Well, as far as Star Wars news goes, this is both unexpected and baffling. Deadline reports a new Star Wars animated series is coming to Disney+ from Dave Filoni, and it’ll be centered on The Bad Batch, the group of misfit clone troopers recently introduced in the final season of The Clone Wars.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch has been ordered by Disney, with fan-favorite Dave Filoni on board as exec-producer. Filoni is the guy behind Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, the unfortunate Star Wars Resistance, and oh yeah, The Mandalorian. He’ll be working alongside producers Athena Portillo, Brad Rau, Jennifer Corbett, Carrie Beck, and Josh Rimes, with Corbett as head writer. Those names will all be familiar to close followers of Star Wars lore because they’re responsible for a lot of it.
The Bad Batch are a group of experimental clone troopers with unique abilities who fight for the Republic during and in the aftermath of the Clone War. They debuted during the first half of the final season of The Clone Wars.
I’m shocked by this because The Bad Batch were the part of this final season that I disliked the most. Their characters were so far out of left field that they didn’t really feel like they belonged in Star Wars. You had the token smart one, the token big tough one, the token crazy one, the token leader, and the token mysterious one, but they didn’t make much sense when taken into fuller context.They were presented as unbeatable wild cards, which begged the question why they weren’t deployed everywhere? And where were they during Order 66, which turned all of the Clone Army against the Jedi?
It’s also clear that Disney/Lucasfilm are putting greater emphasis on stuff like this rather than live-action features. The future of Star Wars appears to be on the small screen, at least for the time being. Look for Star Wars: The Bad Batch to arrive in 2021.
