Breaking down the new shots from the midseason trailer for The Bad Batch

We’re halfway through the first season of The Bad Batch, and as has been typical of Star Wars animated shows, we got a midseason trailer for the series that was released today!

You can take a look at it below. It’s comprised of mostly footage we’ve already seen, but there are a few new shots, which we’ll speculate on after the trailer:

All along I was wondering if we’d get a trailer this week to mark the midseason point of the show’s first season, especially since most of the material seen in the original trailer(s) has already appeared in the first half. I expected a true midseason trailer, but this one is simply a sneak peak that packages together a bunch of footage we’ve already seen with a few new shots. So there’s not a whole lot here to discuss or build hype for the show – but I wonder if part of that is because unlike other animated shows that aired on TV, this one isn’t taking a midseason break (even though the ending for the last episode felt like the cliffhanger for such a break).

So there’s not a whole lot new, but what new shots we did get are worth discussing. Let’s break those down:

We saw a glimpse of this scene in the trailer before the season came out, and it’s the only one that we haven’t seen show up yet. I continue to think that this is Raxus, which would be pretty awesome. Raxus was the capital of the Confederacy of Independent Systems during the Clone Wars and therefore is a significant planet to see at this point in the timeline. The Tarkin novel mentions that Raxus was an area of interest for the Empire given the fact that it still had strong Separatist ties, which would explain why the Empire would send clones and tanks to march on the city here.

It’s not just Imperial clones that are sent to the planet, however, as the Bad Batch shows up there as well. We knew that, of course, but we get a couple of new shots in this trailer of them on the planet I assume to be Raxus. They’re accompanied by a protocol droid that looks to be the same model as AP-5 in Rebels. But also note that Omega is nowhere to be found, which leads me to believe that this takes place before the squad rescues her? So perhaps this will be happening very soon, and I would assume that means there’s a key reason for the Bad Batch going to Raxus that ties into everything with Omega.

Additionally, we see Tech and Echo sliding down a grappling line toward a clone in one of the walkers, with Tech shooting at him and stunning him. I’m guessing this is the Bad Batch trying to take control of one of the walkers, and it’s a pretty cool shot.

This also looks to be on Raxus, as the squad enters a cave of sorts, still accompanied by the protocol droid, as well as a mysterious figure. He looks to be quite wealthy and a person of some prominence, however. Maybe he’s a governing ruler on Raxus?

Omega! This is the only new shot of her that we get, so we’re really going into the second half of this season totally blind as to what’s going to happen. She’s in cuffs here and looks quite afraid, but she’s at a control panel pressing some buttons. I’m guessing that she’s trying to escape or call for help here, but it’s unclear whether she’s still in the custody of Cad Bane, the Kaminoans, or someone else… (more on that in just a minute). So there is very, very little about Omega seen here for the remaining eight episodes, and that means that there’s really nothing about the plot that’s revealed in this trailer. All we get is a few new shots that give us some glimpses but not a whole lot of information.

These shots, however, are by far the most interesting in the trailer. Fennec Shand shows back up, and she’s looking at a mysterious green tank of sorts… which falls and breaks open on her, and it looks like there’s a figure inside that begins to fall out. But we don’t get any clear glimpses of this. So there’s a lot of unknowns still, but we do get one concrete bit of information: Fennec Shand will show back up! And given the uptick in interviews with Ming-Na Wen recently and coming up, it seems that Fennec may have a much bigger part to play in the second half of the season. If I had to guess, I think she’ll hunt Omega wanting the bounty for herself. Along the way, however, I wouldn’t be surprised if she comes to appreciate the kid and actually works to protect her rather than harm her. Since Fennec will be starring in The Book of Boba Fett I wouldn’t be surprised if she gets established as a sort of hero, much like she was portrayed in the second season of The Mandalorian. She’s obviously not exactly a ‘good’ person, given her history, but I nonetheless wouldn’t be surprised if she’s portrayed as likable here for fans.

But what’s going on with these tanks? The close-up shot of the tank shows some markings to the right side that look similar to the markings on the control panel Omega is operating, which leads me to wonder if Omega is the one who actually causes the tank to fall on Fennec, perhaps trying to escape from her grasp.

The setting that they are in is what is especially intriguing to me. These tanks remind me of the ones seen in The Mandalorian, where we saw figures inside them and got a look at the Empire’s cloning secrets. And now I’m beginning to wonder if The Bad Batch is going to tie in with all of this too and tell a more significant story than we could have imagined. For now I’m wondering if we’re going to see some of Palpatine’s secret workings and experimenting in cloning. Keep in mind too that Sidious already hired Cad Bane in The Clone Wars to work for him, so it wouldn’t be a huge stretch to wonder if Sidious is once again behind Bane’s job. We know that Palpatine is very interested in cloning, as we’ve seen it show up in the sequel trilogy in a significant way, in recent comics, in The Clone Wars (as he wants to clone the zillo beast), and hinted at in The Mandalorian too. It would be cool if this show gives us a glimpse of that too. Maybe Palpatine wants Omega for something (remember that I, as well as others, have speculated that Omega might be Force sensitive).

And in The Mandalorian, remember that the cloner, Dr. Pershing, wears the emblem of the Kaminoan cloners. He’s a human, yet he seems to be aligned with the Kaminoans. Maybe Palpatine and the Empire take over the Kaminoan facilities for their own cloning projects? I would love to see the zillo beast cloning come back into play again, and would love to see more about these whole secret machinations of the Emperor.

Maybe we will or maybe we won’t… but these shots in hte trailer certainly remind me of all of this and have me curious and excited to see where things go from here.