Marvel's Poe Dameron Explains A Major Star Wars: The Force Awakens Plot Hole

SPOILER WARNING: Major spoilers ahead for Marvel's Poe Dameron Annual #2, by Jody Houser, Andrea Broccardo, Stefani Renee, and VC's Joe Caramagna, in stores now.

The planet destroyer known as the Death Star has cast an enormous shadow over the history of cinema. It's one of the most notorious weapons ever seen on the big screen, making an insanely large impact on pop culture when Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader first used it to destroy Princess Leia's homeplanet of Alderaan in 1977's Star Wars.

Come 2015's The Force Awakens, J.J. Abrams and Co. had the tall order of replacing it with something even more sinister, which resulted in the Starkiller Base. Now, Poe Dameron Annual #2 fills in a "plot hole" from that film, explaining just how the Resistance came to know about the weapon of mass destruction that would go on to destroy several worlds at a time.

In the movie, the First Order, which rose from the ashes of the Empire in the wake of 1983's Return of the Jedi, unveiled the weapon early on and destroyed a couple planets to scare General Leia's Resistance. But the rebels had already known about its might -- it harnessed the power of stars and used the energy to create deadly laser beams which could eviscerate multiple planets in seconds. We didn't know how they knew, though, and just assumed that being rebels and all, they found out through their spy network. As it turns out, it's not that simple.

This issue details exactly what went down and how this intelligence was gathered. Leia's forces did find out through a network, but there are a couple things to note which the movie never shed insight into. The information didn't come through rebels, but rebel sympathizers. And they weren't humans, they were actually droids.

C-3PO built a spy network of droids, scattered across the galaxy, gathering crucial data on what Supreme Leader Snoke, Admiral Hux and Kylo Ren were up to. Also, details were gathered due to C-3PO leading a hacking unit, which led to him becoming the Alliance's head of intelligence.

He's come a far way from that bumbling robot we saw in the first trilogy, helping Luke, Han and Leia save the galaxy using tools such as the Millennium Falcon, and in his case, sheer luck. Here though, he's more calculating, helping Poe Dameron plot heists, a role he thought he'd never take but one which admits he has to, because desperate times call for desperate measures.

We've seen him do this sort of hacking already on the Death Star, lowering shields on Endor to help blow up the second Death Star, as well as in the past, with R2-D2 and the younger versions of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker in the prequel trilogy. But he's never been an official general or a soldier like this. And it's paid off because they find out about Snoke's superweapon through these rogue droids, who span as far as the Outer Rim.

This emphasizes how much Threepio's evolved. He's no longer just someone Leia relies on from time to time, he's a chief strategist. That's why he's deployed bots that weren't too deeply embedded within the First Order (so they couldn't get caught and be traced back to him), but also droids who weren't too far from the action.

He did need credible intel, after all, to ensure the rebels' survival and help formulate plans of attack for the likes of Poe and his Black Squadron. It's his proactive nature here which alerted Leia's forces to the threats to come, and what got to her to start calling for help, and his intel is what Leia used to begin sourcing funds for the other fights against Snoke and the First Order.