Star Wars: Will ‘The Bad Batch’ Season Two Redeem ‘The Rise of Skywalker’?
Season Two of The Bad Batch has already been announced, but who do we expect to see and how do we think Clone Force 99 will shake up Star Wars?
Imperial Crosshair
At the end of the first season’s finale, Crosshair stays behind while the rest of Clone Force 99 fly off and awaits an Imperial pickup that he’s sure will come. Realistically, The Empire would probably leave him behind because one clone they’re in the process of phasing out and had already assumed dead would likely not be worth the space gas to come back for. But this is Crosshair and The Bad Batch so of course he will have some vital piece of information or extra skill that somebody will want to swing back for.
And unfortunately, now we know that he’s chosen his side and it’s with The Empire, even if he did a couple of not-awful things towards the end. It’s not clear if he’ll continue to be a primary antagonist for the remaining Batch members or if he’ll more or less ignore them while doing other work for The Empire, but it’s probably safe to say that we will see more of Crosshair as an Imperial and some level of bad-guy in season two.
Continued Stories of Rex, Gregor, Wolf, Hera, Etc.
One of our favorite parts of The Bad Batch was checking in on our favorite characters from other series throughout the galaxy, and there is still a lot of story to tell for all of these characters as well as some they never met up with. It’s most likely that we’ll see Rex and Gregor (and possibly Wolffe) since the Batch are already in regular-ish communication with Rex, but there is a chance we can return to Hera since she and Omega have also left open an avenue for communication. Besides them, the possibilities for characters we didn’t see in season one are nearly endless.
Science Mountain from the Thrawn Trilogy
At the end of the episode Nala Se is taken to a mysterious unnamed planet and greeted by a woman wearing a uniform identical to Dr. Pershing’s from The Mandalorian. Nale Se is told she will be continuing her work and we’re left to put together those puzzle pieces. And to us this science facility where cloning will happen on the top of a mountain on a lush semi-tropical planet looks and sounds a lot like Mount Tantiss on Wayland. Appearing in the original Thrawn Trilogy, Mount Tantiss was an Old Republic era fort turned weird science storehouse by Emperor Palpatine and the location for twenty thousand cloning cylinders.
In ties to the current established canon alone, there is a veritable gold mine of possibility on Mount Tantiss, acting as a connecting point between The Empire as we know it and an eventual Snoke-as-a-bad-Palpatine-clone; acting to normalize and explain the more controversial clone-based plot points of the entire Sequel Trilogy that had so many fans up in arms. It also has the ability to tie directly to Dr. Pershing’s work and what happened to Grogu between the fall of he Jedi order and the events of The Mandalorian.
There is a possibility that Thrawn could be involved in some way as he was in the books, but it doesn’t seem as likely since he’s a slightly different character now than in the Legends Canon. And of course maybe we’ll eventually – very far down the road – see my personal favorite lost character, Luuke. Okay, that one is silly and probably not happening, but the possible reintroduction of Wayland and Mount Tantiss opens the second season of The Bad Batch up for some very exciting possibilities.
What do you think we’ll see in the second season of The Bad Batch? Which characters would you like to see make an appearance next season? What do you think is next for Crosshair, Omega, and the remaining members of Clone Force 99? Let us know in the comments!
May The Force Be With You, Adventurers!
