Darth Maul’s Phantom Menace Sith Interceptor Was Nearly 70 Years Ahead Of The First Order

Darth Maul’s personal vessel in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, the Sith Infiltrator known as the Scimitar, successfully used a seemingly impossible form of tracking almost 70 years before the First Order. The Scimitar was a unique and heavily armed starship with experimental and rare technology, utilizing a cloaking device (an extreme rarity for a ship of its size) and an advanced tracking system. The Empire would struggle to replicate one element of the Scimitar’s tracking technology, though its successor state, the First Order, would deploy it against the Resistance.

The Scimitar only briefly appears in The Phantom Menace, with Darth Maul flying the vessel to Tatooine on a mission to track down Queen Amidala. After Maul’s presumed death on Naboo, the ship fell into the hands of his mentor, Palpatine (Darth Sidious), who would use the ship during the Clone Wars and his reign as Emperor. One Star Wars original trilogy era appearance by the Scimitar reveals that one of its advanced features was decades ahead of its time.

Darth Maul’s Sith Interceptor Had Hyperspace Tracking Long Before The First Order

Maul & His Scimitar Had This “Innovative” Technology At His Disposal

As revealed in Lando #3 by Charles Soule and Alex Maleev, the Scimitar was capable of tracking ships through hyperspace, a feat thought impossible before the events of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. With Lando Calrissian having stolen Emperor Palpatine’s yacht, the Imperialis, the bounty hunter Chanath Cha commandeers the Scimitar and tracks down the ship through hyperspace by locking onto its drive signature. The Scimitar’s ability to track ships through hyperspace precedes the Empire’s research and the First Order’s deployment of this technology, though there may be a reason for this inconsistency.

Did The Sith Keep Hyperspace Tracking Secret?

The Technology May Not Have Been Perfected Yet

As shown in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, research into hyperspace tracking was one of the Empire’s many projects referenced by Jyn Erso during the movie’s third act on Scarif. The Empire still had not perfected the technology well after the Galactic Civil War, as shown in Adam Christopher’s Shadow of the Sith. As the novel reveals, the Empire had been experimenting with buoys planted throughout the known galaxy, which would lock on to a ship’s unique energy signature. By the start of the First Order’s war with the Resistance, however, the technology had finally become operational.

The Scimitar’s ability to track a ship through hyperspace may have been exclusively for the Imperialis, and thus the technology would not have been perfected for general use yet. The Empire and later First Order might have studied the Scimitar’s method of tracking the Imperialis in their own research into hyperspace tracking, however. In any case, the connection between the two factions and Darth Maul’s ship in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace creates a fascinating throughline across all three Star Wars trilogies.