“Star Wars: The Bad Batch” had a pretty interesting cameo in its opening scene, revealing a Jedi Padawan named Caleb Dunne, who ends up becoming Kanan Jarrus from the “Star Wars: Rebels” series.
- Now, we know why “The Bad Batch” decided to add in the cameo.
Why did Kanan show up in ‘Bad Batch’ Episode 1?
“Bad Batch” executive producers Jennifer Corbett and Brad Rau recently told Entertainment Weekly that the decision to bring Dunne into the show was made to help tell the Bad Batch’s story of accepting a new youngster, named Omega, into the group.
- “The more that we started thinking about the development of Omega and the Batch’s relationship to her, it felt natural to have Hunter interact with the young Padawan who he’s not able to help,” Corbett said. “He witnesses this kid lose everything, and even though he’s not able to help that Padawan, later on that fuels his decision to go back and help Omega because he’s kind of righting that wrong.”
According to Corbett, “Star Wars: Bad Batch” creator Dave Filoni suggested Caleb be added into the scene.
- “We were all so excited because fans of ‘Rebels’ knew his story and kind of just got a glimpse of it,” Corbett said. “But we just really wanted to explore what Order 66 was like from his perspective to just add to that. It’s always fun when we get to play with those kinds of characters, so we were all excited about that.”
Is this different than the comics?
However, Dunne once had a different origin story. According to Polygon, the original story of Caleb/Kanan losing his master “depicted Caleb cutting off his Padawan braid and adopting a ponytail to go into hiding. It represented the relinquishing of his Jedi identity and a rite of passage into a life of crime.” But, in the show, Caleb is still wearing his Padawan ponytail.
- And in the comics, Caleb was right beside his master when she died from Order 66. In the show, he’s far away from it.