Greetings, Star Wars fans! We’ve had a relatively quiet week this week compared to last week when we got a huge onslaught of Rogue One news and information. It all came in the form of several EW articles. We’re on the verge of what is expected to be a ton of new information at the upcoming Star Wars Celebration starting July 15th. This new information will be for both Episode VIII and Rogue One, as well as for Rebels and I’m sure a lot of other Star Wars properties. Nevertheless, there are still a few items that we found out this week on Rogue One, and many of them may give us some clues as to what news we can look forward to at Celebration.
First off, before we begin, I want to say this should have come yesterday for our usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, but let’s just say life gets in the way sometimes, and this was no exception. Expect us to return to our usual MWF schedule for next week on.
Lyra Erso?
One of the items we heard about this past week from Making Star Wars was a potential new character, Lyra Erso. Although, we’re not sure if she will be a sister to Jyn Erso (the lead played by Felicity Jones) or her mother in a flashback. Given the rarity of flashbacks in Star Wars, one might think that the former is more likely. That said, after TFA and Rey’s Forceback scene, Star Wars could be venturing into new cinematic concepts. Even still, we know that Rogue One will not have much incorporation of the Force, so to put an “ordinary”, non-Force-associated flashback in it would be quite a departure from the usual Star Wars formula. This isn’t impossible at the same time because Rogue One is not your typical Star Wars movie–it’s the first of the “anthology films”, which are completely unknown in terms of to what extent they will stick to the usual formula. Hey, sorry to waffle on this one, but it’s important to cover all the bases of each side. In the end, I’m kind of leaning toward her being a sister. The existence of a stunt double for Lyra Erso, to me, suggests the possibility of a slightly more important role than a brief cameo. This might make some sense in a scene at the beginning of the movie, to establish Jyn’s character along side her sister, maybe the two of them get into some trouble leading to the “tribunal” confrontation that Jyn goes through in the trailer.
Death Troopers
We keep hearing and seeing more and more about these “Death Troopers”. We don’t know to what extent they will be in the movie, but it is starting to look like we will have a variety of troopers in this one. They will be in there enough to probably be in this scene:
where a Death Trooper picks up an “action figure” of a Storm Trooper. It’s possible this was made by someone on the planet. What we do know is that EW confirms that this shot “will have special significance in the story.”, so what could it mean? I can imagine a scene where they show the calm before the attack, with people farming on this land, and a kid playing with a home-made action figure. Would be pretty cool and add a realism to the story. It would add a sense that there really are people in this galaxy that live out their lives beyond the films.
The Death Troopers go back to a Legends novel from 2009. The interesting thing is the book takes place 1BBY, putting it about the same time as Rogue One, if not a little earlier. That being said, there could be a lot of differences in their roles. Very early reports on this suggest that these guys are tall (over 6 feet) and have green, illuminated headgear. To me, it would make sense if these “Death Troopers” were involved with security for the Death Star, which could be part of where they get their names. According to EW, these Death Troopers are “tasked with hunting down and destroying the fragmented Rebel uprising.”
Star Ship: The Raven
There is another leak from Making Star Wars, this time on the name of a new ship. The article provides evidence for a new ship called “The Raven”. The leak comes from a toy list where it says:
Star Ship Raven Deluxe vs. X-wing
It isn’t clear whether the word “Deluxe” is part of the name of the ship as well. Might be just the type of toy, but none of the other listings use the word. One thing that is pretty clear is that the Raven is part of the “bad guys”, given that it is part of a package that puts it “versus” the X-wing. What’s cool to me is is the idea that this ship could be a kind of a foil to the Millennium Falcon. Both have names that refer to birds from Earth, yet they seem to be on opposing sides.
There are other ships mentioned, such as the “Mon Calamari Cruiser”, which is probably something like we’ve seen from RotJ, but could also be something new. Here is a ship called “MC80 Liberty type Star Cruiser” in RotJ:
It’s anyone’s guess what “The Raven” looks like at this point.
EDIT: Shortly after posting this article, there was a post from StormTrooperLarry suggesting that the Raven is the TIE Striker. After cross-referencing a few publicity material from LEGO, Larry determined that the toy looks something like this:
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