50 Fun Facts About Star Wars: the Bad Batch

Who created The Bad Batch for Disney+?

Dave Filoni. He had stepped back from directing Rebels to develop new animated shows for Lucasfilm, and Disney+ announced this one in July 2020 as his vision.

What is the name of the Bad Batch's ship, their home for most of the series?

The Marauder. The squad's shuttle carries them through three seasons until the assassin CX-2 blows it up in the final one, cutting off their escape with Omega.

What is the Bad Batch's official squad designation?

Clone Force 99. The mutations that got its members written off as defective are what let most of them shrug off Order 66, the command that turns every ordinary clone on the Jedi.

Which refuge, shown to them by a pirate friend, becomes the Bad Batch's home by the end of the series?

Pabu. They stay on the island to help rebuild after a tsunami, and it is from there that a grown-up Omega finally flies off to join the Rebellion.

Who voices the Bad Batch and most of the other clones?

Dee Bradley Baker voices all five squad members and dozens of ordinary clones besides, and makes a point of giving every one of them a slightly different sound.

Who voices Omega in The Bad Batch?

Michelle Ang shared a studio with her co-star only for the premiere; other work and then the pandemic kept them apart, so she recorded much of the series remotely over video calls.

Whose idea was the Bad Batch originally?

George Lucas wanted a squad of clones whose mutations set each apart from the regulars; the four episodes he asked for were shelved by a cancellation in 2013 and finished only in 2020.

Which giant creature, secretly cloned by the Empire, do the captive children set loose in the Bad Batch finale?

A Zillo Beast. The Empire regrew it from a monster first met in The Clone Wars, and in the finale it tears through the secret Tantiss base and covers the prisoners' escape.

On which date did The Bad Batch premiere on Disney+?

May 4, 2021 is Star Wars Day, the fans' 'May the Fourth be with you'; a feature-length opener led into a 16-episode season that ran until August 13.

Project Necromancer is a secret effort to clone whom?

Palpatine. The Emperor visits the hidden laboratory in person and calls the work vital to his Empire's future; it is the series' answer to how he can come back from the dead decades later.

Which member of the Bad Batch serves as the squad's leader?

Hunter. His mutation gives him the heightened senses of a master tracker, and during Order 66 he is the one who quietly lets a fleeing Jedi boy escape.

Which former 'reg', rebuilt as a cyborg by his captors, joins the Bad Batch after they help rescue him?

Echo was believed killed in The Clone Wars; in truth the Separatists had wired him up as a living computer, and the squad that helped pull him out became his new unit.

The Bad Batch were designed to have special abilities without ever becoming what?

Superheroes. 'Wrecker should not be the Hulk,' as one of the show's makers put it: every gift had to stay within what a soldier in that galaxy could plausibly do.

The Bad Batch's lead voice actor said which of his clone characters should sound like a 'coiled snake'?

Crosshair. The cold, patient voice fits the sniper who is the only one of the squad to obey Order 66, and who turns on his brothers in season one before he comes back to them.

In The Bad Batch, which former captain, believed killed at the war's end, works in secret to help other clones?

Rex survived Order 66 by having his inhibitor chip cut out, and when he learns the squad still carry theirs he rushes them to a wrecked Jedi cruiser to operate.

On which planet is Captain Howzer stationed when he sides with local freedom fighters?

Ryloth. Howzer warns the escaping rebels of an Imperial trap, then turns to face his own troops and urges them to stand with him, and is arrested for it.

In The Bad Batch, which clone commander deserts after a mission with the squad's sniper makes him doubt the Empire?

Cody argues for a peaceful end to a hostage stand-off, watches the rebel governor shot dead on orders anyway, asks aloud whether the Empire is doing any good, and is soon gone.

What kind of creature is Batcher, the animal Omega befriends?

A lurca hound, one of the guard beasts Omega is made to feed in captivity; when the Empire decides to put Batcher down for growing too tame, she sets her loose in the jungle.

Omega's name is a nod to "Alpha", the first unmodified clone, better known as whom?

Boba Fett. Jango wanted one clone left exactly as he was, to raise as a son; Omega is the only other pure copy ever made, which is why her name closes the alphabet he opened.

In The Bad Batch, Omega speaks in her actress's native accent, shared with the films' clone actor, from which country?

New Zealand. The accent is a nod to Temuera Morrison, the Kiwi who played Jango Fett and his clones on film; she also pitched her voice younger and drew on watching her small son.

Which actress voices Cid, the Trandoshan who hands the Bad Batch mercenary work?

Rhea Perlman, best known as Carla in Cheers, voices a sharp-tongued bar owner: Cid runs a parlor on Ord Mantell, and in the end she sells the squad out to the Empire.

Which Imperial vice admiral runs the new conscripted Stormtrooper program?

Rampart destroys the clones' home city and blames a storm; when a senator exposes the lie he is arrested, and the Emperor turns the scandal into his case for replacing the clones.

Which comedian voices the pirate Phee Genoa in The Bad Batch?

Wanda Sykes. Her casting was revealed in December 2022, and her pirate opens the second season by tipping the squad off to Count Dooku's war chest.

Who voices Dr. Royce Hemlock, director of the Advanced Science Division?

Jimmi Simpson voices the scientist who takes over as the show's chief villain in season two; his downfall comes from the hostage he takes in the finale, who helps bring him down.

Who voices the adult clone Emerie Karr in The Bad Batch?

Keisha Castle-Hughes was not told at first that Emerie was a clone; she guessed when the producers asked her to keep her natural accent, the same one Omega speaks with.

The actress behind Emerie Karr had a silent cameo in Revenge of the Sith as the young queen of which planet?

Naboo. She walks in Padme's funeral procession as Queen Apailana without a line to speak, and came back to the franchise almost twenty years later as a clone scientist.

Who voices Jedi Master Depa Billaba in The Bad Batch's Order 66 opening?

Archie Panjabi has only minutes in the role: Billaba is cut down by her own clone troopers while her Padawan runs, a death that an earlier comic had told quite differently.

Caleb Dume, who escapes Order 66 in the premiere, is better known by which name in Rebels?

Kanan Jarrus. The producers weighed casting a younger actor before asking Freddie Prinze Jr. to come back and play his own character as a boy.

Why does Tom Kane's newsreel narration open only the first episode of The Bad Batch?

The war ends in the premiere: the newsreel voice that opened Clone Wars episodes had no war left to report, and the squad come home to find the Republic already an Empire.

In which 2015 novel had Asajj Ventress last been seen before her return in The Bad Batch?

Dark Disciple ends with Ventress giving her life for the Jedi she loves, so the producers had to work out how she survived before they could bring her back.

What colour is Ventress's new lightsaber in her Bad Batch appearance?

Yellow. The blade and her longer hair come from designs drawn for Clone Wars episodes that were never produced, whose story was told in a novel instead.

Which character from The Mandalorian turns up decades younger in The Bad Batch, hired to retrieve Omega?

Fennec Shand. The twist is who is paying her: the cloning scientist Omega used to assist, who wants the girl kept safe, so the mercenary on her trail ends up fighting off a rival to protect her.

Who voices Todo 360, Cad Bane's service droid, in The Bad Batch?

Seth Green. His fussy droid is the weak link in the kidnapping: Omega talks Todo into letting her out of her cell, then signals the squad for help.

Which accent did Vanessa Marshall use for the teenage Hera Syndulla in The Bad Batch?

French. Twi'leks speak with that accent, which the grown-up Hera had lost by the time of Rebels; Marshall, who is fluent in French, finally got to play her with it.

Which droid is billed in The Bad Batch's credits as playing 'Himself'?

Chopper. The joke began on Rebels, where every episode billed the grumbling astromech as himself, and fans were left guessing at his real voice until the credits of the series finale.

Which Rogue One actor reprises Orson Krennic at Tarkin's summit in The Bad Batch?

Ben Mendelsohn. His Krennic is there as the man running Project Stardust, the Death Star, which ends the series by swallowing the funding taken from Hemlock's cloning labs.

Which actor from the prequel films returns to voice the abandoned clone cadet Mox in The Bad Batch?

Daniel Logan played the boy clones of the prequel films, so the casting is a wink: two decades on, he voices a young cadet the Empire has left behind.

Who voices Isa Durand, leader of the Durand crime family, in The Bad Batch?

Anjelica Huston. Her crime matriarch sells the squad a lead on the Empire's secret base, and it sends them to an abandoned outpost overrun by a monster.

Where were the unfinished Bad Batch story reels first shown in April 2015?

Star Wars Celebration Anaheim. The Clone Wars had been cancelled two years earlier, so fans first met the squad as rough story reels; the episodes were not finished until 2020.

Who composed The Bad Batch's score, as he had for The Clone Wars and Rebels?

Kevin Kiner writes the animated series with his children Sean and Deana, and says this score grew out of his Clone Wars music just as that music changed over its own run.

The Bad Batch's composer said its score nods to The Guns of Navarone and which other film about a band of misfits?

The Dirty Dozen. 'They're a band of misfits and they're sneaking around,' he explained, so the clones got a war-movie sound laid over the electronics and orchestra.

Who revealed the first trailer at Disney's Investor Day on December 10, 2020?

Syfy Wire thought the trailer made the show look like a more action-heavy Clone Wars crossed with The A-Team.

Which rebel leader's refugees are the Bad Batch ordered to wipe out in the series premiere?

Saw Gerrera. Finding families where they were told to expect insurgents, the squad walk away from the mission, and that first refusal gets them arrested for treason.

Which weapon becomes Omega's own in The Bad Batch?

An energy bow. She snatches it up from the ground after a fight with slavers on the squad's first job for Cid, and with practice it becomes the weapon she is known for.

How did The Bad Batch's animators respond to complaints that the clones had been 'whitewashed'?

They adjusted the skin tones, going back through finished footage so that the clones looked closer to Temuera Morrison, the film actor every one of them is copied from.

In The Bad Batch, the 'child' Muchi, rescued from slavers for Jabba the Hutt, turns out to be a young what?

Rancor. The squad set out to save a kidnapped child and only later realise what Muchi is; she goes home to Jabba's majordomo, Bib Fortuna, who hands over the reward.

Which ocean world does the Empire bombard and abandon in The Bad Batch?

Kamino. Once conscripts can replace clones the Empire has no more use for the cloners: Tipoca City is shelled from orbit and left to sink into the sea with the squad still inside.

In The Bad Batch, what does a high 'M-count' in someone's blood indicate?

A strong link to the Force. Asajj Ventress is the one who explains it to the squad, and Hemlock's cloners cannot copy a high count until they find that Omega's blood can carry one across.

Which game does Omega turn out to be brilliant at, winning enough to clear the Bad Batch's debt to Cid?

Dejarik, the holographic chess from the Millennium Falcon. Left behind because hunters are after her, Omega beats the parlor's regulars and pays off everything the squad owe.

In The Bad Batch, what does the squad's sniper reveal about his inhibitor chip late in season one?

It was already removed: he has been serving the Empire by choice, which turns a story about brainwashing into one about betrayal.