Late last month, it was confirmed in an Entertainment Weekly article that the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge theme park expansion will feature an “elite squad from the First Order” named “the Red Fury,” whose ship will be a TIE Echelon with “a cockpit similar to Kylo Ren’s batwinged shuttle but the curved foils of Darth Vader’s TIE Advanced x1.” And while it was previously speculated that this fighter will feature in the upcoming Star Wars: Episode IX, a recent report from ABC news correspondent Clayton Sandell makes this possibility seem more likely than ever.
Sandell was on the Galaxy’s Edge tour when he managed to get a few details on the model fighter, telling Star Wars News Net:
“That’s where the TIE fighter is parked and it is an awesome TIE fighter. A brand new TIE fighter that nobody has ever seen before. And they hinted you’re going to see this TIE fighter in a new movie. I am guessing Episode IX. It’s a really cool design. It combines, if you could imagine Kylo’s shuttle kind of shrunken down into a TIE fighter look.”
If what Sandell says is true, then it’s all but guaranteed that Episode IX is the movie being hinted at, seeing how Lucasfilm still hasn’t announced any theatrical releases beyond this year. Either way, if you’d like to get an early look at the new TIE fighter, a photo just recently emerged on Reddit that you can see below.
Though we’ve yet to receive any official confirmation that the fighter will feature in the Sequel Trilogy’s final installment, the fact that Galaxy’s Edge is intended to be canon to the franchise certainly works in favor of this prediction. Besides, isn’t the whole point of these themed Disneyland regions that visitors feel like they’re stepping into the movies?
In any case, you can expect further pics of both the new TIE fighter and the Red Fury once Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge comes to Disneyland in Anaheim, California in June, before opening in Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida in the fall. After that, we’ll find out which theme park features make the jump to the big screen when Star Wars: Episode IX hits theaters on December 20th, 2019.
