Star Wars day 2021 brought us the much awaited follow up to Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Star Wars: The Bad Batch released on Disney Plus on May 4. The Premiere was a near feature length  75 minutes long. The second episode was released on May 7, with a shorter run time. The new series features the updated graphical and animation quality of the final TCW season. As well as featuring the art style of TCW as opposed to Disney’s Rebels series art style. The premiere, titled Aftermath, sets the stage for the series.

Setting The Stage

The intro features the trademark war-time narration of TCW. And the opening title, which burns away to reveal The Bad Batch Title, making it clear that The Bad Batch is tightly related to TCW. Aftermath follows the titular squad, aka Clone Force 99, and their reaction to Order 66. Without getting into spoilers, the squad find themselves in the center of the newly formed Empire’s attention. 

The Bad Batch comes hot off the heels of last year’s final season of TCW. TCW’s seventh season was long awaited after the show’s untimely cancellation after Disney bought out the franchise. The final season of TCW closed up the stories of the waning days of the Clone Wars, and the beginning of the “dark times”. The highly acclaimed season also originally introduced us to Clone Force 99; A group of rag-tag, 80’s style, defective clones whose mutations make them especially capable. 

For The Fans

Bad Batch continues the recent trend in Star Wars media to explore Order 66. The final season of TCW depicted how fan-favorite characters Ashoka and Rex survived. The Clone Wars era, or prequel era, was big for an entirely different generation than the originals. The generation who grew up with them also aged with TCW series. This is reflected in the more mature outlook present in the show. This continues with the Bad Batch. The prequel era has also become somewhat of a fan sweet heart. After the initial backlash to the prequels the excitement for The Bad Batch might seem strange. But, in the decades following, Lucasfilm has crafted a massive fan base around its prequels. 

The second episode, Cut and Run, is also a callback to fans of TCW. On the grander scale it deals with how deserters were affected by Order 66. All in all in just the two episodes fans have been given large swaths of lore and background to understand and theorize over.