‘The Bad Batch’ Season 3 Gets a New Clip, Cast and Crew Talk About ‘Dark’ Final Season
The three-episode premiere of The Bad Batch season 3 is fast approaching, and a new promotional clip has been released as actors Dee Bradley Baker and Michelle Ang, showrunner Jennifer Corbett and executive producer Brad Rau talk about what we can expect from the series’ final season.
The clip, released as part of IGN Fan Fest, shows Hunter and Wrecker walking with teenage former clones on a jungle planet.
Hunter and Wrecker run into some trouble in this exclusive #IGNFanFest clip from the final season of Star Wars: The Bad Batch. pic.twitter.com/nh4uOYbmPt
— IGN (@IGN) February 20, 2024
The two young clones reveal that they were shipped off Kamino by the Empire to this jungle planet to be experimented on. Could they be on the planet Weyland, where Mount Tantiss is located? If so, that could mean they’re launching an early rescue mission for Omega. We don’t get to learn more, as Wrecker accidentally disturbs a dangerous beast lurking in the jungle and the four clones prepare for combat.
Meanwhile, Dee Bradley Baker, Michelle Ang, Jennifer Corbett and Brad Rau all spoke to StarWars.com about the final season.
Jennifer Corbett revealed it was always the plan to do three seasons of The Bad Batch. She’s delighted that they were able to see the vision through, noting its “bittersweet” conclusion.
When we first started this show, we had hoped that we could get three seasons to tell this story. We kicked Season 1 off with Order 66 and the team trying to figure out where they fit in the galaxy. We knew Season 2 was going to be a little bit darker, because we knew that the team was going to lose in some way. As the season progressed, it became clear that the way for them to lose is to essentially have the team be fractured. That’s what happens when we lose Tech, and then also with Omega being taken by the Empire.
I think bittersweet is the word, because it’s been an honor to be able to tell this story and tell it in a fitting way, and to have worked with this team and be so proud of what they’ve all done and accomplished. We’re just so excited for the fans to see what we have in store for them.
Brad Rau agreed on the final season’s bittersweet nature and that it helped that they planned for three seasons going in.
It’s so bittersweet. It’s been such a great show. But one thing that’s really positive is going into this season, we knew very early on this would be the final season. That’s a blessing that can be a rare thing in our field — knowing that, we were able to wrap things up the way we want it, the way that we felt the story deserved, the way that the characters should have it.
Dee Bradley Baker spoke about his mixed range of emotions at seeing his journey with the clone troopers finally come to an end (for now, at least). He thinks this season is the best yet.
I’m excited. I’m gratified. I’m thrilled, really. I’m also a little bit sad, but mostly I’m thrilled to see this brought in for a landing, and mostly because I can’t wait to hear fans’ reactions to how much they’re going to love it and how good this is. If you love the Bad Batch and if you love Star Wars, this is as good as that gets.
And it’s just such a beautiful job done by [executive producers] Brad [Rau] and Jen [Corbett] and Dave [Filoni] and everyone involved with this, Michelle [Ang, Omega actor]. It’s been the privilege of a lifetime — of my career — to be involved with it, I must say. That’s how I feel.
The third season really covers everything. I’ve got to say, having seen it now, that it is the best of the three seasons and the most satisfying on all levels of this storytelling that is the best that Star Wars can be,” he says. “I’m incredibly proud of it and really impressed. It’s so beautiful, and it’s moving and it’s meaningful. It also goes in some directions that I think that fans will not expect and that will be very welcome, and memorable in a very enduring way.
The Bad Batch season 2 ended with the death of Tech, a development that devastated fans. Jennifer Corbett felt that Tech’s death was a pivotal moment in the series, as it really rams home to both the Bad Batch and the fans just how powerful the Empire is. Dave Filoni agreed.
There were a lot of conversations that went into that, and we even tried to talk ourselves out of it many times, because he’s such an important character to the show, to all of us and the crew, and we know he is important to the fans. But what we’re showing in Season 2 is that the galaxy has changed and the Empire is now very powerful in the early years. So we were trying to be logical in the sense that, the Batch keeps putting themselves in these positions and, ultimately, there has to be a time when they do lose.
Even Dave said, when we were pitching him ideas for leading up to the finale, ‘If you’re going to have them go against Tarkin, Tarkin’s smart. Tarkin will be able to pull one over on them.’ And as he should — to again show how the balance has changed in the galaxy.
It’s sort of like a reset for the squad, because when you first meet them in the very first episode [of the series], they’re a unit, they have a zero fail rate, and they’re very successful. But then Crosshair sides with the Empire, and then Echo leaves to go with Rex, and now Tech’s gone, and now Omega is taken. Clone Force 99 is not what it was, and the question is will it ever be the same? Hunter and Wrecker are forced to change the way that they do things in order to piece together what they can of the squad.
Baker discovered just how devastated fans were when attending various conventions. While they all obviously hope for a reveal where Tech is still alive, Dee feels his story had the best ending it could.
I’ve been through a lot of conventions over the past year, and fans are deeply bereft and stricken and holding out hope. I tell them it’s a life well-lived.
It’s a soldier’s life that is admirable and heroic in all the best sense. A heroic sacrifice is the end that any soldier on the clone army would wish for. They’re trained to fight and they’re trained to win and work together and problem solve and to do the right thing. And Tech does all of those things in his final gesture that keeps the mission alive and saves his colleagues, his friends, his family. I couldn’t wish the fellow any more. For me personally and for everybody else, yes, we want him to live longer, but I wouldn’t want to dull the gesture — the gesture of his final act of heroism.
Executive Producer Brad Rau mentioned that the absence of Tech made writing season 3 very difficult, noting that the tone of the show became heavier by default.
It affected a lot of the logistics. The very mathematical logistics of how we normally would have the team operate was massively different without Tech there. But emotionally, the most important part, the way that the loss of Tech affected Omega, Hunter, Wrecker, Echo, and Crosshair, even throughout the whole season was, I wouldn’t say heavier than we expected, but was definitely very heavy.
Michelle Ang agreed that this season does not shy away from dark moments — rather, it embraces them.
What struck me when I watched the first couple of episodes of the season was that it felt tense. It’s suspenseful. It’s very edge-of-your-seat and uncomfortable, which is a little bit of a departure, I would say, from how we mostly have started the other seasons. We sort of drop the audience straight into the tough stuff.
Ang also spoke about season 3 and Omega’s role in it.
Season 3 opens with Omega being separated from the Batch willingly because she recognizes not doing that endangers all the people that she loves. That’s a pretty big call for a young character. It shows that Omega’s starting to understand the complexities of the world and is willing to stand in the face of danger for what she knows is the right thing to do.
It’s that idea of that [youthful] confidence despite the stakes that is interesting. In terms of getting into the Omega headspace, she’s gone through some tough things, but it hasn’t ever been bleak. She still has all these really gung-ho ideas. That was really fun, being in high-stakes situations and bringing through the confidence, but perhaps a little bit of a departure from the wonder and the novelty of everything, which would’ve been Omega in previous series.
If you look at the broader perspective, at the end of the day, The Bad Batch is [about] a young person who has been fortunate enough to have the right kind of guidance to believe in herself and in what she can contribute to the world. That’s such a universal story.
It’s about growing up. It’s the path that every young person goes through until they feel like they’re ready to step out into the world.
Crosshair has had one of the more fascinating character arcs in The Bad Batch, first doubling down and aligning with the Empire before finally realizing he made the wrong choice. Naturally, Baker is also a fan of Crosshair’s journey.
There are a lot of fans who are very interested in that journey and rightfully so. It’s beautifully written and it’s a very compelling story, I think. He is broken. I mean, he is changed, he’s turned, but he’s broken.
He’s imprisoned, and he is down about as far as that guy can get. And so that’s a very different situation for Crosshair. He’s no longer a free agent. He’s not free. He’s a prisoner and also an experimental subject. He is at the mercy of this machine that he miscalculated to serve at the end of Season 1 and then through Season 2, until he finally realized what the situation was. So the tone and pace of his character, the energy of his character, is a different one. It’s one of a beaten man and one who also harbors a lot of regrets and lacks hope and lacks a path forward. And that’s a very different creature from what we’ve seen of him previously.
He spoke a little about Crosshair’s pairing with Omega in the coming season as they find themselves imprisoned together. The best partners in crime are often polar opposites of each other, and this pairing is no exception.
He is the most reluctant and pessimistic of the Bad Batch. By far. So you pair him with the polar opposite of that, which is Omega, who is as can-do, positive, let’s find a way, let’s have faith in ourselves, and in our collaborative ability to problem solve things. You couldn’t get more of that than you do with Omega, which to me is so gratifying and interesting about this third season, is to watch her very much come into her own. Not just as a team member, but as a leader, as someone who envisions the most daunting problem being solved and, knowing that through her faith in her good friends, that a solution can be found and will be found, and she, by golly, is going to do it.
Corbett spoke about how much fun the unlikely duo was, stating that their shared dynamic was her favorite.
I love when the two of them are together. Crosshair is at the lowest point that he’s ever been and Omega is as well. But she has a much more hopeful attitude, and it’s, ‘We’re going to get out of this. There’s got to be a way.’ And he’s sort of given up on any of it because he’s coming to terms with all the stuff that he’s done, and maybe he believes that he deserves to be where he is. The journey that we take them on is one of my favorites just because it’s about Omega seeing the good in people and trying to get Crosshair to see the good in himself. And it’s not an easy thing for Crosshair to do, as I think it’s very human to be weighed down by the choices that you make. But I’ll say one of my favorite dynamics in Season 3 is the two of them together.
Michelle Ang also loved the pairing.
They really have some great times together in this season. And Dee loves playing all the characters, but Crosshair in particular we have a lot of fun with. He’s just sort of snide. There’s a line that Omega says: ‘You don’t like anything.’ I feel like there were some recording sessions where we were just having so much fun with Omega dropping these truth bombs. Crosshair has probably been my favorite in terms of working with one of the characters that Dee plays over Season 3.
We’ve seen Omega quickly mature across the first two seasons of The Bad Batch, and Ang feels as if Omega’s personal journey over the series mirrors her own as a voice actor.
When I came in, I was naive and I was enthusiastic. I’m still absolutely enthusiastic, but given the knowledge that Dee was able to share with me and the experiences we’ve been through, I hope that I’ve proven myself.
I’m lucky I have all of these wonderful characters to play off. I’m always in awe of Dee, but also I feel like we’re so familiar with our characters now and the series that it feels like a more even playing field. We are collaborators and friends and artists. And we really had to lean on that because Season 3 has some really intense emotional stuff. Not to say that the other seasons weren’t emotional, but I think [this season] in particular, being able to rely on his voice acting to bring out the truth was really important.
Season 3 of The Bad Batch has a really clear villain in Dr. Hemlock, voiced by the brilliant Jimmi Simpson (Westworld, House of Cards). Corbett spoke a bit about how she tried to bring something different to a franchise that already has so many memorable villains.
I think when we knew that Mount Tantiss was going to be a major setting for the show at the end of Season 2 and into Season 3, the evolution of that character was obviously a doctor who’s willing to do the Emperor’s bidding, but who has this kind of dark past — who was rejected from the Republic because of the things he was doing, and now he’s working in this top-secret facility that not even a lot of people in the Empire know about. So he, pretty much, has carte blanche to do whatever he wants to do, as long as he is also achieving the Emperor’s ultimate goal. And that gave us a lot of room to play with, ‘What would this guy be like?’
He’s into creating, but his version of creating is very different from the Kaminoans’ version of creating. He has a plethora of clones to experiment on to his heart’s content, and he doesn’t have any qualms about that. He’s voiced by Jimmi Simpson, who is just incredible and gives him this layer of eeriness. I’m always very unsettled whenever I watch an episode with him, because you never know, really, what the character’s thinking and what the character’s willing to do. And I think that’s why he’s so interesting.
He’s definitely not a battle strategist, but because he studied clones, he knows how they think, he knows how they operate. So he does have a one-up on them in that sense. But the hardest thing for the Batch is that they have no idea where he is.
One relatively unknown quantity is Dr Emerie Karr. She serves Hemlock and appears loyal to him, despite being a female clone herself like Omega. Brad Rau suggested that her arc will be equally unusual.
We’re going to see a lot more from Dr. Emerie Karr. And Keisha Castle-Hughes is such an incredible actor. Her performance, and the way she interpreted Emerie, affected how she was written. It was really cool to see. I don’t want to give anything away, but her arc was one of the more unusual ones. The trajectory — I’ll just say this and be cryptic — was different than we might’ve expected.
Corbett was quick to point out the differences between Karr and Omega, despite their shared lineage.
I think even though she is Omega’s sister, they’re very different because of how they were both raised, which again is another commentary on clones and how the clones were treated during the Republic versus how clones are treated now that they’re in the Empire. She and Omega have a very interesting dynamic that evolves over the season.
The Bad Batch season 3 premieres on Wednesday, April 21, on Disney Plus.
Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.
