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.
What Made the TIE Avenger So Dangerous?
Development of the Avenger and Defender leaned upon what was seen by the Imperial Navy as an increasing need to shift to quality over quantity in its Starfighter corps. Both the TIE Fighter and TIE Interceptor excelled in established Imperial tactics of sending large amounts of ships to overwhelm the technically superior fighter craft used by the Rebel Alliance, but increasing Imperial defeats in the wake of the destruction of the Death Star, as well as the introduction of further Alliance ships like the A and B-Wing, saw several Imperial leaders push for development on higher quality craft that could achieve similar levels of offensive and defensive capability as their enemies.
The TIE Avenger was intended to be the Navy’s go-to space superiority fighter, championing this pivot. The Avenger featured an increased level of armament, with four blaster cannons at the tips of its solar arrays; multi-purpose warhead launchers that allowed the ship to carry increased payloads of missiles, torpedoes, or even heavy bombs that allowed it to supplant the TIE Bomber as an assault ship in some capacities; and even a short-ranged, limited tractor beam that the Avenger could use to momentarily disable enemy fighters and line up a killshot. While the Avenger had similarly marginal physical armor plating to the TIE Fighter and Interceptor, alongside that additional offensive capability was the inclusion of deflector shields, a first for the TIE line.
But what made the TIE Avenger such a potent starfighter was that it incorporated all of these advancements into a similar size profile as prior TIEs, on top of having advanced engines that let it reach speeds that could even outmatch the A-Wing. Pairing those engines with the inclusion of a dedicated hyperdrive also allowed the Avenger to be used in hit-and-run missions, able to jump into a system, attack, and slip away again at lightspeed—a key tactic of the Rebellion, but one that had largely been eschewed by the Empire.
What Happened to the TIE Avenger in the Star Wars Expanded Universe?
The idea of a new TIE Fighter being introduced post-Hoth that basically outgunned, out-moved, and out-defended everything else being used in Galactic Civil War up to that point makes it seem like all the odds were stacked in the Empire’s favor, but as ever, Imperial bureaucracy and corruption stymied its impact on the fighting until it was too late.
Of course, a ship with such advanced capabilities cost a lot more to produce than the TIE Fighter—even if the point was the need to deploy less of them in engagements—angering Imperial Command, which would funnel some of the innovations from the Advanced’s prototyping line into cheaper ships like the Interceptor and Bomber instead, leading to a reduced production need for the Avenger. As a niche elite starfighter, the Avenger was also quickly supplanted by the development of its sister ship from the Advanced line, the TIE Defender, which had similar offensive and defensive capabilities, better maneuverability, and a larger design profile that afforded it the chance to be a multi-role vessel instead of strictly focused on fighter interception like the Avenger did. The Defender was a similarly costly project, but its expanded field capability made it a more viable investment even beyond its minor gains over the Avenger on a technical level.
Eventually what capacity the Empire had to produce the Avenger was heavily damaged by the betrayal of Grand Admiral Demetrius Zaarin. Zaarin was one of the lead architects on development of both the Avenger and Defender while he worked for the Empire, but a growing disillusionment with Palpatine saw him launch an attempted coup in 3ABY. One of Zaarin’s first moves was to begin assaulting Avenger production facilities, wiping out much of the Empire’s already limited capacity to produce the ship at a large scale. By the time Zaarin was defeated, the Empire itself was on the verge of its splintering with the death of the Emperor and Darth Vader at the Battle of Endor, so there was no time at all for Avenger production to ramp up again, consigning it to history as one of the Imperial Navy’s awkward middle children of fighter design.
What Does the TIE Avenger Mean for Andor Season 2?
As with pretty much every wink to the deep cuts of Star Wars continuity in the show so far, probably very little. Andor‘s focus has never been on the Easter egg nods to wider Star Wars canon it gives to diehards willing to notice (like the mention of the Rakata in season one). To the audience that knows, it’s a cool nod to a beloved game. To the audience that doesn’t—and most likely perhaps a Cassian that doesn’t, either—a TIE Fighter is a TIE Fighter no matter the shape of its wings or its weapons loadout. After all, as Luthen tells him as part of the brief montage of clips we got to see, Cassian is still thinking like a thief, rather than as a major figure in a burgeoning insurgency.
But given that the second season will be set jumping year by year closer to the time of Rogue One and A New Hope, it is interesting if this is the on-screen debut of the Avenger. Considering its history in the EU as an evolution of the TIE Advanced prototype, the idea of seeing it in a contemporary period to that ship (which we already know was rare and unique in A New Hope as Vader’s personal vessel) raises some fun questions. It also wouldn’t be the first time a TIE Advanced offshoot got introduced into the timeline before A New Hope either: Rebels, which is chronologically contemporary to Andor, did much the same with the introduction of the TIE Defender as one of Thrawn’s personal projects—which itself faced a similar fate of Imperial bureaucracy and incompetence stopping its mass production before it could become a major threat.
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