1x01 Aftermath

[7.6/10] From the beginning, Star Wars’ iconography featured the motley, earth tone-draped freedom fighters of the Rebellion against the pristine, black-and-white perfection of the Empire. Before the audience ever knew the details of the conflict at hand, this imagery told us everything. The rigid, overpowering force of the film’s Imperial villains contrasted with the shaggier, freethinking rebels who dared to oppose them.

Star Wars: The Bad Batch follows in those vaunted footsteps. The series -- from Star Wars animation impresario Dave Filoni, head writer Jennifer Corbett, and supervising director Brad Rau -- frames itself as a contrast between the wilds of personal choice and the strictures of mandated conformity. As the Empire emerges from the ashes of its predecessor, those who fought for the Republic must decide what their place will be in this new galactic order. Will they stay good soldiers or become free but wanted men?

The characters making those choices are familiar to anyone who watched the revival season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars (or its story reel predecessor). The titular group of “deviant” clones with favorable mutations includes: Hunter, the group’s Rambo-resembling leader with enhanced senses; Crossfire, the sly sharpshooter; Wrecker, the comically dopey brute, and Tech, the gadget-friendly nerd. They’re joined by Echo, a familiar, typical clone trooper, who was turned into a cyborg against his will by the bad guys, eventually finding a home among his fellow misfit toys. All are voiced by franchise stalwart Dee Bradley Baker who, as always, nigh-effortlessly differentiates the clones in terms of personality and bearing.

Baker and his personas are not the only elements of The Bad Batch that will be familiar to Clone Wars fans. The new series is a self-conscious sequel to the prior show, even more so than Rebels. It picks up where season 7 of The Clone Wars left off, replete with the usual serial-style narration, scenes from Revenge of the Sith reimagined in the animated style, and the old show’s logo transitioning to the new one. The series premiere, portentously titled “Aftermath”, features cameos from original Clone Wars characters like Saw Guerrera and AZ-3, and recognizable locations like the cloning facility on Kamino and the forests of Onderon.

There’s benefits and drawbacks to that approach. These choices do help orient the series as a proud torch-bearer in the animated branch of Star Wars that launched in 2008. The Clone Wars series featured tons of worldbuilding that established and deepened many corners of the Star Wars galaxy, allowing Filoni and company to put their own unique spin on the Prequel era. Utilizing that work, rather than starting from scratch, helps The Bad Batch hit the ground running. The new show can build on what’s come before rather than reinventing the wheel. And, not for nothing, it provides longtime fans the comfort and reassurance of things they already know and like.

But that’s part of the problem. Beyond just the Clone Wars extensions, “Aftermath” positions Admiral (not yet “Grand Moff”) Tarkin as its main villain. The series’ opening scene sees the Bad Batch interfacing with Caleb Dune circa Order 66. Guerrera himself delivers the key thematic speech at the episode’s midpoint. There’s a lot of connections to other pieces of the Star Wars Universe here.

The balance between honoring continuity and devolving into fanservice is always a tricky one. Finding the sweet spot is particularly hard in pilot episodes, where you’re trying to hook a curious but potentially unsure audience. But Bad Batch threatens to run headlong into the franchise’s longstanding small universe problem, where all the characters you know and like from all across a (theoretically) expansive galaxy just so happen to have crossed paths at key moments in their lives. In Star Wars, the new is constantly circling back to the previously known, and The Bad Batch offers little tonic on that front.

That concern notwithstanding, “Aftermath” commendably picks up on some key themes and ideas from The Clone Wars and moves them forward in compelling ways. Chief among them, the old show regularly considered what the end of the war would mean for the clone troopers. The fear that their overseers would continue to treat them as disposable comes to fruition, as Tarkin openly threatens to end the cloning program and resort to a conscription army at “half the cost.” More to the point, the Bad Batch themselves seem to wonder what’s in store for them without the usual missions to complete and with their orders now coming from the Empire, not the Republic.

They are helped (or hindered), however, by one key detail -- their mutations leave them largely unaffected by the “inhibitor chips” that affect the rest of the Clone Troopers. These mental implants turned most of the “regs” of the clone battalions into unquestioning butchers under the aegis of Order 66. Our heroes, however, pride themselves on not simply following orders to the letter, if at all. Their “deviation” leaves them capable of questioning the wisdom and moral rectitude of turning against the Jedi and doing the bidding of a newly-crowned Emperor Palpatine.

The central question of “Aftermath”, and potentially the series as a whole, is whether you should conform to such orders and expectations or think for yourself and follow what’s right. The correct answer isn’t particularly murky, especially in the world of Star Wars. But the context -- of soldiers who’ve been at war for years now finding that the ground has unexpectedly shifted beneath their feet -- gives the choice weight and meaning.

The lever for their decision comes from an unexpected place -- the impact of these great changes on children. When Hunter is appalled at his brothers turning their weapons on the Jedi, he goes out of his way to protect and reassure young Caleb. When Tarkin sends the Bad Batch on a mission to take out a group of “Separatist insurgents,” who turn out to be an embryonic version of Saw Guerrera’s partisans, Hunter holds his men back not just because their targets are flesh and blood rather than battle droids, but because he sees children in their party.

Most of all, Hunter finds a connection with Omega, the unexpected fifth clone with a favorable mutation, which seems to have given her psychic powers and other abilities. This “Boba Femme” adds some commendable gender balance to an almost de facto male-heavy cast. More than that, she represents both the Bad Batch’s loyalty to one of their own, and Hunter’s sense that the newly-formed Empire is unworthy of their devotion, if for no other reason than it would have them stamp out innocent lives like Omega, Caleb, and the kids in Saw’s party.

Those children represent a red line for Hunter in particular. “Aftermath” demonstrates the Bad Batch’s resourcefulness, whether it means knocking Separatist “clankers” off cliffs, reprogramming battle droids, or finding clever ways to escape captivity. But it also shows their unique ability to consider the morals of their directives and reach their own conclusions, even if the consequences put them in grave danger. The troopers of Clone Force 99 aren’t just distinct for their useful genetic abnormalities; they have the unique capacity to make their own decisions apart from Republic/Imperial programming.

The Bad Batch’s debut sets up all sorts of tangles and complications to make those decisions perilous and interesting. Tarkin remains apt to shut down the cloning program. The Kaminoans are motivated to hide information from him to keep it going, even as one of them conspires to let our heroes escape. One of the Bad Batch’s own, Crossfire, proves more susceptible to the programming than his comrades and turns into an assassin hunting down his former allies. Hunter, Omega, Echo, Wrecker, and Tech, are now on the run, trying to figure out what comes next when the structures they bristled against, but nevertheless relied on, have all but evaporated in a matter of days.

But it all comes down to their ability to make independent judgments without any gameplan to follow, to do right even when the whole world seems to be telling you to do wrong. The Bad Batch don’t look like their fellow troopers. Their features are peculiar. They seem out of place in the polished confines of Kamino. And yet, they value their differences, which allows them to break free of the Empire’s grasp and forge a path that, some day down the line, the Rebellion will follow.