Star Wars: The Bad Batch Producer Promises Plenty of “Familiar Faces” Will Drop By

Given that Star Wars: The Bad Batch is a spinoff from Star Wars: The Clone Wars, it has been unknown to fans how much this new animated series would connect to other corners of the galaxy far, far away, with producer Jennifer Corbett confirming that fans can expect some “familiar faces” to pop up in this first season of the series. The timeline of the new series puts it between Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: A New Hope, which will immediately spark speculation among fans that we could see characters from both the prequel and original trilogies. Star Wars: The Bad Batch debuts on Disney+ on May 4th.

“Because we’re all such massive Star Wars fans on the team, it was very tempting to want to just play with everyone possible,” Corbett detailed to Entertainment Weekly. “But we had to check ourselves and make sure that the people that do come into the story, it has to be purposeful and why we’re incorporating them in this episode and how it relates in terms of the batches journey. Because otherwise, as fun as all these characters are, it might just be fan service if we’re using all the action figures, but it’s really serving no point.”

She added, “You will see some familiar faces and it was very, very planned out and thought out of why our team specifically interacts with them because where we are in the timeline, there’s several people out there that they could cross paths with.”

Season 2 of The Mandalorian brought with it a number of exciting appearances from characters across all corners of the franchise, with the season concluding with the shocking appearance of Luke Skywalker. While the nature of animation means fans might not be as impressed with such an appearance, the medium also means it’s a lot easier to pull off these kinds of connections, as a performer merely needs to provide a character’s voice, as opposed to the more complex components of filming a live-action series.

“It creates a really interesting opportunity to cross paths with other people we know,” producer Brad Rau pointed out. “We just are very careful that we don’t take the action figure box and just dump it, although I would love to, and just play with everybody. It wouldn’t really make sense. So we try to pick and choose what makes sense for our characters. Again, what serves our story the best? Does it make sense to run across this character? Oh, cool. That’s interesting. I think the fans might like that, so we go for it.”

Star Wars: The Bad Batch debuts on Disney+ on May 4th.

Who are you hoping could appear in the new series? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!