A nightmarish Imperial superweapon from the Star Wars Legends continuity was quietly reimagined for the modern canon in Star Wars Rebels – and made far less dangerous. The Star Wars Legends continuity was the original canon for the Star Wars franchise, but when Star Wars underwent a partial reboot in April 2014, Legends became both an alternate continuity and a wellspring of inspiration for the newer Star Wars timeline. In many cases, an element of Legends-era lore will be significantly reimagined when reappearing in the modern canon.

In the Legends continuity, Emperor Palpatine returned from the dead multiple times in the various Dark Empire comics by Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy. Using the dark side power of essence transfer, Palpatine placed his consciousness in mindless clone bodies stored in his citadel on Byss in the Deep Core. Byss also housed a hidden backup portion of the Empire itself, known as the Dark Empire, whose military consisted of Palpatine’s deadliest forces. This included deadly droids like TIE/D drones and Scorpenek annihilator droids (appropriated from the Separatists), deadly vessels like the Eclipse-class dreadnaught, and terrifying superweapons.

Star Wars Rebels Secretly Brought Back The World Devastators

The World Devastators are among the Dark Empire’s superweapons, and a case can be made that they are significantly more dangerous than the Death Stars or any other superweapons, save for perhaps the Sun Crusher. World Devastators are massive war machines that harvest a planet’s natural resources with powerful tractor beams. At the expense of whatever planet they’re absorbing, World Devastators churn out warships for the Dark Empire, upgrade themselves and grow in size, and even produce other World Devastators. These monstrosities are comparable to the Star Forge, only they do not require a dark side-user and are mobile.

As World Devastators grow and improve themselves, they also become virtually indestructible to conventional means of attack. While Rogue Squadron managed to destroy three small World Devastators during the Battle of Mon Calamari, the rest could only be destroyed thanks to internal sabotage from Luke Skywalker and R2-D2, with the former feigning his fall to the dark side and allegiance to the Dark Empire and the Sith. Rebels season 4 introduced similar machines to the modern canon called ore crawlers, though they were nowhere near as dangerous as the original Legends iterations of the World Devastators.

The “World Devastators” Aren’t Quite As Dangerous As Legends

Ore crawlers, despite having a similar visual design and basic function to the original World Devastators, are trivial in comparison to the Dark Empire’s abominations. Ore crawlers strip mine a planet’s surface to provide the Galactic Empire with materials for their military, but they are not the self-replicating, virtually-indestructible, planet-killers that their Legends counterparts are. In Star Wars Rebels, ore crawlers simply mine materials and transport them to Imperial facilities, so while they are certainly destructive, they are a far cry from superweapons.