Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 3 Confirmed as Series' Last, Teaser Reveals Release Window, Major Character Returns

Clone Force 99 will deploy for one final mission in Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 3. During the Star Wars: The Bad Batch panel at Star Wars Celebration Europe 2023 on Monday, Star Wars: The Bad Batch executive producers Brad Rau, Jennifer Corbett, and Athena Portillo confirmed that Star Wars: The Bad Batch will return for its third and final season in 2024, completing the story of Omega, Crosshair, and the rest of the Bad Batch during the early days of the Galactic Empire. The panel also included a teaser that confirmed several major returning characters. Here's the description from StarWars.com:

It began with the Emperor (once again voiced by Palpatine actor Ian McDiarmid) visiting Dr. Royce Hemlock, leader of the Empire's cloning efforts, on Mount Tantiss. "It is imperative that this facility remain secure," Palpatine says. "Your brilliance is a great asset to this Empire." All members of the Bad Batch appear, with Hunter addressing Omega's capture at the hands of the Empire. "Omega's been waiting for us. I'm not making her wait another day." We see Omega and a sullen Crosshair, both still in Imperial custody. "I'm not giving up, Crosshair," Omega tells him. "I won't leave you, either. You're my brother." Throughout, there are glimpses of several worlds and characters, including Republic commandos, clones, Rex, plenty of giant creatures ("Why is there always a huge monster!" Wrecker asks, before dropping a thermal detonator in one's mouth.), and Ming-Na Wen's fan-favorite bounty hunter, Fennec Shand.

Star Wars: The Bad Batch's two-part season finale was a memorable one. It brought back Tarkin and a Rogue One: A Star Wars Story villain. It also saw Clone Force 99 lose a member in Tech and Omega's capture by the Empire. She's now held in the same location as Crosshair, Mount Tantiss, the Empire's cloning research facility (which happened to belong to Grand Admiral Thrawn in the original Thrawn trilogy, beginning with Heir to the Empire)

Star Wars: The Bad Batch has illuminated certain stories from the era of Star Wars between the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy (now designated the "Reign of the Empire" era on Star Wars' new timeline). The show's producers told us about coordinating with other shows set in that era such as Andor and Obi-Wan Kenobi when we spoke to them ahead of Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2's debut.

"Where we are in the bad batch, it's a bit early into the era of the Empire that we're far enough away from Obi-Wan and Andor," Corbett says. "But that's not to say that some of the storylines that we have don't affect those shows. We really rely on, you know, the Lucasfilm Story Group, who is with us whenever we have story conferences, and they comment on storylines if some are veering into territory that could affect other things that are either in development or are currently being made, we're made aware of that. But so far, we haven't been told, 'No, you can't do that because of this.' It's really more of a collaboration and just making sure that we're telling the best stories without affecting other things coming up."

Star Wars: The Bad Batch is streaming now on Disney+.