Brad Rau and Jennifer Corbett talk to Dan Brooks at StarWars.com about the death of Tech and bringing the award-winning series of Star Wars: The Bad Batch to an end.
“When we first started this show, we had hoped that we could get three seasons to tell this story,” executive producer and head writer Jennifer Corbett tells StarWars.com. “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.”
These two story elements made for a shocking end to a critically-acclaimed season, one that just won The Bad Batch the Saturn Award for Best Animated Series — its second in a row. The death of Tech was a particularly raw moment; following the raid of an Imperial stronghold, which earned the Bad Batch the ire of Grand Moff Tarkin, the clone sacrificed himself to save his brothers. Behind the scenes, Lucasfilm took the sequence, and the decision to kill off Tech, very seriously. “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,” Corbett says. “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.” Dave Filoni, series creator and executive producer, agreed.
“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,’” says Corbett. “And as he should — to again show how the balance has changed in the galaxy.”
But the story of the Bad Batch isn’t over.
Season 3 of The Bad Batch kicks off on February 21 with a three-episode premiere, and finds the team scattered in the wake of this fallout. Omega and Crosshair are prisoners and Echo has joined up with Rex, leaving only Hunter and Wrecker on Bad Batch duty, as it were. Throughout, they’ll feel the loss of their brother. “It affected a lot of the logistics,” Brad Rau, executive producer, says. “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.”
“It’s sort of like a reset for the squad,” says Corbett, “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.” First, the team’s two polar opposites must come together.
Crosshair, already the frostiest Batcher, is emotionally and physically reeling from a string of bad choices: leaving his brothers to serve the Empire, realizing his mistake and killing a superior officer, and undergoing experiments and torture. Omega, enthusiastic and good-natured, has been captured in an effort to force the Kaminoan Nala Se to continue her cloning research for the Empire. So while Crosshair and Omega are in similar situations, they could not be further apart in terms of outlook. Rau and Corbett found that dichotomy to be a creative drive for Season 3. “I love when the two of them are together,” says Corbett. “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.”
Both are being held by the ambitious and ruthless Dr. Hemlock. He’s a unique villain for Star Wars — not physically imposing, not military-minded, and with no powers of any kind. But Hemlock represents the Empire’s willingness to take and twist the galaxy into whatever it desires in order to achieve power, this time from a scientific point of view. Clones aren’t just expendable on the battlefield; now they’re test subjects. “It’s always a challenge coming up with a Star Wars villain because there’ve been so many great ones,” says Corbett. “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?’” For Corbett, Hemlock has emerged as the best kind of baddie: the one you love to hate.
Read the interview in full at StarWars.com, the final season of The Bad Batch, streaming on Disney+ from February 21st.
