Battle of Starkiller Base

In their quest to locate Luke Skywalker in 34 ABY, the First Order intended to utilize Starkiller Base to eradicate the Resistance and severely weaken the New Republic. They initiated a preemptive strike against the New Republic's capital, Hosnian Prime, along with four additional planets within the Hosnian system, as a display of their power, resulting in the destruction of these planets and a New Republic fleet.

On Takodana, Kylo Ren discerned that Rey, a scavenger and ally of the Resistance, possessed Force-sensitivity. During the Battle of Takodana, he apprehended her and transported her to Starkiller Base for interrogation. However, this interrogation proved counterproductive when Rey managed to delve into Kylo's mind, uncovering his anxiety about failing to achieve the same level of greatness as his grandfather, the notorious Imperial enforcer Darth Vader, prompting him to seek guidance from his master, Snoke. Upon his return to resume the interrogation, he discovered that Rey had already escaped by manipulating the stormtrooper assigned to guard her into releasing her. Enraged by this, Kylo destroyed the interrogation room in a fit of fury, causing two patrolling stormtroopers to retreat upon noticing the commotion.

By tracing the trajectory of the weapon's energy beam, the Resistance pinpointed its origin. Jessika Pava engineered a recon pod that Temmin Wexley piloted to survey the superweapon. Wexley's wife, Karé Kun, towed the pod to and from Starkiller Base in her X-wing. The First Order managed to track the X-wing back to D'Qar.

Concurrently, members of the Resistance's J-Squadron were tracking their captured comrade Jo Jerjerrod. By monitoring the coordinates of a captured TIE/vn space superiority fighter, they arrived at Starkiller Base, landed, and infiltrated the base covertly.

Finn had provided the Resistance with Starkiller Base's blueprints, which revealed that the superweapon siphoned energy from a sun to power its primary weapon, and that it depended on a thermal oscillator to maintain the energy on the planet. Destroying this thermal oscillator would destabilize the planet's core, causing the base to implode. However, this needed to be accomplished before Starkiller Base fully charged its main weapon. Finn, Han Solo, and Chewbacca volunteered to disable Starkiller's defensive shield from within.

Han Solo piloted the Millennium Falcon to Starkiller Base, accompanied by Chewbacca and Finn. Their mission was to deactivate the shields, enabling the X-wing squadron to launch an attack, although Finn's primary objective was to rescue Rey. Breaching the shields at lightspeed, the Falcon executed a rough landing on Starkiller Base near a cliff's edge.

Han, Chewbacca, and Finn infiltrated the main base and captured Captain Phasma, compelling her to deactivate the shields before disposing of her in a garbage chute. They then reunited with Rey, who had already managed to escape independently. Upon exiting the base and observing the aerial assault, Han, Chewbacca, Finn, and Rey recognized the need to assist the Resistance squadrons and decided to create an opening by planting thermal detonators within the base.

When Han noted the impossibility of accessing the oscillator to plant the explosives, Finn proposed finding a way to unlock a doorway through a conventional junction, leveraging his prior experience on Star Destroyers. He and Rey then approached a parking area, commandeered a lone snowspeeder, and headed towards the junction, while Han and Chewie made their way to the nearest structure. A solitary stormtrooper spotted their snowspeeder and attempted to shoot them down, reporting the incident after his shot missed.

As Finn and Rey sped towards the junction, they were pursued by three additional snowspeeders. After a brief exchange of fire, Rey instructed Finn to steer towards the trees. There, Rey asked Finn to switch places, resulting in Finn taking control of the blaster while Rey piloted the speeder. With a single shot, Finn eliminated one of their pursuers. Shortly after, another shot from Finn disabled the second pursuer. As they approached a cliff, Finn's engagement with the last pursuer caused him to drop the blaster into the snow, leaving them almost defenseless. However, thanks to Rey's expert maneuvering, they successfully jumped between cliffs, leaving the last pursuer overturned in the snow. Finn and Rey then continued towards their objective.

Upon reaching the junction, Rey swiftly began working. In a short time, she successfully rigged the junction, causing a service hatch to open on the complex Han and Chewie were infiltrating. Han and Chewie then devised a strategy to maximize the use of the explosives at their disposal before proceeding.

Han then confronted Kylo Ren on a bridge overlooking a vast pit, imploring his son to reject Snoke and return to the light side of the Force. However, Ren refused and impaled his father with his lightsaber. Han lovingly caressed his son's face before falling down a shaft as Finn, Rey, and Chewbacca watched. Kylo Ren was weakened and horrified by his actions. An enraged Chewbacca injured Ren with his bowcaster and proceeded to shoot down several stormtroopers. Chewbacca then detonated the explosives, creating an opening to the base's thermal oscillators.

With the shields down, Blue Squadron and Red Squadron, led by Poe Dameron as Black Leader, initiated their assault. All starfighter squadrons locked their S-foils in attack position to commence the strike on Starkiller Base's thermal oscillator. General Armitage Hux, observing the fleet from outside, ordered the deployment of all TIE fighter squadrons. The X-wing starfighter squadrons successfully executed a bombing run on the thermal oscillator, scoring a direct hit but causing no damage, before the TIE fighters engaged them. During the ensuing battle, a heavy cannon emplacement launched a missile that destroyed an X-wing fighter. With ten minutes remaining until the weapon was fully charged, half of the Resistance fleet had already been destroyed. The thermal detonators, triggered by Chewbacca, detonated within the base, revealing a new opening to the oscillator for the fighter squadrons. Red Four and Red Six provided cover for Poe while the rest of the squadron focused on firing on the target. As the squadrons flew through the trenches of the base, facing attacks from First Order TIE fighters and turbolasers, Ello Asty's X-wing was shot down.

J-Squadron managed to locate Jerjerrod during their infiltration. They engaged a number of stormtroopers and commandeered a Griffin-class light shuttle to escape. Wanten, the officer who had been tracking them, attempted to intervene but was killed by the shuttle. After rendezvousing with the X-wing fleet, Commander Dameron allowed the shuttle to lead the way back into hyperspace.

Finn and Rey exited the base, but Ren pursued them, catching up in the forest despite being weakened by the injury inflicted by Chewbacca's bowcaster. Rey angrily denounced Ren as a "monster" for murdering his own father and attempted to shoot him with her blaster, but Ren incapacitated her by Force pushing her into a tree. Finn, horrified, rushed to her aid as Ren furiously labeled him a "traitor." Unable to awaken her, Finn ignited Anakin Skywalker's second lightsaber. Ren asserted that the lightsaber rightfully belonged to him, but Finn challenged him to "come and get it" before attacking. Despite Finn's efforts to defend himself, Ren easily overpowered him, stabbing him in the shoulder with his lightsaber's crossguard blades and slashing him across the back, incapacitating him, but not before receiving a shoulder wound. With the duel seemingly concluded, he reached out for Anakin Skywalker's saber and attempted to seize it using a Force pull.

Suddenly, without warning, Skywalker's weapon flew out of the snow, not into Ren's hand, but into Rey's. Ren was initially taken aback, showing surprise and stepping back as the saber flew past him. Rey used telekinesis to pull Skywalker's lightsaber into her hand and attacked the Knight with a brutal barrage. Ren initially held the advantage, using his rage to ignore the pain. Ren became so impressed with Rey that he tried to tempt her, complimenting her strength in the Force and offering to complete her training if she would join him. This backfired, however, as it only reassured Rey of her own power: she begins to draw on the Force to hone her attacks, and the tide of the duel shifted in her favor. Ultimately Rey overpowered Ren and dealt him a severe wound to his face. By this point Kylo had taken too many wounds to continue standing, but he still struggled in vain to rise again. While an unidentifiable voice in her mind tempted her to the dark side of the Force by arguing it would be easy to kill Ren there and then, she rejected the temptation before the planet ruptured between where they were standing and they were separated from finishing their fight.

Poe instructed his squadron to provide cover as he entered the opening of the oscillator. A pursuing TIE fighter failed to clear the gap, allowing Poe to circle within the unguarded structure, firing volley after volley of torpedoes into the oscillator, destroying it thirty seconds before it finished draining the sun to charge the weapon. This triggered a chain reaction that destroyed the base and leveled the entire planet's terrain. Inside the main base, chaos erupted as General Hux departed the command center and First Order officers realized all hope was lost and evacuated. Hux, meanwhile, reported to Supreme Leader Snoke, who ordered him to rescue Ren and flee the base, as he wished to complete Ren's training. Rey returned to Finn, despairing that he would not wake up and that they would be trapped on the rupturing planet to meet their doom. However, Chewbacca promptly arrived with the Millennium Falcon to rescue them.

Phasma managed to escape from the trash compactor and quickly made her way back to the computer terminal to erase its history, preventing anyone from discovering that she had lowered the shields. She soon discovered that Lieutenant Sol Rivas had accessed the terminal, learning about Phasma's treason in the process. Phasma, seeking to eliminate any loose ends, pursued Rivas to a TIE fighter facility, where he stole a TIE fighter. Phasma approached pilot TN-3465, who was unable to join the ongoing dogfight because her droid, BB-K8, was performing a data update on her fighter. Phasma approached TN-3465 and ordered her to follow Rivas in a two-seat TIE/sf space superiority fighter, eventually tracking Rivas to the nearby Luprora. The Millennium Falcon and the remaining Resistance fleet successfully escaped Starkiller Base as it erupted into a star. With the mission accomplished, they entered hyperspace to return to D'Qar.

Following the battle, Organa sent a coded transmission to all Resistance squadrons, announcing the victory at Starkiller Base and instructing them to report in immediately and await further instructions. Around the same time, R2-D2 rebooted and merged his portion of the galactic map with the piece discovered by BB-8. Chewbacca and Rey departed for Skywalker's location on Ahch-To, while Finn was placed in a medically induced coma to recover from his injuries inflicted by Ren.

After locating Rivas, Phasma killed him, along with TN-3465 and BB-K8, to eliminate any witnesses to her actions before returning to First Order space, where First Order vessels were regrouping.

Surviving First Order defense force pilots, such as Poldin LeHuse, were reintegrated into the fleet, expressing a desire for revenge and to prove themselves after failing to save the superweapon.

While aboard the Star Destroyer Retribution, Zay Versio and Dio witnessed Starkiller's explosion, before reporting to Shriv Suurgav that her mother Iden was dead but she made it count. Zay ordered Suurgav to contact the Resistance and tell them that the war was just beginning.

The Resistance victory proved to be ultimately pyrrhic, as the destruction of Starkiller Base did not undo the complete annihilation of the Hosnian system and the New Republic by the First Order prior, thus paving the way for the latter to claim dominant control over the galaxy. Also in the aftermath, its members had to evacuate from D'Qar as a result of the First Order knowing their location, and ultimately was pursued and largely decimated before ultimately escaping the First Order with the help of Skywalker.

According to the Resistance spy Vi Moradi, even four months after the base's destruction, the majority of the galaxy remained unaware of Starkiller Base's fate.

The initial footage of the battle was unveiled in the first The Force Awakens teaser trailer on November 28, 2014.

A segment of the initial bombing run was re-filmed at Bad Robot Productions to include more cockpit scenes. Dameron's run into the breach in the oscillator was intentionally designed as an homage to the Death Star trench run, but without a Force-sensitive character.

The 2017 reference book Star Wars: On the Front Lines indicates that the Battle of Starkiller Base occurred 30 years after the Battle of Yavin. Star Wars: Galactic Atlas places the battle in 34 ABY, thirty-four years after the Battle of Yavin.

The Battle of Starkiller Base is featured in the 2017 videogame, Star Wars Battlefront II. In the game's Galactic Assault mode, one potential scenario involves players fighting for the Resistance as they land on the surface during the battle, at Precinct 47, with the objective of freeing prisoners held within the base's detention block inside the Command Center. They face three sets of objectives, each requiring completion to progress. Meanwhile, First Order players are given a single objective: eliminate 100 Resistance players before they complete a set of objectives, otherwise the kill quota increases by 50, maxing out again at 100. For the first set of objectives, Resistance players must plant bombs at a fuel station and a turbolaser near the base's main gate. If successful, the Resistance must then capture a command post at the main gate. Finally, if completed, they must override both the base's cell door and gate controls. If the Resistance prevails, they are shown boarding transports and escaping. If the First Order wins, Starkiller Base fires.