic, which became culturally and scientifically stagnant over the next 200 years, until the Clone Wars broke out. As in the real world, conflict led to new leaps in scientific progress.
This may also help understand one of the strangest plot elements of Star Wars: The Last Jedi - the Holdo Maneuver, in which Vice Admiral Holdo rammed the Resistance flagship into Supreme Leader Snoke's vessel the Supremacy at the moment it was about to jump to hyperspace. This tactic left viewers taken aback, with many wondering why the technique hadn't been used before. One reason hyperspace hadn't been weaponized may well be that it still wasn't well understood, with most people thinking of it simply as a means of getting from A to B rather than as something they could use offensively. It will be interesting to see whether Holdo's unintentional legacy is a new approach to hyperspace, with Star Wars using it as a weapon more often.
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