The new 'Star Wars' poster hints at a mysterious new weapon from the next movie

2015-10-19T15:19:27Z

It's going to be a big week for "Star Wars" fans.

On Monday, Disney will release a trailer for the next "Star Wars" movie, "The Force Awakens," during "Monday Night Football" on ESPN. As a teaser for the new trailer, Disney released an official poster for "The Force Awakens."

It looks like this:

And of course, fans are already picking apart the imagery in the poster. It's pretty mysterious.

Disney/Lucasfilm

One of the biggest mysteries: What is that big, spherical thing in the top right corner? Is it a new kind of Death Star?

Disney/Lucasfilm

Probably.

Warning: Stop reading now if you want to avoid spoilers or speculation about the next "Star Wars" movie.

Some fans have pointed out that the mysterious object could be the Starkiller Base, a fortress listed in the database on the official "Star Wars" site.

Here's the full description of what the Starkiller Base is, according to starwars.com:

An ice planet converted into a stronghold of the First Order and armed with a fiercely destructive new weapon capable of destroying entire star systems.

So it sounds like the bad guys in the new movie, also known as the First Order, have turned an entire planet into a weapon capable of wiping out solar systems. That's way scarier than the Death Star, which could only destroy one planet at a time.

This isn't the first time we've seen the Starkiller Base. The second teaser trailer for "The Force Awakens" shows the First Order at a Nazi-like rally on a frozen planet. That certainly fits the Starkiller Base description.

This is probably the Starkiller Base. Disney/Lucasfilm

By the way, this isn't the first time we've seen a weapon in the "Star Wars" universe that can destroy an entire star system. In the Expanded Universe novels, there's a weapon called the Sun Crusher that can do just that. It was featured in a series of novels called "The Jedi Academy" trilogy written in the the early 90s. However, those novels are no longer considered part of the official "Star Wars" canon.

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