Every Death Star Ever Built — All 6 Explained!

Summary

The video surveys six Death Star-related projects across Star Wars canon and Legends, from a secret superlaser test rig to a Hutt crime lord’s disastrously constructed weapon.

1. The Maw Prototype

Before the first Death Star, the Empire tested its planet-killing superlaser on a skeletal, 120-kilometer station hidden in the Maw, a stable pocket among black holes. The prototype could fire, but its aim was badly calibrated and it needed about 15 minutes to recharge.

Years later, it missed its target and destroyed a moon instead. A Jedi lured it into one of the black holes it had been hiding near. The video notes the grim irony of a secret weapon being swallowed by “the Jaws.”

2. The First Death Star

The full-sized station combined a planet-destroying superlaser with vast defenses—and cost roughly a trillion credits. Its first demonstration was the destruction of Alderaan.

But Galen Erso had secretly built in a fatal weakness: an exhaust port leading to the reactor. Rebel pilots exploited it at Yavin, reducing the Empire’s enormous investment to space debris. The narrator jokes that losing a trillion-credit battle station to a hole “the width of a man” would make for a career-ending engineering review.

3. The Tarkin Superlaser Platform

In Legends, the Empire tried a different approach: remove the moon-sized fortress and keep the cannon. Named after Grand Moff Tarkin, the heavily shielded platform was built to destroy both ships and planets.

It fired just once, cracking open a planet to obtain valuable cloaking crystals. When Luke, Leia, Chewie, and the others infiltrated it, Leia sabotaged the weapon so it destroyed the platform itself. The video wryly calls naming it after the man killed by the first Death Star a “somber” tribute.

4. The Second Death Star

The station at Endor fixed the first Death Star’s exhaust-port vulnerability and could fire much more quickly. Improved targeting also let it destroy large ships.

Palpatine tricked the Rebels into believing its weapons were not ready, then used the operational superlaser to attack their fleet. The plan unraveled when the ground team brought down the shield and Rebel fighters flew into the unfinished station to destroy its reactor.

5. The Fake Death Star

After Endor, a warlord repurposed a stolen, unfinished Worldcraft—a giant artificial planetoid—to impersonate a Death Star. The deception worked: the Rebels attacked the decoy while the warlord’s crews escaped with real ships.

The mock-up was eventually destroyed in a replay of the Yavin tactic, complete with an exhaust-port weakness. As the narrator points out, the Empire somehow rebuilt the famous flaw into a fake Death Star.

6. The Darksaber

Hutt crime lord Durga used stolen plans to commission a stripped-down superlaser inside a long, lightsaber-hilt-shaped shell. It was built in the Hoth asteroid field under cover of a phony mining company, but the project was undermined by distracted workers, cheap parts, and poor construction.

When Durga tried to fire it to clear an escape route, the weapon failed, and the Darksaber was crushed between asteroids. The video clarifies that this Legends weapon is unrelated to the black-bladed Darksaber familiar from the TV series.

Recurring Theme

Imperial and would-be Imperial designers kept trying to build the ultimate superweapon, yet the projects repeatedly fell to bad engineering, sabotage, or spectacularly poor judgment.

Notable Personalities

Bevel Lemelisk, Qui Xux, Tol Sevron, Galen Erso, Grand Moff Tarkin, Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Chewbacca, Grand Admiral Thrawn (the subtitles refer to an unnamed Grand Admiral), Moff Jerjerrod, Emperor Palpatine, Durga, and Wedge Antilles.