Respawn just announced their latest Apex Legends cinematic trailer will air on April 19 at 11 AM ET on YouTube. Titled Northstar, this latest entry into the Stories from the Outlands series comes just a couple of weeks ahead of the start of Season 9, and it will almost certainly introduce players to the game’s new playable legend. Except, the term “new” may be a misnomer here, as Respawn has thrown some heavy references to Titanfall 2 pilot Viper in with the announcement.
Viper was one of the less prominent opponents players faced in Titanfall 2. Piloting the agile aerial Titan Northstar, he presented a different type of challenge to the otherwise predominantly ground-based and cumbersome Titans fought across the game’s campaign. Viper was also the pilot players know the least about, since his face, name, and general background information remain unknown to this day, aside from some minor tidbits.
Tomorrow’s Apex Legends cinematic trailer references Viper’s Titan with its title. Additionally, on April 17, Respawn narrative director Mohammad Alavi sent out a tweet mimicking one of Viper’s few lines in Titanfall 2: “Viper’s got you in the pipe, five by five,” itself a reference to Aliens. The tweet has since been deleted.
Prior to the cinematic trailer announcement, all indications pointed at the upcoming legend being Valk, a new face to the Titanfall universe. To be clear, Valk is still almost certainly the new legend we will see in Apex Legends Season 9, as Respawn has a very consistent record of not recycling their old characters, and instead introducing brand new faces to the game, albeit with many references to the past. In this case, we can speculate that Valk’s design is inspired by Viper or that there may be a lore connection between the two, and that the new legend will have an ability kit with a focus on aerial mobility.
