Leia Organa wasn’t the only high-profile woman from Alderaan to join the rebellion. One of her best friends, Evaan Verlaine, was an ace fighter pilot for the Rebellion, and thanks to our first look at a new series of Star Wars trading cards, it seems Verlaine might be showing up in Rogue One.
Lucasfilm released a batch of Topps digital trading cards showing off a gaggle of new faces from Rogue One, and fans think the unnamed X-wing pilot seen in one might be the infamous Verlaine. Verlaine first appeared in Leia’s Marvel comics mini-series, which means that she’s definitely in the official canon.
The dashing female pilot is simply labelled as “X-wing Pilot” in the digital Topps card, but the details found in the card suggest that we’ll be seeing a bit more of her in the upcoming film.
EW debuted the card, and singled out the fighter tags on her helmet. According to EW, “The V symbols inside the array of yellow dots on her helmet stand for kill counts, each one tallying 20 enemy fighters. Whoever she is, she’s flown around the block a few times.”
Is that you, Evaan Verlaine?
So she means business, and isn’t just some Rebel grunt. On top of that, she bears a striking resemblance to the blonde-haired Verlaine from the comics. First seen in Star Wars: Princess Leia, Part I and introduced by name in Part II, Verlaine eventually helps Leia, R2-D2, and Nien Nunb save her fellow Alderaanians on the planet Sullust after her home planet is destroyed by the Empire in A New Hope.
If she’s Verlaine in Rogue One, that means we’ll meet a battle-ready but not broken Rebel operative fighting to help the Alliance steal the plans to the superweapon that will eventually leave her planet-less. She could also be important to Jyn Erso’s plot to get the plans in the right hands. Since she’s a fellow Alderaanian, and because Leia can’t outright say she’s working for the Rebels unless she wants to lose her diplomatic immunity, perhaps it’s Verlaine who gets the plans to Leia’s Tantive IV ship we see at the beginning of A New Hope.
It’s pure speculation at this point, but this kind of multimedia crossover is just the right kind of synergy that Lucasfilm is going for in the new Star Wars canon. Saw Gerrera was a character from The Clone Wars who then made his way to the big leagues of the movie saga. Perhaps Verlaine, who is also in the canon novel Aftermath: Life Debt, is also getting bumped up to the main saga too.
