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

I wrote a previous article exploring the Easter eggs and references that were dotted across the third season of Star Wars Rebels, and one of them was in relation to a character that has serious connections to Thrawn.

In Through Imperial Eyes, Thrawn uses a code phrase to deactivate his assassin droids, and that word was Rukh. Ruhk was the name of a Noghri warrior, first introduced in Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire, who carried out assassination missions for Darth Vader, and later acted as a bodyguard for Thrawn. But after discovering that the Empire was responsible for the destruction of his homeworld, Ruhk turns on the Empire, killing Thrawn in the process.

This is particularly interesting (and worrying for fans of Thrawn) because the Noghri assassin is the next character from the Old Expanded Universe to be reborn into the canon timeline, and voiced by Warwick Davis no less.

Images in the trailer show Ruhk pursuing and attacking Ezra disguised as a Scout Trooper, implying he is no friend to the Rebellion. It’s possible that the team will be drawing closely from Ruhk’s backstory, having him as the personal hitman of the Empire which would explain why he has targeted Bridger. But that doesn’t mean that his allegiances won’t change.

This could mean the end of the Grand Admiral, making good on Bendu’s warning and explaining why he was not present through the original trilogy and altering his original demise in the post Return of the Jedi era. Rebels has stuck particularly close to Thrawn’s backstory so far and it’ll be interesting to see how this dynamic changes the character.