Star Wars: The Bad Batch Creative Team Weighs In On The Characters To Watch Closely
You may think you know the Bad Batch. After all, if you've seen "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," you've already met the team's leader, Hunter, resident genius Tech, demolitions expert Wrecker, and the clone with a long and tragic history, Echo. But you don't know the Bad Batch; not really. As the first 70-minute episode of the team's eponymous animated series proves, the surprising final season of "The Clone Wars" only scratched the surface.
"The Bad Batch" has plenty of surprises in store, and at a press conference, the people behind the show highlighted two characters to which viewers will want to pay particularly close attention. One is someone you've already seen: Crosshair, the Bad Batch's sly sharpshooter. As actor Dee Bradley Baker — who voices the entire Bad Batch — explains, Crosshair's position on the squad sets him apart from his comrades. "His practical usefulness in the team is that of a sniper," Baker says. "That's someone that stands further back from the rest of the group and just takes [opponents] out one by one. And that's very much to his character. He's not someone who's running around with the team. He's assisting the team in a very strategic and laser-focused kind of way. And so, his nature is set to be apart from the team that he is a part of."
In the "Bad Batch" pilot, Crosshair's distance from Hunter, Echo, and the rest plays out in some interesting and unexpected ways, and Bradley promises that Crosshair's arc will be a big part of the show going forward. Another character, however, may be even more important: the young, female clone known as Omega.
Why Omega may be The Bad Batch's most important character
Like her live-action counterpart — the Child, Grogu — there's a lot about Omega that's mysterious. She's the first female clone we've met. She also has a very close relationship with Kamino's chief medical officer, Nala Se — Omega even wears a variation on Nala's signature headband. We know there's something special about her abilities, but we don't know exactly what, and it looks like that question is going to drive a fair amount of the plot in "The Bad Batch" as the series continues. However, what Baker finds the most interesting about Omega isn't her potential abilities, but how she shakes up the Bad Batch's team dynamic.
"They're their own sealed unit, and they're certainly not used to having anybody else along or working with anybody else," Baker says. As such, when Omega joins their band, it changes everything. "It's interesting, in terms of the story and the writing, to have this kind of personal relationship with a younger character and to see how that changes," Baker says, "and how they accommodate that and how that works, because it's more of like an uncle-niece, or a father-child dynamic."
Director Brad Rau expressed his excitement to see "these clinical, best of the best soldiers, as suddenly fish-out-of-water in this changing galaxy, and then to have this kid that they do look to, to help raise in a very parental way, noting that it's very much a "two-way street." To Baker, that relationship helps ground the show's sci-fi premise. "I think it connects you to the story in a personal way," Baker says, "So it's not just an action story, as 'Star Wars' never is. There's a personal story that's also playing out as well." Of course, you'll want to watch out for Omega's physical gifts, too. "Omega has her own interesting potential powers, maybe," Baker teases.
"Star Wars: The Bad Batch” premieres on Disney+ on May 4, 2021. Subsequent episodes drop every Friday.