As a prequel, Rogue One needed to skirt carefully around the existing Star Wars canon, which was no small task considering the film directly led to the events of A New Hope. Use of the Death Star, in particular, needed to be addressed with care, because canonically, Alderaan was the first test of the battle station’s full destructive capacity. That meant Rogue One couldn’t show it destroying a planet, and yet, the protagonists had to understand the magnitude of what they were dealing with in order to motivate them to act.

Director Gareth Edwards limited the Death Star’s use to twoincidents, both designed as smaller tests so as to avoid stealing Alderaan’s thunder. The first entailed the destruction of Jedha City, while the second was a similarly focused strike on Scarif, where the heroes ultimately succeeded in stealing the Death Star’s plans and transmitting them to Princess Leia. In response, the Death Star launched a larger attack against the planet's massive facility, destroying it and the surrounding territory without totally obliterating the planet.

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Death Star fires upon Scarif in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

However, given the nature of the assault, the attack on Scarif may even be worse than the obliteration of Alderaan. Scarif consisted of shallow seas and islands, and the blast unleashed by the Death Star boiled the oceans and unleashed a tsunami that likely wiped out the nearby facility. The devastation would also destroy the planet's ecology -- not only the flora and fauna, but also any human settlements. And unlike Alderaan, which was destroyed in a matter of seconds, the damage would play out over decades, turning a near-paradise into a wasteland.

And that's only the tip of the iceberg. The Citadel Tower destroyed in the attack was an Imperial facility, staffed by Imperial personnel and manned by Imperial troops, who were all presumably killed as well. While Jedha City was a sacred site to the Jedi and Alderaan housed Rebel sympathizers, both sites were enemies of the Empire, meaning an attack on them, while horrifying, at least made logistical sense.

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Death Star fires upon Scarif in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Scarif, on the other hand, belonged to the Imperials, and the Citadel Tower was an incredibly valuable locale. Over and above the direct loss of Imperial personnel in the attack, the Tower itself was utterly lost and all of the data on it destroyed. Grand Moff Tarkin did this to prevent the transmission of the Death Star plans, but he makes the order to turn the weapon on the Empire’s own forces without a hint of hesitation or remorse. To him, everyone on Scarif had outlived their usefulness, including Orson Krennic, a fierce rival whom he was conveniently able to eliminate with the blast as well.

The callousness with which the deed is inflicted speaks volumes about the Empire, and the Star Wars saga has gone to great lengths to reflect planetary devastation like what happened on Scarif before, most notably with Mustafar, which appeared to be healing from the ecological damage present in the sequels in The Rise of Skywalker. Alderaan will never heal, of course, but that may be the only way its fate is worse than Scarif’s.

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