It’s been rumored for a few months now that Star Wars: Episode IX will introduce a new, “elite” type of Stormtrooper with red armor, and while this claim has yet to be confirmed, recent statements from the creative executive in charge of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at least hint at the possibility.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Scott Trowbridge offered a tease of the various Stormtroopers you can expect to see at the upcoming Disney theme park expansion.
“The 709th, the Red Fury,” Trowbridge said. “There are some stories to be told about those folks, and why they’re here, what they came looking for — or who they came looking for.”
The article goes on to say that this “elite squad from the First Order” came to the planet of Batuu on a new ship described as a TIE Echelon with “a cockpit similar to Kylo Ren’s batwinged shuttle but the curved foils of Darth Vader’s TIE Advanced x1.”
Though it remains to be seen whether the “Red Fury” have anything to do with Episode IX (or for that matter, whether they’re actually red), the Galaxy’s Edge region is intended to be canonical to the series, making it perfectly plausible that these franchise newcomers might show up later this year in J.J. Abrams’ film.
Either way, we’ll be getting a look at the Red Fury once Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opens in Disneyland in Anaheim, California, in June, before coming to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, in the fall. As for Star Wars: Episode IX, hopefully the first promotional footage from the flick will be with us at least as soon as Star Wars Celebration in April, but regardless of what the coming months bring, we still have quite a long wait ahead of us before the film hits theaters on December 20th, 2019.