The Star Wars universe is full of spacecrafts named after letters of the alphabet. While there is no more famous ship of this type than the trust X-wing fighter, there are several others. However, based on what we saw in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it looked like the rest had been retired, as they were nowhere to be seen. It appears the other ships do still exist, however, and at least one of them will be making a return in Star Wars: Episode VIII. The fast and maneuverable A-wing.
The news comes as part of a tweet from Ali Arikan who has an image of England’s Prince Harry taking of tour of Pinewood Studios in London , where much of Star Wars: Episode VIII is being filmed. It appears Mark Hamill gets to act as a tour guide as Harry gets to sit in the cockpit of a ship sitting in front of a green screen. While we don’t get to see a lot of it, what we do see here is a dead giveaway. Everything from the red paint and tail section to the cockpit hatch, which is more rounded than a traditional X-wing, says that this is an A-wing.
The A-wing was often a "blink and you miss it" type of fighter in the original Star Wars trilogy. No character of note ever piloted one on screen, and so little attention was ever given to them. Fans who played any of the X-wing series of computer games from the 1990’s are probably more familiar with them than anybody else in the fandom. They’re smaller than an X-wing and while they don’t have as powerful weapons, they are significantly faster. About the most famous thing an A-wing has done in Star Wars to date is crash into the bridge of a Star Destroyer during Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi.
While all this confirms for sure is that A-wings will be seen, we’ll have to wait and see if the pilot for this craft will be anybody we know, assuming Prince Harry isn’t there to film his own cameo. Poe Dameron, the lead fighter pilot of the Resistance is obviously an X-wing guy, like Luke was before him, but we’re sure he can pilot anything and look just as cool doing it.
