Andor season 2 confirmed a timeline detail for the Death Star that is completely unbelievable and drastically changes how you’ll see A New Hope. Where specific dates of Star Wars are concerned, Andor season 2’s timeline was one of the more intriguing. Rather than take place over the course of a few days or weeks, as most Star Wars TV shows tend to, Andor season 2’s ending took place around four years after its premiere, feeding directly into the story of Rogue One.

Over the course of these four years, many elements were confirmed regarding Star Wars’ Rebel Alliance. Not only was the planet of Yavin 4 found and made into a Rebel base, but galaxy-defining elements like the Ghorman Mᴀssacre and Mon Mothma’s abandonment of Coruscant took place. This allowed Andor season 2’s story to blend seamlessly with Rogue One, raising an interesting timeline conversation in the process. After Andor, a detail about the Death Star’s timeline becomes clear, making A New Hope feel very different.

The Death Star Took 20 Years To Make… & It Didn’t Last A Month

The Death Star Had A Laughably Short Active Life Span

The Death Star timeline aspect that Andor reconfirmed was just how short its active life span was. When watching the Star Wars movies in chronological order, going from Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith to Rogue One and into A New Hope means the Death Star is destroyed within three movies. While the films obviously make it clear how much time has pᴀssed in big ways, Andor expertly showed the intricacies of the Death Star’s construction, the expansiveness of its timeline, and the extreme lengths the Empire went to in order to make it operational.

The more in-depth look at the Death Star in Andor makes the 20 years it took to build feel so much bigger than the movies ever did. Andor season 2’s final moments then lead right into Rogue One, which does the same with A New Hope. When taking these three specific projects into account, it becomes clear that the Death Star was operational for a few weeks, at the very most. After two decades of the intricacies required to secretly build it on the Empire’s part, the Rebels uncovered what it was, found the plans, and enacted the strike that destroyed it in only a matter of days or weeks.

The Second Death Star Didn’t Even Get Finished

The Rebels Rubbed Salt In The Wounds Of Palpatine & The Empire

To make this short life span even more humorous, from the perspective that the Emperor’s evil plans that were in the making for 20 years were ended in a few days, the Second Death Star had an even shorter life span than the first. In Return of the Jedi, it was revealed that the Emperor was making a secret Second Death Star, which was typical of Palpatine with his many contingencies. However, the Second Death Star was unfinished when the Rebels discovered it and unleashed an attack at the Battle of Endor.

The Battle of Endor then saw the Second Death Star be destroyed before it had even been constructed. The first Death Star managed to be built and became briefly operational, but the Rebels ruined Palpatine’s plans. Only years later, these plans were dashed once more, this time before Palpatine’s secret plan for another planet-killing weapon could even be fully realized.

Palpatine Would’ve Been Better To Avoid Superweapons Entirely

The Empire’s Evil Functioned Better Without Superweapons

If these two incidents prove anything, it is that the Empire and Palpatine would have been better off without superweapons. After all, it was the construction of the Death Star, its plans, and the rush to destroy that kicked the Rebel Alliance into high gear. Without this motivation, the Empire could have outlasted the Rebels.

However, the destruction of the first Death Star led to the deaths of millions of Imperials and the Emperor’s highest-ranked politicians, while the Second Death Star’s explosion killed the Emperor himself, alongside Darth Vader. Without either superweapon, the Empire might never have forced the Rebels of Star Wars into such drastic action, proving that Palpatine’s hubris in the Death Stars was his downfall, brought about by the spies and saboteurs of Andor.