“Star Wars: The Bad Batch” will be unlike any other “Star Wars” product you’ve seen, while also feeling entirely familiar.
“The Bad Batch” is a new animated series that takes place in the weeks following “The Clone Wars” animated series. It will focus on a group of Clone Troopers who have to survive after the fall of the Republic and the beginning of the Galactic Empire.
This is essentially a spinoff show for the fans of “The Clone Wars.” If you’ve never watched “Clone Wars,” it would be easy to watch this show. Just know it’s about Clone Troopers and you’re good to go. Of course, you will definitely understand a lot more if you watch “The Clone Wars” and understand the context of the entire war.
In a recent virtual press conference I attended, the “The Bad Batch” creators opened up about the specific time period of the show, which will be between “Revenge of the Sith” and “A New Hope.” But it happens so soon after “The Clone Wars” that it will present a different look at the Empire’s early days.
“The Clone Wars” showed off the peak of the Clone Troopers. But “The Bad Batch” will show something different.
“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,” said Jennifer Corbett, the producer and head writer for “The Bad Batch.”
The transition from the New Republic to the Empire will be the focus of the new show, too. We’ve seen the New Republic and the Empire stand on their own. This will be something much different.
Corbett said that “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.”
She said that she “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.”
Now, of course, the “Bad Batch” will have the same visual style of “Clone Wars” since it is a sequel to “Clone Wars.” But “Bad Batch” won’t be overwhelmingly different from other “Star Wars” shows because it will still have emotional stories in a galaxy far, far away.
“Let’s face it, we’re blowing stuff up and we’re having fun doing that,” said Brad Rau, a producer for the show. “But, to have the emotional context of that is the challenge, I think, in any of these stories. And 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.”