'The Bad Batch' Will Have More Episodes Than 'The Clone Wars' Season 7
With the debut of Star Wars: The Bad Batch being less than three weeks away, more details regarding the show have been revealed. Apart from the season premiere being a delightful 70-minute episode set to air on May the Fourth, as well as episodes being released every Friday afterward, we now also know that the first season of the show will have more episodes than Season 7 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which aired in 2020.
The news came from an interview with Kevin Kiner, composer of The Bad Batch series (who also scored The Clone Wars and Rebels shows). During a podcast interview with Full Of Sith, Kiner revealed that he has been working on the music score for episode 14 of the series:
"I'm working on episode 14 now... I hope I can say that, I think I can. I just did a big action cue... it's in a jungle scene... I'm having a great time with it."
With that in mind, the first season of the show would have at least 14 episodes, contrasted from the three-arc Season 7 of The Clone Wars, which only had 12 episodes from February to May 2020. There has been speculation that with The Bad Batch being a more formal series in itself, it is likely to fall within the usual 20-22 episode range of an ordinary The Clone Wars season back in the late 2000s and early 2010s. From what was said by Kiner, it appears that the work on Season One of the show is far from over, something that fans would definitely be excited about and should applaud the producers for.
While there is no confirmed information on the duration of the episodes to come, there is a possibility that they would exceed the standard 25-minute mark of The Clone Wars episodes that fits a half-hour time slot. The reason is simply due to the series no longer airing on scheduled network television, but to be streamed on Disney+ instead, offering a much higher degree of flexibility as to episode length since the audience could view the content at any time from the release of the episode(s). With the 70-minute season premiere being a forerunner, future episodes of The Bad Batch would probably incline toward a more substantial length to facilitate more detailed storytelling.
With reference to information on other Star Wars series to be released in 2021, calculations would reasonably point toward the speculation of a new episode of Star Wars content every week for the rest of the year - The Bad Batch's first season would come to a close sometime in September, which could then bridge into the 10-episode Star Wars: Visions anime series, followed by live-action The Book of Boba Fett which is set to premiere in December this year (as first confirmed in the post-credits scene of The Mandalorian Season 2 finale back in December 2020).
In light of the back to back schedule of Star Wars shows, coupled with many more series to come such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka, and Andor, the future of Star Wars seems to be delightfully bright.
Source(s): The Direct