Vildar Blin Vildar Blin was a Human male corporal and scout of the Alliance Special Forces during the Galactic Civil War . After his brother betrayed their family by joining the Galactic Empire ' s Commission for the Preservation of the New Order , Blin joined the Bormea sector ' s Rebel underground , and he later served with Alliance High Command at its Echo Base headquarters on the ice planet Hoth . Blin was killed during the Battle of Hoth in 3 ABY while storming a downed All Terrain Armored Transport that exploded as a result of friendly Rebel snowspeeder fire . Biography . Vildar Blin was once a member of the local security force on the planet Corulag , in the Bormea sector of the Core Worlds . However , Blin joined the sector ' s Rebel underground after his brother betrayed their family by joining the Imperial Commission for the Preservation of the New Order . Eventually , Blin was assigned to the Alliance High Command headquarters of Echo Base on the Outer Rim Territories ice planet Hoth , where he served with Alliance Special Forces as a corporal . During the Battle of Hoth in 3 ABY , the Rebel Alliance ' s worst battlefield defeat of the Galactic Civil War , Blin fought in the defensive trenches surrounding Echo Base , under the command of Colonel Ledick Firest . Trained in reconnaissance , Blin helped spot for the Rebels ' artillery and marked for capture any salvageable Imperial equipment from fallen All Terrain Armored Transports . In the skies above the trenches , Rogue Group pilot Wedge Antilles downed one of the AT - ATs by ensnaring its legs with high - tension cable from his T - 47 airspeeder , or " snowspeeder , " tripping it to the ground , the first Imperial walker neutralized during the battle . Blin and an assistant boisterously stormed out of the trenches at Firest ' s behest for the grounded AT - AT . They reached the walker before any Imperials could emerge and were about to enter the AT - AT when a snowspeeder pilot fired upon the vulnerable walker , destroying it . Large chunks of shrapnel flung the Rebel soldiers backward , and Blin and his assistant were killed in the explosion . Personality and traits . Vildar Blin served the Rebel Alliance Special Forces as a scout . Even before joining the Alliance , he had prior training in first - response tactics and already boasted special forces experience . As such , Blin was regularly assigned to reconnaissance missions , which encompassed his artillery observation and salvage duties at the Battle of Hoth . Blin , a Human , sported a beard of brown hair by the time of the Hoth battle and had light skin . Equipment . During the Battle of Hoth , Blin wore the standard cold - weather armor of the Echo Base field troops , including headgear , anti - glare goggles , padded vest , thermal flak jacket , gloves , belt , leggings , boots , and backpack . His equipment also included binoculars , and he carried a sizable piece of equipment during his ill - fated charge of the downed AT - AT during the battle . Behind the scenes . Vildar Blin appears briefly in the 1980 film , running across the Hoth plains for the first downed AT - AT walker at the Battle of Hoth , before the shot cuts to an explosion of the walker . The character ' s identity and role as a first - response scout were created for the " Rebel Scout " card as part of the November 1996 " Hoth Limited " expansion set of the " Star Wars " Customizable Card Game . Blin ' s backstory was later expounded upon in the 2004 article " Who ' s Who in Echo Base " in " Star Wars Insider " 74 , the first source to confirm his death in the walker explosion . Blin ' s death in the " Who ' s Who " article draws upon a scene that appears in , in which a group of Rebels charge the downed AT - AT and are subsequently caught in its explosion . However , in the novelization , the AT - AT explodes from within rather than from Rebel snowspeeder fire .