The Stormtroopers are just the henchmen, however. In fact they're pretty much the prototypical evil henchmen, with their inability to ever kill the good guys and propensity for running around like headless chickens if they don't have a charismatic leader telling them what to do, preferably whilst clad in a flowing black cloak. Just so you know for sure that they're the bad guys. If you can have a name like "Sidious", that helps too. As we said, the rumour is that Max Von Sydow and/or Adam Driver have been cast in a villainous role for Star Wars Episode VII, but we're not sure exactly what that role will entail. One of the most compelling pieces of speculation we've stumbled across doesn't clear that up, but does make a good argument for who the main antagonists will be. That'll be the antagonists that have got Luke Skywalker locked up at Skellig Michael Island (although that might be doubling for another location in the film, we're not sure if Ireland exists in the Star Wars Universe), have commandeered the rudderless Stormtroopers, and could be chasing over the group in possession of the severed hand and lightsabre which we still feel a little silly about admitting might be the main MacGuffin. And this one doesn't need to be taken with quite as big a pinch of salt as the rest of the rumours on this list since, if you take a look at what Disney are already doing with the Star Wars franchise, seems to make a lot of sense... From the looks of it they bad guys in Star Wars Episode VII will be the same as in Star Wars Rebels, the new animated series set to begin in October, which takes place between Episodes III and IV. They're called The Inquisitors and they're a bunch of particularly vicious defenders of the Sith Order, who've appeared in all that Expanded Universe guff that Disney roundly threw out, and are represented by Jason Isaacs' solo Inquisitor in Rebels. So turns out the Dark Side will still be represented, despite the death of Darths Vader and Sidious at the end of Return Of The Jedi. Although...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
