Told from the point of view of the title characters, a group of Dirty-Dozen-like mercenaries having adventures in the early days of the Empire, the concept of the show — which will make its debut on May 4 (just in time for the annual “May the 4th Be With You” celebration) was introduced on Clone Wars and revisited in a popular arc of that show’s final season.
Explains executive producer Dave Filoni in the pages of the forthcoming oral history of Star Wars, Secrets of the Force, “George wanted to explore the idea that there were clones that had, at birth, specialized traits — and after the Clone 99 incident at the beginning of The Clone Wars, the Kaminoans and the Republic have decided not to dispose of them, but to actually impose further mutations on them to create genetic supersoldiers. So the Bad Batch were the expression of this elite squadron of supersoldiers.
“It’s very different,” he adds, “to have clones that aren’t quite clones. It works more in the original supercommando idea that you see Boba Fett being thought of in The Empire Strikes Back or along those lines.”
Star Wars: The Bad Batch is a further example of the desire for Disney+ and Lucasfilm to eventually have new programming set in a galaxy far, far away year round.