Star Wars Television

This morning Lucasfilm finally gave us our first, brief look at the long-awaited second season of Andor. As well as hinting at the conflicts to come, both internally and against the Empire alike, in doing so it also quietly teased another teeny bit of the old Star Wars Expanded Universe making its way back onto screens.

That teeny bit is actually not-so teeny, physically speaking. It’s the ship that Cassian is seen stealing during the snippet: a TIE Fighter with a familiar design that will immediately be recognizable by any old school fans of classic PC flight sims in the form of TIE Fighter‘s TIE Avenger. And if the ship is anything like it used to be in the EU, then Cassian is pilfering quite the mean little starfighter.

What Is the TIE Avenger?

First introduced in the 1994 classic TIE Fighter, the Avenger was one of several successful production descendants of the TIE Advanced prototype flown by Darth Vader in A New Hope. That includes the TIE Defender, canonized in current continuity during the events of Star Wars Rebels. In-game, the Avenger enters deployment after the events of the Battle of Hoth take place in Empire Strikes Back, as the Empire began moving fighter design away from the sheer overwhelming scale of mass-produced standard TIEs—trading defense for maneuverability and numbers—to a series of more specific lines of fighter ships that could counter the Rebel fleet’s similarly designed attack wings, as well as the Alliance’s hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.

The Avenger played a major role in the narrative of TIE Fighter‘s story campaign, before making appearances in its successor games X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance as a playable ship. But while Andor season two will mark the first time we’ve seen a TIE Avenger in the contemporary Star Wars continuity, it’s not the first time the ship has been acknowledged in the rebooted canon, having been previously mentioned in reference books.