Ahsoka, And Everything You Need To Know About Hyperdrive Motivators
This post contains spoilers for the second episode of "Ahsoka."
In the second episode of "Ahsoka," Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) head to the shipyards of Corellia to investigate Morgan Elsbeth's old racket. The former magistrate used to run shipyards on Corellia, but they have since been turned over to the New Republic. When Hera and Ahsoka arrive, they discover the yards have been decommissioning hyperdrive motivators and cores from Star Destroyers to put into New Republic ships, and they have been finding other uses for them or selling them off to pay for other New Republic programs.
But what exactly is a hyperdrive core? Or a hyperdrive motivator? Or generator? We've heard a lot of different names for a technology that hasn't ever been well-explained in "Star Wars." So let's break down what we know.
What's a hyperdrive motivator?
The first time we heard the phrase "hyperdrive motivator" was in "The Empire Strikes Back." C-3PO tells Han Solo that the hyperdrive motivator of the Millennium Falcon has been damaged, making it impossible to go into lightspeed. They need R2-D2 to fix it and help them escape the Empire.
The next time they come into play in a story is really "The Phantom Menace," where the hyperdrive motivator of the Queen's chrome J-Type 327 Nubian ship is damaged, stranding Qui-Gon Jinn, Queen Amidala, and their entire entourage on Tatooine while they seek a replacement.
These components are vital to going at speeds faster than light. They're finicky, easily damaged, but extremely valuable and powerful. In order to get just a motivator for the Queen's ship, Qui-Gon had to resort to forcing Anakin Skywalker to fly in a deadly podrace to win enough to get a new motivator from Watto. Meanwhile, Han Solo is constantly having trouble with his hyperdrive in the Millennium Falcon, much to his chagrin.
Hyperspace itself is an alternate dimension in "Star Wars" that could be reached by traveling at speeds faster than the speed of light through specifically calculated hyperspace lanes. That's why hyperspace is able to travel at the speed of the story in pretty much any instance in "Star Wars" rather than adhering to any actual science about how light speed would work.
A super star destroyer core
As Hera and Ahsoka question the "legitimate" business man running Morgan Elsbeth's new operation on Corellia, they wonder why they're salvaging a hyperdrive from an SSD, or a Super Star Destroyer. You've seen one dwarf the other Star Destroyers at the beginning of "The Empire Strikes Back," as Vader's flagship, the Executor, arrives on the scene. They're absolutely massive ships.
So, why would it be bad for Morgan Elsbeth and the bad guys to get their hands on a hyperdrive core of that size? With enough of them, there's no telling how far they could go, literally and figuratively.
Hyperspace rings
At the end of the episode, we learn that the Eye of Scion is a massive hyperspace ring that Elsbeth is building, using the hyperdrive cores from her old shipyards. Hyperspace rings were in wide-use by the Jedi during the Clone Wars. Their ships were too small to be equipped with hyperdrives on their own, but they could dock with rings that were equipped with hyperdrives that would take them across the galaxy. Obi-Wan Kenobi made extensive use of one in "Attack of the Clones" and in various moments throughout the animated "Clone Wars" series.
With a ring the size of the one Morgan Elsbeth is building, with a number of hyperdrive cores stripped from ships as large as Super Star Destroyers, they would be able to make the trip from one galaxy to the next if they had the right coordinates and space lane. And then, they would be able to bring Thrawn's flagship, the Star Destroyer Chimera, back with them.
None of that is good news for the heroes of the New Republic working to prevent his coming.
New episodes of "Ahsoka" premiere on Tuesday nights on Disney+ at 9:00 PM EST.