The Bad Batch is Star Wars television’s secret weapon. The spin-off of Star Wars: The Clone Wars fills in that mysterious post-prequels timeline window and answers some key questions surrounding the nefarious practice of cloning.
But thanks to an overlapping release schedule, The Bad Batch was often overlooked by the Star Wars fandom. Season 2 was supposed to arrive this spring, but now that release date is in jeopardy. Could that actually be a good thing?
While Star Wars TV may be on hiatus, Star Wars Insider magazine is still trucking along, and one of the most overlooked parts of its issues is a little cross-promotional panel describing future Star Wars projects. For a while, The Bad Batch Season 2 was listed with a “Spring 2022” release date, but in the upcoming issue, Star Wars Insider 209, this was quietly changed.
Issue 209 is set to be released on March 15, 2022, but a sneak peek from Redditor BZPJMJ64 revealed that the series is now listed under an ominous “Coming Soon.” Could this mean that Season 2 is delayed? Yes, but not for nefarious reasons.
Part of the reason The Bad Batch Season 1 didn’t get the attention it deserved was because the weekly releases of the series overlapped with Loki, the blockbuster success on the Marvel side of the Disney franchise world. And if The Bad Batch was slated for a Spring 2022 release, it’s probable it would have overlapped with Obi-Wan Kenobi, which premieres on May 25, 2022.
The Bad Batch is probably being delayed to save it from having to share the spotlight, but there could be an even more interesting motivation. Just like The Bad Batch, Obi-Wan Kenobi is set in the years immediately after Order 66 and the events of Revenge of the Sith. The Bad Batch Season 2 could very well be building on something revealed in Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Obi-Wan was the investigator of the cloning system on Kamino in Attack of the Clones, so it stands to reason that something from this part of his life would come back to haunt him. Maybe he’ll even encounter a clone like the ones Bad Batch’s Omega has chosen as her family.
This could even be our first hint of a live-action Omega appearance. So while The Bad Batch may be further away, it should be worth the wait.
The Bad Batch Season 1 is now streaming on Disney+.
