Star Wars: The Bad Batch opens with a striking image; the old Clone Wars logo, which burns away to reveal the logo of the new show. Led by Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels creator Dave Filoni, the new series serves as a bridge between the two prior animated series, showing the events immediately following Order 66 and the rise of the Galactic Empire. Many of the characters in The Bad Batch, including the members of Clone Force 99, have previously appeared in The Clone Wars.

The Clone Wars has been incredibly influential to the modern era of Star Wars in numerous ways. It was the franchise’s first full-length TV series, laying a basic blueprint for successors like Rebels and The Mandalorian to follow. It introduced major characters and storylines like Ahsoka Tano and the canonical Mandalore arc. And perhaps most importantly, it took a prequel trilogy that was widely disliked and retroactively improved upon it, fixing heavily criticized traits in characters like Anakin Skywalker and expanding the story of the late Republic era.

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When The Clone Wars was first cancelled back in 2013, fans eagerly awaited its successor. But though Star Wars: Rebels was a great series in its own right, it wasn’t truly a sequel to the previous show. The art style was different, the lead characters were all new, and the structure of the show was quite different than that of The Clone Wars. By starting out with the original Clone Wars logo and burning it, The Bad Batch makes a bold statement that, unlike Rebels, it will be a spiritual sequel. This claim is supported by the show’s animation style as well, which is essentially the same as The Clone Wars and therefore a good deal different from the Ralph McQuarrie-inspired art of Rebels.

Even the font choices in The Bad Batch echoes The Clone Wars. After the series logo fades, the premiere episode title, “Aftermath,” appears in exactly the same way as the final four episodes of The Clone Wars – the Siege of Mandalore arc. Of course, it remains to be seen exactly how much The Bad Batch will carry on the Clone Wars story and how much it will become its own original series. It’s possible the striking similarities were only used this one time to emphasize the connection to The Clone Wars.

So far, The Bad Batch has done a strong job of showing new and previously neglected effects of Palpatine’s rise as Emperor. The impending discontinuation of clone production looms in the background, foreshadowing the soon-to-be irrelevance of the Republic’s once grand army. The Clone Wars may be over, but they still cast a long shadow over the events of Star Wars: The Bad Batch.

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Rick Stevenson
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Rick Stevenson is a writer, editor and performer based in Brooklyn, NY. He’s written on TV, film and games for over six years, in addition to assorted stints in bookselling, carpentry, and TV production. Rick studied writing at the College of William & Mary and Oxford University, and can report with some authority that they are both old. He lives and dies for Avatar: The Last Airbender.

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