But as we saw in ESB, asteroids can do severe damage to a shielded SD.

After the ISDs were in the asteroid field over an unknown amount of time taking an unknown amount of impacts. And we only see the asteroid exploding and the transmission beeing cut off. The asteroid could have simply damaged only the communications or the shield interaction could have caused interferences.

Watch empire again. The hologram of the officer on that Star Destroyer puts his hands up in a posture of defense from something out of view...right before the hologram disappears from Vader's display. It looks like a lot more than just communications was damaged.

And, with freeze-framing, you can see that right after the asteroid impact but before the cut-away, the tower is missing and the Executor's engine glow can be seen where the tower had been.

Confirmed by Filoni that General Syndulla is indeed Hera.

But does she *survive* the battle?

Why does everybody assume everybody's gotta die

what the hell kind of writing even is that

Why does everybody assume everybody's gotta die

what the hell kind of writing even is that

The George RR Martin kind.

Well, on a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

But probably more likely because a huge chunk of the Rebel fleet was destroyed at that battle and I don't recall seeing the Ghost jump out or be destroyed.

Why does everybody assume everybody's gotta die

Because Rebel terrorists on their Holy Force War will be shown no mercy

Why does everybody assume everybody's gotta die

what the hell kind of writing even is that

Apparently Rogue one kind....

I mean, Jyn and Cassian could have gotten out with Krennics shuttle being right there, but nooooooooo, we needed a pompeii ending scene.... minus the romance.

Ok I'll bite.

Why does everyone assume the protagonists have to survive?

Sacrifice for the cause is a very real and special thing we see in life. Is it because 99.9% of us would not make that choice, or are we just so indoctrinated by normal Hollywood guff that we can't stand, to borrow and paraphrase a writers term, "kill off your darlings"?

That said I now have another thing to look out for. If the shuttle was near and functional they really should have at least tried but my first impression was that it's already inescapable and I actually like their calm acceptance of their fate on that basis.

Eh, the pun was groan-worthy, but seeing him get to work at the end was amazing.

Indeed. During the original Trilogy, Vader had a terrifying reputation - given how much of what he does happens out of the public eye, it's nice to see exactly why.

Vaders' Imperial Assault deployment card has a special rule called "Brutality". After seeing that....yeah, that sounds about right. Ideally spoken with a Mortal Kombat announcer's voice.

I hope that was Ghost in battle scene and they all die, if not already dead(at least some of them like Kanan or the purple guy) in one of future Rebels episodes.

Rogue One had a high enough hero body-count for me. I would be quite happy if some of the Ghost Crew manage to fly off into the sunset.

The Rogue One body count was perfect for me. On Rebels though, I'm happy for them all to survive if it's a good story well told. I do think some meaningful sense of loss would.

That sense of loss could be something other than death if well done though.