Fennec Shand Is Coming To 'Star Wars: The Bad Batch' Series On Disney+
Last week, Lucasfilm and Walt Disney Company announced that Star Wars: The Bad Batch will air on May the 4th, 2021, also known as Star Wars Day. We have already seen a preview of the animated show when the trailer was released back in December 2020. Among the Bad Batch clones, who are the protagonists of the show, we see another character from The Mandalorian that we have come to love: the sniper Fennec Shand.
Due to its distance from the ruling government in the Core Worlds, the Outer Rim has always enjoyed a certain degree of independence. Criminal activities flourished far from the eyes of law enforcement. In this environment, Fennec Shand climbed up the ranks of the underworld to become an elite assassin for the top crime lords.
With the story of The Bad Batch occurring approximately 28 years before The Mandalorian, Fennec Shand would be at the beginning of her career. As far as we know, she has always been an assassin. She had no prior Imperial connection like Migs Mayfield, and no prior Rebel Alliance or New Republic connection like Cara Dune. She appears to be connected to the Hutt crime syndicate. Perhaps she spends some time on Tatooine working for Jabba the Hutt. She is wanted by the Imperial Security Bureau. The Bad Batch could be working with Shand or against her as they go about their new mercenary business. With the genetically enhanced sniper “Crosshair” being a part of the Bad Batch, we might even get to see a one-on-one sniper versus sniper fight. It was not clear from the trailer whether she would be their ally or their enemy. Whatever her role, fans could not wait to see her character again in the prequel arc to her story. Maybe we will see how the years of life experience transformed her into the Fennec Shand of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.
Fennec Shand first appeared very early in season 1 of The Mandalorian. At this time, viewers knew that the yet unnamed Child (who resembled a smaller and younger version of Jedi Master Yoda) was the target of the also unnamed Mandalorian bounty hunter. However, he had a change of heart and ended up rescuing and fostering the Child. Fennec Shand was yet another bounty the Mandalorian planned to collect with the help of rookie bounty hunter Toro Calican. She was a side job, essentially a side quest on Tatooine, as he waited for his ship to be repaired.
“And if you remember, I don’t miss.” - Fennec Shand to Din Djarin
We first saw Shand's skills as a deadly sharpshooter in the great desert of Tatooine. Din Djarin is able to evade her at first when his flash chargers temporarily blind her. A little shaken off her game, she still manages to hit him on a rapidly moving speeder bike from a great distance (perhaps he should have zig zagged). Only beskar armor saves him from more serious injuries. Later on, we see Shand collapsing after being shot by Calican in the stomach. A pair of sharp eyes might have caught a brief moment when a dark figure approached her body at the very end of the episode. As far as we knew at that time, she was just a brief intermission in the overall plot of The Mandalorian, never to be seen again.
Shand would return again in season 2 of The Mandalorian right in the midst of action when Djarin takes the young Grogu to Tython, the planet where the Jedi Order possibly originated. This time, she would be in the company of none other than the legendary Boba Fett, the original Mandalorian bounty hunter. After Boba Fett vows to assist Djarin in rescuing Grogu, Shand enters the main storyline of the series alongside Boba Fett. At the end of season 2, after fulfilling their pledge to Djarin, Shand and Fett return to Tatooine, where they take out Bib Fortuna and the remnants of Jabba the Hutt’s organization. With a bottle of presumably alcoholic beverage in her hand, she joins Fett as he sits on the former throne of the Hutt crime lord. When the title The Book of Boba Fett flashed on the screen, fans knew that this would not be the last of her.
At this time, we know that Ming-Na Wen will return to lend her voice to the character. The production team only left us with a full picture of the animated version of Fennec Shand on the Star Wars Instagram's story. As more details about The Bad Batch and The Book of Boba Fett are released, we hope to see and hear more about her.
Source(s): The Direct