The first season of The Bad Batch has come to an end, and the final scene of the season saw Kaminoan scientist Nala Se brought to a secret Imperial base, under guard of Clone Commandos, where she is greeted by an Imperial scientist.
The unidentified scientist says, “Mistress Nala Se. Welcome. We are all admirers of your scientific talents. The Empire has big things planned for you.”
They then proceed into the base together, with Nala Se looking uncertain (because she was, after all, taken against her will right before her home was destroyed, so it’s quite understandable!). But what is particularly interesting is the uniform worn by this Imperial scientist, because we’ve seen it before. Doctor Pershing, who is working with the Imperial remnants in The Mandalorian, also wears the same uniform.
When Pershing first appeared in The Mandalorian, fans noted that he was wearing the emblem of the Kaminoan cloners, which immediately raised eyebrows and had people curious as to what was going on. And as we can see in The Bad Batch, this Imperial scientist also wears the same emblem. There is an obvious connection there, and it now seems like Nala Se will be helping the Empire with whatever projects they have going on.
This just furthers the connective tissue between the two shows (and it’s not the first time that’s happened), and it has me very interested in where things could go from here. It now seems that there is an official link between the cloning interests in The Mandalorian and the cloning interests in The Bad Batch, but what exactly that is remains to be seen. The implication in The Mandalorian is that the reason the Empire wants Grogu is so that they can work on cloning projects, and it seems that it’s because of the high midichlorian count in Grogu’s blood. That would suggest that the Empire is trying to create Force-sensitive clones (I wrote about all of this back when we learned about it in The Mandalorian season two and offered some speculation as to what it could mean). And if that’s the case, then it would all of the sudden line up with the sequel trilogy and The Rise of Skywalker as well, which involved Palpatine’s cloning efforts (though mostly in the background and not outright stated much).
Circling back around to The Bad Batch, then, it would not surprise me if we were to learn more about Palpatine’s interests in cloning in the next season, though what that means remains unknown. There’s also the whole Zillo Beast thing that’s never been followed up on since The Clone Wars, so that would be another possible avenue as well.
But there is now a very clear connective link between these shows, and it has me thinking that a bunch of this storytelling could all be leading into one bigger story, which would be pretty cool.
Star Wars Thoughts 