When Star Wars: The Bad Batch hits Disney+ on May 4, we’ll be getting a 70-minute premiere episode. Damn, that’s like half a season of The Mandalorian. New episodes will follow every Friday starting May 7. Here’s a fresh trailer showing Hunter, Echo, Tech, Wrecker, and Crosshair doing their thing.
If you were wondering if the Bad Batch, officially dubbed Clone Force 99, would serve the newly formed Galactic Empire, we get our answer when Grand Moff Tarkin orders them to be hunted down.
Besides not following orders, Clone Force 99 differs from other Clone units in that each squad member was genetically created to be exceptionally proficient at a single skill.
We also see them joined by an unnamed Kamonio child.
And we get a pair of scenes showing off previously known Star Wars characters, including The Mandalorian’s Fennec Shand (played by Ming-Na Wen, who reprises her Mandalorian role), and a younger, less beaten up Saw Gerrera (played by Andrew Kishino, who played Gerrera in The Clone Wars series).
All the Bad Batch clone voices are done by Dee Bradley Baker. He’s no stranger to Star Wars, as he recently did the Frog Lady and Frog Man vocals in the last season of The Mandalorian.
The Bad Batch is one of more than 10 Star Wars shows currently being worked on. We know production for the Obi-Wan series begins in April. While many of these are still at least a year out, The Bad Batch will be followed by The Book of Boba Fett sometime before the end of 2021.
Let’s hope this 70-minute premiere isn’t a one-off, and the rest of the episodes are decently long. I enjoyed The Mandalorian, but those 30-minute episodes weren’t enough.