Ever since I heard the Empire made their last stand at the Battle of Jakku, I’ve wondered...why?
Why this backwater desert planet?
Well the new book Empire’s End has thankfully provided us with a satisfying answer, and
tells us what was really happening at the Battle of Jakku.
This video will contain spoilers for the book, so if you want to read it first, go grab it
for free on Audible, blow through it at double speed, and then come back here.
Jakku was part of a contingency plan in the event of the Emperor’s death.
Palpatine explains himself using chess as an analogy.
Actually the game is called Shah-tezh...but it’s chess, so I’m just going to talk
in terms of chess for simplicity’s sake.
Palpatine explains that if the king is taken in chess, the game is lost, no matter what
other pieces remain on the board.
If the king is taken, the pieces that remain have failed and are not worthy of survival.
Basically he’s saying that if he dies, the rest of the Empire should die with him.
The other man in that conversation was Gallius Rax who was taken under Palpatine’s wing
as a child.
Who was told that it was his destiny to tear down the Empire should his master ever perish.
You might remember in the Shattered Empire comics, red-robed sentinel droids deliver
messages from Palpatine to carry out Operation Cinder.
These attacks across the galaxy were also part of the contingency.
After the Battle of Endor, Rax was visited by a sentinel droid, alerting him that his
destiny had come.
Jakku’s part to play was to wipe out the Empire and its enemies simultaneously, breaking
the metaphorical chess board.
Its secondary purpose was to chart a safe route into the Unknown Regions to find a new
galaxy where Gallius Rax could lead the worthy few survivors in a new Empire.
These goals were overseen at what was known as the Observatory.
Prior to the battle itself, Rax took control of what was left of the Empire and stationed
them on Jakku.
He claimed the harsh planet would strengthen them all for what was to come.
In reality, it was mean to purposefully demoralize them and test the limits of their sanity.
He wanted his soldiers to crack under the pressure.
They were there for months before being accidentally discovered by the New Republic, and they wound
up being there even longer than he anticipated when the new government took their time approving
the final attack.
The Ravager was the final super star destroyer in the galaxy, and it was the central piece
of the Empire’s strategy.
It sat in low orbit above Jakku, surrounded by standard star destroyers.
When the New Republic arrived, the star destroyers protected the Ravager from fire.
They would part and allow the Ravager to unleash its weapons cycle, and would then retake their
position.
The strategy was very effective.
Admiral Ackbar was able to tighten the radius of the Imperial line, but they were not able
to break through to the Ravager.
However, the Empire was desperate, mentally broken and physically exhausted.
Captain Groff of the star destroyer Punishment panicked and smashed his ship into a New Republic
capital ship, creating a hole in the Imperial defense.
A New Republic Starhawk called the Concord, captained by Krista Agate, used the opportunity
to attack the Ravager head on.
It was easily disabled, and left to plummet towards Jakku, which was Agate’s plan from
the start.
She used her ship’s state of the art tractor beam to latch onto the Ravager and pull it
with her.
She ordered New Republic fighters to focus their fire on the super star destroyer’s
now-exposed engines, and when they were disabled, both ships crashed down to Jakku, turning
the tide of the war.
The remaining star destroyers were left to retreat, surrender, or fight on.
Some captains even drove their own ships into Jakku.
While the war raged on in space, the New Republic ground forces used the few U-Wings left in
their fleet to deliver troops to the ground.
Their goal was to take a rumored Imperial weapons facility, which was, in fact, the
Observatory.
They were supported by Wedge Antilles and the rest of Phantom Squadron.
Like the New Republic Navy above, they had a difficult time pushing forward.
Rax’s plan was to delay anyway, because the Observatory had yet another purpose.
A hole had been drilled down into the planet’s core.
Energy from ancient and powerful Sith artifacts was poured into the core until it began to
destabilize and break apart.
Theoretically this would kill everyone on the ground and in the sky.
But Rax’s plan was stopped by former Grand Admiral Rae Sloane, who sought revenge on
him after he removed her from power.
She killed Gallius Rax and stopped the planet’s explosion.
With his dying words, Rax urged Sloane to venture into Unknown Space, so she took a
ship and escaped with Brendol and Armitage Hux.
A treaty called the Galactic Concordance was signed by Mas Amedda of the Empire and Mon
Mothma of the New Republic.
Even so, fighting on Jakku continued for months with stubborn captains and ground forces that
refused to give in.
After Jakku, small Imperial holdouts remained throughout the galaxy, but the Empire was
effectively dead.
In the Unknown Regions, Rae Sloane followed the coordinates from the Observatory.
What she found was another super star destroyer: the Eclipse.
The former flagship of Emperor Palpatine himself.
Along with Hux and his son, she planned to board the ship and start the Empire anew.
Now you know what really happened at the Battle of Jakku.
Hopefully that answers all your questions, but if you want to get the full account, I
highly recommend you check out Empire’s End.
If you’re interested in picking it up, you can check it out on Audible.
The audiobook is out now, and you can get it for free by clicking on the link in the
description or or going to www.audibletrial.com/starwarsexplained.
If you sign up for a trial, you’ll get a credit for one free book, and you can use
it on Aftermath: Empire’s End.
Or a number of other Star Wars books.
Or get any book you want!
The point is you get a free book, and you’ll be supporting the channel when you do!
That’s it for today!
If you haven’t already please like this video, subscribe to the channel to see new
Star Wars videos every single day, follow me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and
consider checking out my Patreon page!
As always, thanks for watching and may the Force be with you!