Star Wars Day 2020 was celebrated with the series finale of long-time animated favorite, Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
Now, a year later, Disney+ will premiere series The Bad Batch on May 4, according to D23’s official website. This spin-off series will follow Clone Force 99, or the Bad Batch after they were first introduced in the first four episodes of season 7.
The Bad Batch, or more formally known as Clone Force 99, is a unique squad of clones that have been genetically mutated, making them significantly different from their clone brothers. Each Bad Batch clone has a single skill they are exceptionally and inarguably good at and when combined with the others, make them pretty much unstoppable.
The Bad Batch started out as four members: Hunter, the leader of the squad, has hypersensitive sensory abilities; Crosshair has wickedly brilliant eyesight, making him the ‘sniper’ of the team; Tech has enhanced mental capacity, putting him at the same level of intelligence as R2; and Wrecker, a super muscular enhanced clone with the same reckless attitude as Anakin but 10 times better.
The commando squad of four (now five with the addition of Echo) was named after the deformed maintenance clone 99 (Season 3 Episodes 1 and 2), who died in the defense of Kamino.
The elite squad was first introduced in season 7 of The Clone Wars, after being assigned to help Captain Rex and Anakin Skywalker in rescuing ARC Trooper Echo from the Techno Union on the planet Skako Minor after Rex and Tech discovered a live signal from the planet carrying Echo’s number CT-1409.
Echo was killed during a rescue mission out of The Citadel (Season 3 Episode 19 ‘Counterattack’) and was believed to have been dead ever since. Rex and The Bad Batch find Echo, deformed and unaware of any event following his “death” at the Citadel, on Skako Minor, looking like what appears to be a Techno Union experiment.
After Echo is rescued and the Techno Union project destroyed, Echo returns to base on Anaxes with the squad where instead of following Rex to hopefully restore those “old times,” he makes the decision to join The Bad Batch, making him the fifth member of the elite team.
The Bad Batch spin-off show will be taking place in the post-Clone Wars era, where we will get to see the crew in action under their own spotlight, going on more daring missions and finding a new purpose after the rise of the Empire. It’s also been confirmed that Ming-Na Wen will also return to animation, voicing her Mandalorian character Fennec Shand as Well.
The series will hit Disney+ on May 4, 2021. The second episode will hit the platform on May 7. New episodes will air every Friday after that.
Sara Edwards is the Star Wars Writer for Boardwalk Times.
