We finally have a release date for The Bad Batch, the newest Star Wars animated series!
It was announced today by Lucasfilm and Disney that The Bad Batch will debut on May 4, in celebration of Star Wars Day! That’s a Tuesday, and so the second episode will drop just a few days later, on Friday, May 7. From there, new episodes will release each week on Fridays on Disney+.
It’s unclear how many episodes there will be in the first season, but I’m thrilled that these will once again be weekly releases (which gives us plenty of time to talk about it and keeps the hype alive for much longer!). We expected that this show would premiere in the spring sometime, and so of course it makes tons of sense for it to drop on Star Wars Day. It will also mark the one-year anniversary of the series finale of The Clone Wars, which is fitting, since this series very much looks like a continuation of that.
The Bad Batch, of course, was first established in The Clone Wars, with the first arc of season seven featuring this elite squad of experimental clone troopers, called Clone Force 99 (aka “the Bad Batch”). The crew is made up of Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, Crosshair, and Echo, and in this series they will try to find their place in a galaxy that has changed so much and continues to change quickly. The show is set immediately after the fall of the Galactic Republic at the end of the Clone Wars, and from the looks of the trailer we got a look at months ago, there will be plenty of familiarity between this show and The Clone Wars. And that makes sense, given how close the timetable is.
That’s honestly why I’m so excited for this show, too. I love The Clone Wars, and one of the biggest reasons why is the characterization and depth it added to the clones. So to now be able to focus on a squad of clones we already know as they face the post-War era is fascinating. Clones were bred and raised for war. What happens when the war ends? What do the clones do then? There has to be a huge identity crisis, and that is surely deepened by the guilt of the clones who betrayed their Jedi in Order 66. All of this makes it a truly fascinating period to explore from a clone perspective, and I can’t wait to see it here.
The Bad Batch is executive produced by Dave Filoni, Athena Portillo, Brad Rau, and Jennifer Corbett. Carrie Beck serves as co-executive producer, while Josh Rimes is the producer. Rau is the supervising director on the show, while Corbett is the head writer.
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