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‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story:’ Snowspeeders To Strike Back Once Again?

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 04:19 PST, Mar 26, 2016

As fans patiently await the first official footage from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, they are once again faced with the leak of a seemingly small bit of information which may potentially reveal larger details about the little-known plot of the upcoming movie.

[Potential Spoilers Follow]

The latest Rogue One leak comes from the Instagram account of Donnie Yenn’s wife, Cissy Wang. As Melty points out, Wang posted a picture of herself posing by a Lego snowspeeder in Times Square earlier this year. While the picture itself was innocuous enough, it was Wang’s caption that drew the interest of Star Wars fans, as it seemed to imply that the snowspeeder she was posing next to resembled one she had apparently seen on the set of Rogue One.

The snowspeeder, also known as the T-47 airspeeder, is a well-remembered vehicle from the Star Wars franchise, first appearing in the opening act of The Empire Strikes Back. The ships were used by the Rebel forces to take down Imperial AT-ATs (themselves equally iconic among fans), yet nowhere else in the original Star Wars trilogy have they appeared onscreen, as the story never returned to the cold weather environment of Hoth. Until, potentially, now.

The basic plot of Rogue One has been known for some time, as the Inquisitr previously reported. The story focuses on the group of Rebel operatives tasked with stealing the plans for the original Death Star, a monumental undertaking around which the entire saga revolves. The particulars of the story are far less distinct, however, leaving open literal worlds of possibilities yet to be discerned by fans. With the potential addition of a snowspeeder to the story, it seems likely that one of those possibilities may be a rematch (pre-match?) with the Empire’s mobile artillery.

Earlier this month, a group of Disney shareholders were treated to some of the first footage from Rogue One, which has yet to be released publicly. As Newsweek reports, people who viewed the clip described seeing two of the iconic AT-ATs in the trailer, albeit with a slightly different paint job from their original trilogy counterparts. As one of the walking fortresses was already brought briefly back to the screen in The Force Awakens, there is no reason to think that they can’t also show up in Rogue One, which is set right before the events of A New Hope.

While fans of the series will no doubt be excited by the prospect of another snowspeeder/AT-AT battle coming to the screen, Movieweb notes that the setting for such an event may have little to do with the icy climate of Empire. As they point out from Star Wars lore, the T-47 airspeeder is not necessarily designed for exclusive use in cold climates. Rather, when the Rebels found themselves based on Hoth, they modified the craft (which were originally manufactured by Incom Corporation as a low-altitude speeder) to handle the extremities of temperature the planet exposed them to. Given this fact, it seems entirely plausible that the snowspeeders and AT-ATs may face off once again against an entirely different backdrop (Dantooine, anyone?).

Though rumors continue to emerge, little is known about Rogue One beyond these rough speculations. Fans are eagerly dissecting every bit of information that arises, yet they likely don’t have long to wait before they are properly introduced to the film; with just nine months to go until its release, the first trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is thought to be imminent.

[Photo by Scott Symonds via Flickr | Cropped and Resized | CC BY-SA 2.0]

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