'Star Wars: The Bad Batch' Confirmed To Be This Many Episodes

Star Wars: The Bad Batch is finally premiering on May the 4th! Introduced in the final season of The Clone Wars, the titular team of clones with "desirable mutations" will be seen in action once again, as they are accompanied by a new character named Omega in the aftermath of the Republic becoming the Galactic Empire. We are guaranteed to see the beginning of the Dark Times on the screen, and there will be at least a few more familiar faces along the way.

We recently heard that the premiere, titled "Aftermath," would be 70 minutes long. And according to reports floating around, the second episode, "Cut and Run," will be 31 minutes, while the third episode, "Replacements," will be 28 minutes. (These runtimes probably include the lengthy Disney+ credits.) Oddly enough, however, we have gone this long without hearing an official announcement of how many episodes will make up the first season. Some have wondered whether it may be just a few episodes, given that Loki premieres on Disney+ on June 11. Would it be the typical 22-episode season that most seasons of The Clone Wars have been? Would it be 12 or 13 episodes like the last two seasons of The Clone Wars? Or would it be more of a miniseries? Now, we finally know, thanks to a CNET interview with writer Jennifer Corbett and director Brad Rau.

According to Rau:

"We have 16 episodes in season 1. We can't confirm any more than that, but we have high hopes. We love these characters. We'd love to keep telling the stories."

So there you have it. The first season (and hopefully not the only season) will consist of 16 episodes, a middle ground between the shorter and longer seasons of The Clone Wars. If each episode is released weekly consistently, the first season could go into August. In April, composer Kevin Kiner had said that he was scoring episode 14, thus giving fans a ballpark of just how long the series could be. The 16-episode count is more comparable to the first and fourth/final seasons of Star Wars Rebels. Season 1 aired 15 episodes (with the first one being double the length, and season 4 aired as 16 episodes. With the flexibility of Disney+ runtimes, The Bad Batch could be a bit longer in terms of total content. Those particular seasons of Rebels feel more tightly focused than the middle seasons, so this could bode well for the first season of The Bad Batch. Even though it feels very much like The Clone Wars season 8, it will follow one group consistently throughout the series like Rebels, which was not an anthology like the former series.

There is a lot of excitement for the series. Corbett touches upon what it will explore:

"We haven't really seen the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Republic and the beginning stages of the Empire on screen. It's not just that the Republic falls, suddenly, it's the Empire at the height of their dominance and galactic terror.

"It's postwar, so some planets are happy that the Empire has brought peace, and others are starting to suspect that something strange is going on.

"It felt like an opportunity to see it through the Bad Batch's eyes as they're reacting to seeing chain code posts and how, as clones who are just numbers until they get nicknames, they react to civilians voluntarily signing up to be given a number. For them, it just seems bananas."

Star Wars: The Bad Batch premieres on Disney+ May 4th, and continues airing weekly on Fridays starting May 7th.

Written By Steven Shinder

Source(s): CNET

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