This explosion in Star Wars: The Last Jedi may not be a big deal - or it could be a *huge* deal

Massive explosions are something you can safely count on witnessing when you go see a Star Wars movie, but the photograph of one fiery boom in particular has some fans in a bit of a tizzy. Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson posted the intriguing image to Instagram without caption or commentary, merely setting the location to Skywalker Sound, where the Star Wars films go for editing. Check it out:

A post shared by Rian Johnson (@riancjohnson)

A photo posted by on on Aug 22, 2017 at 9:11am PDT

At first, I thought this might just be a close-up of the X-Wing explosion you can see at 1:24 in the only official trailer released thus far... 

But look at the top-left edge of the Instagram pic again. That slight curve and the light bouncing off of it looks like a planet's atmosphere. Plus, the debris is pretty well-defined and you can even see what almost looks like a TIE's cockpit window toward the top-center. Though admittedly that might just be a coincidence from how the little bits and pieces of whatever this is are flying through space.

If I had to guess, I'd saw we're looking at another proud Star Wars movie tradition: space battles. All the sharp angles make me think it's a First Order ship being blown up, though even that might be a stretch. Instagram user mertsenisik thinks it looks like the First Order Dreadnought, a new ship revealed earlier this week. Meanwhile, user hubcap_john thinks a chunk in the bottom-right looks like the satellite dish of the Millennium Falcon. One of these is a good thing. One of these would be a very bad thing.

December really can't come soon enough. We need answers!

Sam Prell

Sam is a former News Editor here at GamesRadar. His expert words have appeared on many of the web's well-known gaming sites, including Joystiq, Penny Arcade, Destructoid, and G4 Media, among others. Sam has a serious soft spot for MOBAs, MMOs, and emo music. Forever a farm boy, forever a '90s kid.