Star Wars Day is here and the premiere of The Bad Batch is the perfect way to celebrate! Last Star Wars Day saw The Clone Wars come to an end and now The Bad Batch will tell the next chapter in this Star Wars story. Star Wars, and especially Clone Wars, fans have been eagerly awaiting this exciting new animated series.
The Bad Batch follows the titular clones who were introduced at the beginning of The Clone Wars seventh and final season. In a recent virtual press conference for The Bad Batch, producer Brad Rau, talked about how The Bad Batch is a “spiritual successor” to The Clone Wars not only with the story, but the animation style as well.
“That’s very intentional. The Bad Batch is a spiritual successor to Clone War. So, we wanted to honor the style and the legacy of that. That being said, the whole team at Lucasfilm and our partners at CGCG, we’ve just tightened everything up. So, the fidelity is tighter. The style is tighter. The rigs are tighter. The way that it’s designed is still the legacy of The Clone Wars, but a little more detail. Little bit more focus. And we’re doing, for me, having worked on a lot of these shows, with a lot of the same people internally. It’s just the best team and I think we’re doing our best work ever right now. It’s really fun.”
One of the most exciting parts of The Bad Batch is that the series will not only follow characters from The Clone Wars, but it will be taking place during a part of the Star Wars timeline that hasn’t been explored in Star Wars films or television series. Jennifer Corbett, producer and head writer, shared her excitement about exploring this new time period and how the Bad Batch fits into it.
“This time period’s is one of the reasons I got so excited about this show, other than this oddball group of characters. But I just found it intriguing and engaging to watch a series where we’ve seen the Clone Wars, where it’s the height of the Clone Troopers doing what they’re meant to do, and what they were created for. And, the question became, “What happens after the war is over? What happens to clones who all they know is being soldiers?” Especially for the Bad Batch who do things differently as it is with the Republic and how they fit in once it becomes the Empire.
Because obviously, two very different regimes, and, how they react to this new environment and the new way of doing things and new way of following rules. Which again, isn’t their favorite thing to do. But, it was interesting to just sort of talk about the transition from the Republic to the Empire and what that looks like, because it’s not what we saw in the original trilogy, where it’s the dominance of the Empire.
It’s kind of like the early stages, and I found it kind of interesting to show planets and places that were happy that the war is over, and they don’t really understand the implications of what an Empire actually means. And it’s kind of just laying the groundwork for what everyone knows the Empire to be later on.”
Dee Bradley Baker, the voice of the Bad Batch and other clones in Clone Wars, Bad Batch, and Rebels, explained why the Bad Batch have such a hard time fitting into this new Imperial regime.
“It’s an interesting point you make there, Jen, that in the transition, the sudden, shocking transition from Republic to Empire, that it becomes a suddenly much more rule-based power structure of the galaxy. Of the universe. And that the Bad Batch are not so much a rule-based unit. They’re very much a team, but they are not…like the Clones are more of a top down command structure. And it’s very interesting to place them in the middle of this transformational moment and to see how that plays out.”
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Brad Rau touched upon some of the struggles that the Bad Batch will face in this post Clone War galaxy and how they aren’t completely prepared after only living as soldiers of the Republic for their entire lives.
“And this time period that as a fan, I’m just so excited to see, ’cause we haven’t seen that much about the rise of the Empire. So, to have these clinical, best of the best soldiers as suddenly fish out of water in this changing galaxy…none of them are really equipped to go out into the world. And how do they eat? They don’t have a mess hall to go to. How do they get their gear fixed? How do they get fuel for their ship? These are things that are, “Wait a minute, oh yeah, we didn’t have to deal with that last week, now we gotta deal with it.” Are all things we get into. It’s really interesting.”
The Bad Batch will not only need to figure out their place the galaxy, but how to survive and find supplies that used to be readily available. Although the Bad Batch are no longer soldiers of the Republic, they are still a group of elite soldiers as they have been their entire lives.
During the press conference The Bad Batch was compared to Rogue One because of how it similarly follows characters that are neither Jedi nor Sith, but instead a “rag-tag” group of soldiers. Brad Rau was happy with the comparison, but he also explained why it’s important to ground the series in the emotions of the Bad Batch’s family dynamic.
“We love all of that stuff. But it is really interesting, to deal with this family dynamic. To have the stories be emotionally charged, and emotionally based gives the action a lot more texture, honestly. ‘Cause I mean, let’s face it, we’re blowing stuff up and [Brad laughs] we’re having fun doing that but, to have the emotional context of that is the challenge, I think, in any of these stories. And for us, it helps that we are coming into characters that are familiar and yet, we don’t know that much about. And it gives us room to kind of play around with how those characters develop.”
The dynamic of the Bad Batch was unique and entertaining in their arc on Clone Wars, so the fact that it will be further explored and developed in The Bad Batch is not unexpected, but still exciting to hear. The Bad Batch is already lining up to be a fantastic Star Wars animated series especially following in the same vein as Clone Wars and exploring this new Star Wars time period. Diving into this series with characters that fans already know and enjoy is another piece of why The Bad Batch should be such a blast for Star Wars fans.
STAR WARS: THE BAD BATCH OFFICIAL TRAILER AND SYNOPSIS
Star Wars: The Bad Batch 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 that 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.
The Bad Batch premieres on Disney Plus with a 70 minute episode on May 4 better known as Star Wars Day. Are you excited to explore the time period when the Empire rises to power? Are you glad The Bad Batch is a successor to The Clone Wars in not only story, but animation style? Leave your thoughts in the comments below or on our social media.
KEEP READING: STAR WARS: THE BAD BATCH EPISODE 1 REVIEW: A STRONG SUCCESSOR TO THE FAN FAVORITE CLONE WARS SERIES
