Star Wars reveals cut Star Destroyer design from Episode IX

Unused sketch featured a unique ‘double-decker’ design

A designer and artist who worked on Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker has revealed an unused design for a new Star Destroyer.

Doug Chiang, who is vice president and executive creative director of LucasFilm, posted an image on Instagram of a new “double-decker” spacecraft.

“A new First Order Star Destroyer concept for EP9!” he wrote. “I thought a double-decker might be fun.”

The Star Wars franchise often updates its ship designs for new instalments.

While Rise of Skywalker didn’t end up using the design, it did introduce new-look Star Destroyers from Palpatine’s Final Order that were able to destroy whole planets.

You can see the cut design for the Star Destroyers embedded below.

Earlier this week, Disney announced that a new animated Star Wars series would be coming to streaming service Disney+.

Entitled The Bad Batch, the series will follow a group of elite and experimental clones, first introduced in the Star Wars TV series The Clone Wars, as they “find their way in a rapidly changing galaxy in the immediate aftermath of the Clone War”.

The Mandalorian‘s Dave Filoni is set to executive produce the series, which will debut in 2021.

Disney has also commissioned a host of other Star Wars projects across film and TV, including an Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries starring Ewan McGregor, and a theatrically released film co-written and directed by JoJo Rabbit‘s Taika Waititi.