Star Wars Rebels Season 4 Trailer Breakdown: 16 Things You Need To See

The TIE Defenders were brought back into the Star Wars canon in the last season as the personal pet project of Grand Admiral Thrawn and under construction in the very factory that the Rebels are planning to attack on Lothal. We did see one in action in the episode Secret Cargo, piloted by Vult Skerris, (last seen in The Antilles Extraction) that lived to fight another day.

Since then it looks like the Empire has been doubling their efforts. In the trailer we see not one, but two TIE Defenders engaging the Ghost in aerial combat on a planet that many believe to be Edau.

More TIE Defenders are seen later on in the trailer, but this time on what looks like Lothal. The image below shows a TIE Defender flying over Thrawn who has his blaster ready in hand. Speculation strongly suggests that Ezra or Sabine manage to successfully steal a TIE Defender, backed up by a second image of Ezra, with the wing of a TIE Defender having the same red markings as the one seen here.

This will be a nice little connection back to the first season when Ezra, Sabine and Zeb kept the stolen TIE Fighter from Fighter Flight and gave it a rather colourful paintjob.

Considering the TIE Defenders aren’t seen throughout the original trilogy, it seems they are an exclusive model. And with the factory on Lothal destroyed, the Empire lacks the ability to make more. Does this mean that Thrawn will meet a similar fate?