Did ‘The Bad Batch’ Just Reveal An Old Expanded Universe World?
Cloning and clones have been part of the Star Wars franchise since the beginning. Staring with the very first movie, A New Hope, both Princess Leia and Obi-Wan Kenobi obliquely mentioned a historical galactic event referred to as "The Clone Wars," that both Leia's father and Obi-Wan Kenobi were said to have fought in years before. Not many details about that event was fleshed out during the original trilogy and fans could only speculate as to the nature of that conflict and how clones were involved. However, even before Attack of the Clones was released several years ago, Star Wars Legends returned to the topic quite a few times through various books and comics usually set post-Return of the Jedi.
In the original Thrawn Trilogy, written by author Timothy Zahn in the early 1990's, the antagonist Grand Admiral Thrawn was able to reclaim an abandoned Imperial cloning facility called Mount Tantiss on the planet Wayland. Later, he would use the facility to clone an army to crew several captured dreadnoughts in his campaign to destroy the New Republic. The series also featured a clone named Jorruus C'Boath. This crazed clone of a certain Jedi Master wanted to capture Luke, Leia, and Leia's unborn Force-sensitive children, and bend them to his own ends. At the end of the final book in the series, The Last Command, Luke and Mara Jade faced off against C'Boath as well as a clone of Luke ("Luuke"), created from his severed hand at Bespin in Empire Strikes Back. In the Dark Empire comic series, which was set shortly after Thrawn's defeat, the New Republic faced a threat from the resurrected Emperor Palpatine, who returned through the use of advanced cloning. Several years later in the Hand of Thrawn duology, Luke and Mara reunited to investigate rumors of Grand Admiral Thrawn's return, despite his death several years earlier. They ultimately discovered and destroyed a clone of Thrawn awaiting activation in a remote Imperial facility.
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The subject of clones became a major plot for the prequel trilogy and the Clone Wars animated series, where we finally learn more about the mysterious Clone Wars. In Attack of the Clones, Obi-Wan Kenobi traveled to the mysterious watery world of Kamino. Its reclusive inhabitants, the Kaminoans, were well-established throughout the galaxy as the best cloners money can buy. Upon his arrival there, Obi-Wan learned that a former Jedi Master named Sifo Dyas had entered into a contract with the Kaminoans nearly a decade earlier in order to create a clone army. Although skeptical about the clone army and its shady origins, the Jedi were forced to take command of them as war broke out between the Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems (aka. Separatists). This conflict between the Republic and several breakaway star systems inevitably became known as the Clone Wars, which we would later learn as the war progressed, were actually part of a larger plot by Chancellor Palpatine to amass more power for himself and ultimately destroy the Jedi. After approximately three long years of conflict, the war came to an abrupt end in Revenge of the Sith, when the top leadership of the Separatists was eliminated and Palpatine activated the buried programming within the clones known as Order 66, commanding them to eliminate all the Jedi.
In the recently concluded first season of The Bad Batch, the Empire began to transition from using clones to conscripted soldiers and volunteers. Finally, the Empire canceled their contracts with the Kaminoans, finished redeployment of the remaining clone troopers, and obliterated the cloning facilities on Kamino. In the season finale, one of the remaining Kaminoan scientists Nala Se was brought to an Imperial facility on an unknown planet where she was expected to serve the Empire. Although it has yet to be confirmed by Lucasfilm, many fans are speculating that the series may be planning to canonize Wayland and Mount Tantiss, which, as noted above, were important elements of the Thrawn Trilogy. What this facility and Nala Se's involvement may mean for future Star Wars stories or stories involving Grand Admiral Thrawn is anybody's guess. We will likely learn more in subsequent seasons of Bad Batch.
While we do not have any information about what is in store next for the Clone Force 99, we do have several pieces of information about the future of cloning several decades beyond the series. For instance, we know that, at some point, the Empire or its associates succeed in creating Snoke, who rose to become Supreme Leader of the First Order. Even more importantly, a cloned Emperor Palpatine returned in The Rise of Skywalker in an attempt to conquer the galaxy again, similar to the plot of Dark Empire.
Cloning also surfaced in The Mandalorian, set several years before the sequel trilogy. In both seasons of the show to date, we encountered a mysterious character named Dr. Pershing, who had a uniform with an insignia similar to that of Kaminoan cloners. We also learn that Dr. Pershing appeared to be involved in some kind of mysterious experiments involving Grogu. Some fans postulated that perhaps he was part of a research into cloning a Force-sensitive individual. In Season 2 of Mandalorian, Din and his allies also infiltrate an Imperial outpost on the planet Navarro, which appears to have Snoke-like clones growing in tubes, establishing a possible future link to Snoke and Palpatine's return in the sequel trilogy.
It appeared that recent Disney+ shows like Bad Batch and Mandalorian are revisiting storylines from Star Wars Legends, previously known as the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Fans had enjoyed these stories in the past, so it made sense that Disney returned to them. After all, there was no reason to reinvent the wheel, as the saying goes. The chronicle of clones did not end with Clone Wars or the prequel trilogy. Their threads continued on, interwoven into the very fabric of Star Wars history and beyond.
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