This “May the Fourth” meant more sneak peaks at Star Wars VII

You probably heard it all day yesterday: May the Fourth be with you.

But this year’s annual Star Wars observance meant a whole lot more in light of the next Star Wars installment coming our way in December. We saw some new images of several new characters, some with actors we’d heard of, others as strange as those from the original Mos Eisley cantina. All thanks to Vanity Fair magazine.

The biggest news was that the slick new chrome-armored stormtrooper from the second Star Wars VII trailer (seen here) is played by Game of Thrones’ Gwendoline Christie–yes, women can serve the Empire–and she’s apparently hunting down a certain AWOL trooper played by Attack the Block’s John Boyega. We’re predicting that even with a very 1930s action serial/”something George Lucas would come up with” name, this new villain, called “Captain Phasma,” could be getting primed by toymakers to be one of the highest-selling action figures of 2016.

If this seems a bit familiar it may be because Vanity Fair has previously featured fans’ first looks at the last entries in the Star Wars saga, also with Annie Leibovitz photo shoots. For those new to Annie Leibovitz, she’s one of the best known photographers of the past 40 years, with many famous shots of rock stars.

Visit the Vanity Fair website at this link for an Annie Leibovitz photo shoot, with some cool new images from behind the scenes of The Force Awakens. The magazine reveals Adam Driver’s role as Kylo Ren–the masked wielder of the three-bladed lightsaber from the first teaser preview released earlier this year (seen here), a look at the (awesome) new snowtroopers (this time the Empire, not the Rebellion, is hiding on a frozen ice planet), and Lupita Nyong’o is portraying an entirely CGI pirate named Maz Kanata (those are some denizens from his castle shown above).

Let’s take another look at Captain Phasma from the second trailer: