“Our squad’s nothing but trouble.” Yes, and that’s exactly how we like it. The first full trailer for the animated Star Wars: The Bad Batch is here, and it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a Clone Wars spinoff executive-produced by Star Wars TV-series genius Dave Filoni—clever, action-packed, and incredibly promising.
The Bad Batch are a group of mutated clones introduced in the final season of The Clone Wars. They vary genetically from the majority of their brothers in the Clone Army, each with their own special skill—which Tarkin puts to the test in the trailer’s opening sequence. They don’t seem to be his favorite clones: “They exhibit a concerning level of disobedience and disregard for orders.”
In other words, they’re fun guys—which Tarkin naturally can’t stand. In this post-Clone Wars setting, the men of Clone Force 99 have to figure out what’s next for them (apart from surviving Tarkin’s desire to wipe them out). “You can either adapt and survive… or die with the past,” Saw Gerrera (Andrew Kishino) says.
Saw isn’t the only returning character; we also get more of Ming-Na Wen’s Fennec Shand. Who the Bad-Batch-admiring kid is, we’ll have to wait and find out. And there’s so much else to want to know! We haven’t seen a lot of the Star Wars universe in the immediate aftermath of the Clone Wars, so there’s a relatively large amount of narrative freedom for stories set at this particular fictional moment.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch begins with a 70-minute premiere on Disney+ on Tuesday, May 4th. New episodes will stream on Fridays beginning May 7th.
Buy the Book
Fugitive Telemetry
The look on the kid’s face, with the hyperjump reflected in his corneas… I am seven years old again.
“We do what we do”. “And you do not post on twitter”
New Star Wars under Filoni’s direction? I’m in!
And it drops on May the Fourth. Happy Star Wars Day!
I’m not QUITE as excited for this as I am other projects (my glee yesterday was for learning that the prequel actors for Owen and Beru have been cast in the Kenobi show which opens up SO many interesting possibilities!) but I loved hearing Fennec’s voice, and I love that post-RotS era of the timeline.
I’m hoping McDiarmid cameos at least once.