Rogue One Bits: Another New Stormtrooper, T-47 Airspeeders, 'Star Wars Rebels' Connections, And Force Friday

With Star Wars: The Force Awakens about to hit Blu-ray and DVD, surely that means the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story marketing deluge is set to begin, right? In the meantime, here's the latest edition of Rogue One Bits:

Last year, Rogue One star and certified badass Donnie Yen posted some behind-the-scenes images from the set of the top secret film on his Instagram account, only for the pictures to quickly vanish. But since the internet is forever, the pictures (which depicted a variety of different Stormtrooper helmets) lived on, offering a hint of what we can expect in from the Empire's henchmen in the final film. Now, Yen's wife may have accidentally unleashed a little tidbit of her own about the movie.

As you can see in the Instagram photo screen-capped below (via Making Star Wars), she visited a Time's Square LEGO exhibit and posed next to a T-47 Airpseeder, writing "Looks exactly like the real thing when visiting hubby on the set!" So here's the question: does she mean "Hey, this is just like other big spaceships that I saw on set!" or does she mean "Hey, I saw T-47 Airspeeders on set!" The latter would be cool news for Star Wars fans, as these ships haven't been seen on the big screen since the first act of The Empire Strikes Back.

Speaking of scoops from Making Star Wars, the site recently managed to get a look at the "Hover Tank Trooper," which will be one of many types of Stormtroopers featured in the film. They don't know if this trooper is intended to pilot tanks or accompany them on patrols, but they did provide this written description:

The visor of the new trooper really reminds me of the clones from Attack of the Clones, but the visor doesn't go down in a complete "T" like the Fett-inspired helmet would. It has two really large aerators that kind of remind me of hand-held vacuums (however this design does not suck). The armor itself is really very much in the spirit of the Scout Trooper but not identical or as close as the Scarab Trooper's armor in that respect (not to mention this trooper is white and that one is yellow). The cranium of the helmet reminded me of the classic A New Hope Stormtrooper in shape.

For more details, including a rough sketch of what the design looks like, hit the link above.

Thanks to artist DazTibbles, we can finally post about Rogue One news without resorting to that standard cast picture that has topped countless articles since last year! This fan-made poster made its debut on his DeviantArt page and it's very cool, depicting the characters played by Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Donnie Yen, and Wen Jiang alongside Slave 1, a few X-Wings and the Death Star. The odd thing about this situation is that DazTibbles used the same resources that most fans have to create this piece – we still don't know any character names or the details of their personalities or how they all ultimately relate to one another. But hey, since Lucasfilm is deliberately taking their sweet time ramping this movie up, the fans have to step in and fill the void. You can hit the link above to check out more of DazTibbles' work.

Jedi Temple Archives has posted a few unconfirmed details about this year's Force Friday event and while all of this certainly sounds plausible, it should be taken with a grain of salt for now. The news is broken into two key parts. First, it seems that there will be eight "Black Series" Rogue action figures initially available, which is more than the five that were originally available during last year's Force Friday. Since these 6" figures are immensely popular amongst collectors, this decision makes sense – create more and you'll sell more!

While the details of these figures remain unknown, the site also reports that one of Black Series figures, as well as some kind of toy vehicle, a voice changing Stormtrooper helmet, and one other unknown toy will be available for pre-sale online several weeks before Force Friday. The only thing they seem to know for sure is that the Black Series figure that will be available early will be Felicity Jones' character, who is the lead of Rogue One.

Rogue One and television's Star Wars Rebels may not take place at the exact same time, but they certainly brush shoulders, with the former taking place shortly before the events of the original Star Wars the latter taking place just a few years before that. More importantly, they also deal with the nitty gritty of the rebellion agains the Empire. Rebels executive producer Dave Filoni told io9 that they are aware of the intricacies of this shared universe and have been handling things "very, very, very carefully." He elaborated:

One of the most important things that has less to do with the timeline of the story itself, is I want the awesome things in [director] Gareth [Edwards]'s movie to be special when it comes out. I would never want our series to get ahead of that. Whatever you see in that film, with our time periods being closer, we want to make sure there are things that make sense between the two and we're very careful about that as we've been with A New Hope. Things we are doing are leading towards that.

Fans have been wondering for some time now whether or not any Rebels characters may make a live-action appearance in Rogue One...or if any Rogue One characters may pop up in Rebels before showing up on the big screen. At the very least, we know that Filoni and company know how to navigate the new canon timeline as it gets increasingly complex.

Who else sees similarity between the new Rogue One Starbird and Kanan's armor symbol? @MakingStarWars @Podcast2187 pic.twitter.com/dwbjGAYLT3

— Rebel Kevan (@ELIX11_sw) March 28, 2016

But if you want to put on a tinfoil hat and start searching for some connections between Rogue One and Star Wars Rebels, here's your chance! A fan took to Twitter with the following observation: the slightly revised Rebel Alliance symbol seen on various pieces of Rogue One-related crew apparel bears a basic resemblance to the symbol of Kanan's armor in the series. Or does it? is everyone looking too hard or is there something here? Feel free to debate this one in the comments section.