The New ‘Star Wars: Bad Batch’ Spinoff Will Answer a Lot of Questions About What Happened After The Clone Wars

'Star Wars' newest Disney+ original series will focus on the Bad Batch, seen on 'The Clone Wars.' It'll answer questions about post-Order 66 life.

by Alani Vargas

Published on July 13, 2020

3 min read

The newest ‘Star Wars’ series will be about the Bad Batch

On July 13, Disney and Lucasfilm announced that a Disney+ original series will focus on the Bad Batch. It’s coming to the streaming platform in 2021.

Dave Filoni (supervising director for The Clone Wars) introduced the Bad Batch to fans a few years ago through his extensive storyboards. Star Wars: The Clone Wars was canceled before the arcs were finished, so Filoni had a ton of stories already written, with some of them already in animation stages.

So fans were ecstatic when the first four episodes of Season 7 involved the Bad Batch. They were a group of genetically mutated clones who had heightened senses that aided in missions. There was Crosshair (modified eyesight), Wrecker (stronger than most), Tech (tech genius), and the leader Hunter (enhanced senses for “hunting” a target). Then Echo was added after he was saved from the Separatists. He was weaponized and almost turned into a machine, so he felt closer to these mutated clones than anyone in the 501st.

Fans don’t know how their stories end, including how Order 66 impacted them

The synopsis for the new series said,

The series follows the elite and experimental clones of the Bad Batch (first introduced in The Clone Wars) as they find their way in a rapidly changing galaxy in the immediate aftermath of the Clone War. Members of Bad Batch — a unique squad of clones who vary genetically from their brothers in the Clone Army — each possess a singular exceptional skill, which makes them extraordinarily effective soldiers and a formidable crew. In the post-Clone War era, they will take on daring mercenary missions as they struggle to stay afloat and find new purpose.

StarWars.com

This should excite a lot of fans more, because it won’t just be a show about the Bad Batch’s exploits. It’s going to take place after the Jedi Purge, which fans saw at the end of The Clone Wars (and, of course, in Revenge of the Sith). While different aspects of the franchise have looked at this time period, there hasn’t been a huge emphasis on what happened to the clones. And specifically not what happened to the Bad Batch.

There are a good amount of questions that are left unanswered. Star Wars: The Clone Wars gave an excellent conclusion to that series, and that part of the Star Wars canon. However, did the Bad Batch still have inhibitor chips? And if they did, what did their Order 66 look like? And would the Empire have disbanded them as well? The synopsis makes it sound like they defect from the Empire; what did they go through? And do they have any role in the Rebellion later?

Again: a good amount of unanswered questions.

Does the Empire use them after disbanding the Clone troopers for Stormtroopers?

Going back to the period right after the Galactic Empire is created, there isn’t a ton talking about life at that time. There’s Jedi: Fallen Order, a game that takes place a few years after Order 66. Then there’s the Ahsoka novel that meets up with Ahsoka Tano a year later, and briefly mentions the Clone troopers program transitioning into Stormtroopers.

But not a lot of canon material tells why the Empire got rid of the clones and went with Stormtroopers. As fans see by the sequel trilogy (decades later), with Finn, the Empire (then First Order) started indoctrination of their Stormtroopers from birth. And as the Ahsoka novel talks about, it only took one year to switch from clones under the armor to regular, non-clone people.

As the YouTube channel Star Wars Explained pointed out in 2016, the young adult series Servants of the Empire gave some good answers. They said that even though clones were better soldiers than Stormtroopers, and trained from birth which made them more effective, their usefulness had worn out.

The whole point the Clone troopers was to enact war. It was all a part of Palpatine’s plan to overthrow the Jedi and take over the Republic. And he even made them into weapons for his plan by planting those chips. Something similar could be used against Palpatine as well. Plus, they just weren’t a major necessity anymore, now that they had full control over the former Republic.

With all that said, Star Wars: Bad Batch will surely add some much-needed context to this front, and show how these special clones survived under the Empire.