Star Wars: The Clone Wars Creator Shares How George Lucas Influenced the Final Season

The debut of the final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars is significant not only because fans have waited to see the adventures of these characters conclude for years since its unexpected cancellation, but it also marks one of the final projects that George Lucas had a direct involvement with prior to him selling Lucasfilm to Disney, with series co-creator Dave Filoni recently detailing how these final episodes honor what Lucas started. The director also pointed out that the "Bad Batch" of clones that have debuted in these final episodes are a direct result of Lucas, having wanted to explore a group of clones with "errors" that are embraced to become their strengths.

"If you go back to the original series, what we put out in 2008, it's such a dramatic leap. But then you realize it's been 11 years since that show first aired, which is kind of striking for me that it's been so long," Filoni shared of the visual evolution of the series to EW. "So there should be dramatic improvements, visually. I think that facial animation, the fidelity of the expression — things like that — we were able to improve in the animation itself. I really feel looking at this show now, it's kind of how George and I envisioned it to look in the beginning. We just didn't have the tools necessary to actually realize it then. But over time with a lot of training, you know, like any good Jedi I learned my way."

By the nature of their creation, the clones have always meant to represent identical soldiers, with their objectives on any given mission often being the only ways they would stand out from one another. Filoni mentioned that it was Lucas' idea to develop the Bad Batch of characters who have slight differences from the rest of the soldiers, while not elevating their abilities too far above their peers.

"We always had this bizarre hairstyle trend with clones where they would pick ways to individualize," the creator added. "And the Bad Batch themselves, that was all right from George. He wanted to explore this idea that there were clones that were a little bit more unique from one another that were like a special forces unit that had enhanced skills. And so the trick for those characters is really making them feel special in what their abilities could be, but not making them superheroes. Wrecker should not be the Hulk, even though we love the Hulk and those types of stories. That's not what Star Wars is. So we had to keep it all kind of within the reality of Star Wars."

Check out new episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars every Friday on Disney+.

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