Star Wars Rebels is now back for its fourth and final season. And as you’d expect, the stakes are higher this year than ever before. Continuing on from their feud in season 3, Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen) will be breathing down the necks of The Ghost crew across the new run. It turns out, though, that he won’t be the only antagonist that Ezra Bridger and friends will have to watch out for.
In a new interview, Rebels exec producer Dave Filoni spoke a little about how Thrawn is still the “main competitor” of our heroes in season 4, but also hinted that there are some other villains waiting in the wings of that galaxy far, far away who are even more powerful.
“He’s still the one that is watching for them and that they’re running from and their main competitor. Which is different, we’ve never done that over two seasons before.
There may [be] some other villains more arch than him, hiding somewhere … we’ll have to wait and see.”
Let’s not beat around the bush, as we’re all thinking one thing here: Filoni has to be talking about Darth Vader. For the final season, Rebels needs to go out with a bang and there’s no better way to do that then to bring in the big guns and have the Ghost crew go up against the baddest Star Wars villain of them all. Vader is also Thrawn’s boss, in terms of the Imperial hierarchy, so he could easily be pulling the strings in the background.
The evil Sith’s return to the animated series is already on the cards, too. We know that Ahsoka Tano will be making a comeback this year in order to clarify what happened to her during the season 2 finale, when she battled with – who else? – Vader, her former mentor. Likewise, it’s been confirmed that Emperor Palpatine will not be making another appearance in Rebels. As far as Star Wars “arch” villains go, then, that basically leaves only Vader.
Star Wars Rebels airs every Monday on Disney XD.