We’re still waiting for the corporate overlords at Disney to post the new Star Wars: Rogue One trailer that they showed at yesterday’s Star Wars Celebration—apparently featuring an appearance by a recently revealed Darth Vader—online. In the meantime, though, Lucasfilm has served up a trailer for the third season of its Disney XD show, Star Wars: Rebels, revealing another one of the franchise’s most beloved—and long-anticipated—villains: Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Created by Timothy Zahn for the first of his Expanded Universe novels, 1991’s Heir To The Empire, Thrawn is a brilliant tactician, designed by Zahn to stand out from the arrogant bumblers who eat up most of the Imperial Navy’s gray wool uniform budget. But until now, he’s never made the leap from the books and comics into any of the series’ movies or shows, leading fans to worry that he’d been erased from canon when Disney pruned the Expanded Universe wholesale after purchasing the franchise back in 2012.
Well, worry no longer, Thrawn-thralls: The art-loving admiral is here—voiced by House Of Cards co-star (and Mads-brother) Lars Mikkelsen—to bring a higher class of opposition to the crew of the good ship Ghost. Between his tactical brilliance, internal tensions, new foes, and that always-pesky Dark Side, it looks like they’re in for a pretty rough time when the show’s third season arrives later this fall.