'Star Wars' Finally Reveals One Of The Biggest Secrets From 'Rogue One' In The Newest 'Bad Batch' Episode
The neat thing about the Star Wars universe is that it is a complete mixture of movies, TV series (animated and live-action), and books. And this mixture all ends up fitting together into one big story. One storyline that may be presented in a film may also show up in one of the books or TV series. In the case of episode 3 of Star Wars: The Bad Batch on Disney+, it is in fact, finally filling in a mystery that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story left us with.
Star Wars animated series The Clone Wars and Rebels have been there to enhance the stories and characters for the Star Wars films, and yet also to tell their own stories and introduce their own characters to the universe. And with the new animated series Star Wars: The Bad Batch, it is no exception to the storytelling. The Bad Batch focuses on the experimental Clone Force 99. Not only does it take characters that were introduced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and continue their stories while adding in some new and mysterious additions, but it also has started answering questions that were left unanswered from the Star Wars films.
Within the first two episodes of the series that is currently streaming weekly on Disney+, the series has already reiterated the idea of chain codes that The Mandalorian touched upon recently and a Rebels Jedi, Caleb Dume, better known as Kanan Jarrus. The third episode, titled “Replacements,” revealed a much bigger answer to the contents of a plan that was referenced in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
In the episode, Admiral Tarkin discusses a new Empire initiative known as “Project War Mantle” with Vice Admiral Rampart, a new character to the Star Wars universe. Project War Mantle was mentioned for the first time in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story when Jyn Erso was searching for the Death Star plans in the Citadel Tower on Scarif. We already know that at some point in the timeline the Empire stops using the clones from Kamino and enlists soldiers. And now, thanks to The Bad Batch, we are seeing some of that come into play. Project War Mantle seems to be the Empire’s plan to enlist new soldiers to fight instead of the clones.
Admiral Tarkin refers to the clone trooper program on Kamino as a “cost-prohibitive relic of the past” when he turns Project War Mantle over to Vice Admiral Rampart, whom he promotes to Admiral to head up the program. Both Tarkin and Rampart are convinced that the soldiers will perform better than the clones in battle.
There has always been speculation among Star Wars fans since the release of the prequel trilogy and Attack of the Clones, as well as during the sequel trilogy, as to how and why the Empire replaced the clone army with enlisted soldiers. And once again, that storyline is being continued through the animated stories by filling in the gaps and answering questions, as well as still telling a unique story with a different perspective. From just this one episode, it seems like Admiral Rampart will be playing a significant role in transitioning the soldiers from clones to enlisted troopers.
This storyline is particularly gut-wrenching since the main characters in this series are clones, and seeing this transition from their point of view, being cast aside after losing their free will and murdering due to the inhibitor chip, will be extremely hard to watch. Especially if Crosshair, who seems to be completely controlled by the Empire now, has something to do with it as well. Of course, if this storyline pans out as a major one for this animated series, then Clone Force 99 and Omega will very much be a part of the action.
And if the trend continues, the remaining episodes for this series may just answer more questions, continue more storylines, or bring in characters we have already met from different points in their timelines.
New episodes of The Bad Batch air on Fridays on Disney+.
Source(s): The Direct