Recent Star Wars properties repeatedly misunderstand the iconic TIE Fighters, yet the modern canon lore has an amusingly easy fix for these discrepancies. TIE Fighters are the primary starfighters in the Imperial Starfighter Corps, whose elite pilots are drawn from the top 10% of applicants from the Imperial Navy. While Imperial TIE Fighter pilots are comparable to the elite stormtroopers of the Stormtrooper Corps, TIE Fighters themselves are fragile and short-range craft, lacking deflector shields and hyperdrives. Nevertheless, TIE Fighters are one of the most iconic ships in the Star Wars franchise.
While the standard TIE Fighter remains the most famous Imperial starfighter, the Star Wars original trilogy introduced several TIE Fighter variants. This includes the heavy-hitting TIE Bomber from The Empire Strikes Back and the speedy TIE Interceptor in Return of the Jedi. The Legends continuity would introduce other famous TIE variants, like the advanced TIE Defender – which included shielding, a hyperdrive, and warhead launchers – and Stormtrooper Corps-exclusive TIE Hunter. The modern Star Wars canon would introduce new TIE variants as well, with many being created to mitigate continuity errors, for better or worse.
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Star Wars Keeps Forgetting How TIE Fighters Work
Star Wars: The Force Awakens gave the First Order next-generation TIE Fighters that are almost identical to the original trilogy era’s TIE Fighters. Yet, when Poe Dameron and Finn escape the Finalizer, they steal a TIE Fighter with two seats, a tail gun, and warhead launchers, despite TIE Fighters previously being single-seat craft with no such features. More egregiously, Ben Solo travels from Kef Bir to Exegol in what appears to be a standard Imperial TIE Fighter in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, despite the craft being explicitly described as short-range in A New Hope.
The problem continued in The Mandalorian, which has a standard Imperial TIE Fighter deploy landing gear and fold its wings when landing on Nevarro. Showrunner Jon Favreau claimed that TIE Fighters have never been shown in a landing position before, yet they are shown landed in hangars in A New Hope (post-1997 editions), a plethora of Legends properties, and numerous canon-exclusive properties like Star Wars Rebels, all without landing gear or folding wings. The Mandalorian season 3 adds to this discrepancy by depicting TIE Interceptors with folding wings while landed. Star Wars canon lore, thankfully, mitigates all these issues.
How Star Wars Has Fixed Its TIE Fighter Continuity Problems
In the sequel trilogy, the First Order has many TIE variants, with its two most common craft being the standard TIE Fighter, which is equipped with deflector shields, and the Special Forces TIE Fighter, a two-seated and heavily armed variant with shielding and a hyperdrive. Canon lore also corrected The Rise of Skywalker’s mistake by establishing that Ben Solo used a TIE Scout, a hyperdrive-equipped TIE variant that, in modern Star Wars canon, is identical to the standard TIE Fighter, despite TIE Scouts having a significantly different appearance in their original Legends incarnation.
Canon lore quickly mitigated The Mandalorian’s depiction of the standard TIE Fighter as well by establishing that Moff Gideon’s craft was an “Outland TIE Fighter.” The Outland TIE Fighter is identical to the standard model but features folding wings, landing gear, a lift for the pilot, and a stronger hull than the standard TIE Fighter (considering that Din Djarin’s blaster pistol had no effect on Gideon’s ship). Star Wars canon lore has yet to address the TIE Interceptors with folding wings seen in The Mandalorian season 3, but perhaps they will be designated “Outland TIE Interceptors.”
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Star Wars’ TIE Fighter Problems Are Amusing – And Perfect
Modern Star Wars canon now has several TIE Fighter variants that all resemble standard models but include features that the original iterations lacked. Finn and Poe needed to escape, but The Force Awakens filmmakers likely wished to feature the iconic TIE Fighter, and thus the Special Forces TIE Fighter was created. The Rise of Skywalker forgot that TIE Fighters typically don’t enter hyperspace, and thus a new version of the TIE Scout was established. The Mandalorian forgot that TIE Fighters and Interceptors have been shown in landing position countless times, necessitating the creation of Outland TIE Fighters.
While arguably an amusing way to introduce new TIE Fighters to the modern Star Wars canon, there could be a comparable explanation for so many variants in-universe. TIE Fighters, as short-range, single-seater, fighter craft, are overspecialized to the point of being quite limited in their capabilities. Naturally, Star Wars would have the Empire and later the First Order make longer-range, more independent, or more versatile TIE variants as cheaper alternatives to more advanced and costly fighters like the TIE Defender or TIE Avenger.
