If you think that waiting a year or more for the next season of your favorite show is hard, try waiting for six!
For fans of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, that’s exactly what happened and today the drought is over. Arriving with the familiar sound of engines from a galaxy far, far away, “The Bad Batch” kicked off the seventh and final season of The Clone Wars in its new home: Disney+.
While the 12-episode season is said to contain three distinct story arcs, “The Bad Batch” begins an arc that’s familiar to dedicated fans of the series, as it was previously shown at Star Wars Celebration 2015 and at starwars.com in an earlier, unfinished form. The Bad Batch is the chosen name for Clone Force 99, a squad of Clone Troopers who are “defective, with desirable mutations.” Unlike their fellow Clones, whom they dub “regs,” Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, and Crosshairs aren’t the usual type of sheep who simply follow orders and fall in line. They have distinct personalities and, in some ways, recall the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — particularly Tech, who plays as the Donatello of the Bad Batch. For years, many fans have noted similarities between Hunter and Rambo, and with the upgraded animation the defective Clone harnesses even more of that “Stallone in First Blood: Part II” look.
When we catch up with Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, and the rest of the Republic, the forces of evil are moving well toward collapsing all stability in the galaxy as the Galactic Empire begins to take shape.
Captain Rex believes that the Separatists are using stolen data to inform an algorithm that seemingly predicts every move in a war that is being fought on 12 fronts. But what if it wasn’t data, but a person from the past who was providing the stolen playbook. Armed with a hunch, Rex calls in the Bad Batch for a potential suicide mission behind enemy lines in hopes of locating the source of a mysterious signal.
After fighting their way into a Separatist stronghold alongside Anakin Skywalker, Rex and Tech discover something disturbing that leads to an unexpected and emotional reunion.
New episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars will debut Friday mornings on Disney+.
Photos: Lucasfilm/Disney+
