It’s both. I think “jumping to lightspeed” is an in-universe misnomer for jumping to Hyperspace. Han Solo misuses the terminology the first time we’re introduced to the concept (so does Kenobi, for that matter), but in that same scene he does make a distinction between lightspeed and hyperspace. The ship still needs to accelerate to something very close to light speed to slip into the parallel hyperspace dimension, so it kinda tracks between the two concepts.
Star Wars tech manuals say it’s not a misnomer. They actually do have to hit lightspeed before entering hyperspace.
I assume this is from the same people who said TIE Fighter “wings” are solar panels.
Hmm, I suppose you’re right. I don’t know why sci-fi purists are okay with that explanation when logically nothing can move faster than the speed of light. I’ve seen more debate over whether a blaster is a laser weapon or a plasma weapon. I guess they had a hard time reconciling the line from Han about how the Falcon does “Point five past light speed”. At this point, I’ve accepted that hyperspace and FTL travel in Star Wars is basically just the wild west and nobody is trying to clarify how any of it actually works, they just want to have cool scenes.
