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With no feature film set to hit screens again for quite some time, television has become an excellent format for the Star Wars galaxy. Just this past year we got a trio of major Star Wars television shows, featuring the return of the ultimate bounty hunter in The Book of Boba Fett (2021), the rematch of the century in Obi-Wan Kenobi (2021), and the surprising maturity of Andor (2021). The live-action projects are a blast to be sure, but when it comes to the franchise’s roots in serialized programming, they are deeply entrenched in animation. Dating all the way back to The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) and Star Wars: Droids (1985), animation has the ability to accomplish ideas that weren’t or aren’t possible or as easy to translate in live-action. Recent examples include Star Wars: Rebels (2014-2018), Tales of the Jedi (2022-), and most popular of all, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008-2022).
Not to be confused with the Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack) series Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003-2005), which is also a must-watch Star Wars series, The Clone Wars is more than just an enjoyable sci-fi show. It fleshes out and adds tremendous emotional weight to the oft-criticized prequel trilogy and has even introduced characters just as if not more memorable than the most iconic names in the main film series. The beloved series triumphantly received a stellar ending with its belated seventh season, but though the Clone Wars conflict may have ended, series creator Dave Filoni had more stories in store for the titular clones.
Also introduced in the seventh and final season of The Clone Wars was the Bad Batch – a squad of genetically unique clone troopers each with their own specific set of skills. A fascinating introduction to intriguing new characters, the Bad Batch would ultimately continue the story of both them and other characters from its prequel series in their own show, effectively making Season 1 of Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 8 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Now, this band of ex-soldiers turned mercenaries are back for a second season, as they navigate a world where their brothers are serving a tyrannical dictatorship. Now, a second season is on the way, featuring the titular team wearing fancy new uniforms and crossing paths with old fan-favorite characters.
To find out which actors are returning and who’s being introduced to the galaxy far, far away, here is a cast and character guide to Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2, although, spoiler alert, most of them are Dee Bradley Baker.
Dee Bradley Baker as Hunter
The name of Dee Bradley Baker is going to be brought up quite a bit in this guide, as the veteran voice actor has given his voice to every single clone trooper since Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Though the anthology format of The Clone Wars focused on many characters, only a select few saw clones in the starring role, making The Bad Batch the first series in the franchise to focus solely on Bradley Baker as a leading man (or rather leading men).
Hunter, the leader of the Clone Force 99, better known as the Bad Batch, is essentially the Rambo of the Star Wars universe. Complete with a red bandana and long wavy hair, that tattooed leader is an expert tracker and survivalist. These senses come from more than just training, as Hunter was a part of an experiment to create tracker commandos, the result being one of a handful of genetically unique clones. The reason for the originality of Hunter and the rest of his squad is due to the death of the original clone donor, Jango Fett, and the Kaminoan cloners had to stretch the bounty hunter’s DNA in order to create more soldiers, each one straying further from the original and making the clones a temporary breed. The team’s mutations are also why they were far more resistant to their inhibitor chips that initiated the Order 66 coup that turned their brothers into mindless soldiers. Seeing the rise of the evil Empire, Hunter and most of his crew left the regime behind to find other ways to resist and be free, bringing with them a young female clone by the name of Omega (Michelle Ang).
Dee Bradley Baker as Wrecker
Each member of the Bad Batch is unique not only in personality but also in physique and skill set, and that is abundantly clear in the mighty Wrecker.
Wrecker fits the archetype of the “muscle” of the squad to an absolute tee, being a hulking tank of a clone who prefers to tackle situations with blasters blazing. He may not be the sharpest saber in the drawer, but Wrecker still has a heart of gold and an unwavering sense of humor. Unlike Hunter, Tech, and Echo, Wrecker nearly did succumb to his base clone programming when his inhibitor chip slowly began to activate. Thankfully, with the help of Captain Rex, the team was able to remove Wrecker’s chip, bringing him back to his lovably headstrong ways.
Dee Bradley Baker as Tech
If Wrecker is the brain of the squad, Tech is absolutely the brains
As his name implies, Tech handles all the technological and scientific mumbo jumbo that would go completely over the heads of the rest of the group. Though Hunter may have a slight edge in terms of street smarts, if there’s anything that involves a gear or a computer, Tech will almost always be able to find a solution. He’s consistently proven himself as a valued and vital part of the team and hasn’t been rendered obsolete despite one of his teammates literally being a living computer.
Dee Bradley Baker as Echo
Unlike the rest of the team, Echo wasn’t born with a unique genetic mutation, and his story in the Star Wars franchise long predates that of the rest of the Bad Batch.
Echo’s story began on the same planet where every clones’ story began – Kamino. Here, Echo was a member of the much-mocked Domino Squad, along with Hevy and Fives, who “affectionately” gave Echo his nickname after he would unnecessarily repeat orders they were given in training. The trio of now-beloved characters constantly went at each other, but eventually learned the value of their teamwork. Eventually, they finally passed training, being stationed at Rishi Station, a small but crucial sector that came under a brutal assault by the Separatist Droid Army. Domino Squad showed remarkable bravery in the battle, with Hevy sacrificing himself to keep the army at bay, and in the aftermath Echo and Fives were given the title of Advanced Recon Commandos, joining the ranks of one of the Republic’s most elite divisions.
Echo and Fives, now respected and skilled ARC Troopers were also chosen for a rescue mission to the Citadel – a treacherous and state-of-the-art Separatist prison. To save the rest of the strike team and their Jedi commanders, Echo apparently sacrificed himself for the good of their lives and the mission, leaving Fives as the last surviving member of Domino Squad (or so he thought). Fives would later face his own demise after coming extremely close to uncovering the secret purpose of the inhibitor chips and how Order 66 would affect the galaxy.
Echo and the rest of Domino Squad also formed a bond with Captain Rex, who discovered that Echo may actually still be alive. While on a mission with the Bad Batch themselves, Rex turned out to be right, as Echo had been turned into a cyborg by the Separatists and used to analyze and counter Republic strategies. After being rescued, proving his loyalty to the Republic, and no longer able to be an ARC Trooper, Hunter invited Echo to join his squad, finding another family of brothers to unite with.
Michelle Ang as Omega
The newest and youngest member of Clone Force 99 and the first character on this list to not be played by Dee Bradley Baker is a young female clone named Omega, played by Michelle Ang (Fear the Walking Dead).
Omega is a young child who served as a medical assistant to Kaminoan clone health specialist Nala Se (Gwendoline Yeo), and she felt a real attachment to the Bad Batch. That’s because, like the Bad Batch, Omega is a wholly unique example of a clone, being the first and likely only female clone. Though she may have been primarily used for low-level assistant work, Omega represents the future of the Kaminoans’ cloning future for the army, being a potential new template for Jango Fett’s now-expired genome. Omega however had no desire to have clones of her become foot soldiers for a fascist regime and decided to join the group with the team serving as her own father figures. However, being so important led both the Kaminoans and the Empire to bring her back for study, even with Omega becoming the target of notorious bounty hunters like Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) and Cad Bane (Corey Burton).
Dee Bradley Baker as Crosshair
Circling back to Dee Bradley Baker, Crosshair is an outcast among outcasts, betraying his friends because according to him, “Good soldiers follow orders”.
From the start, Crosshair was always the most antagonistic of the Bad Batch, being a sniper with a killer instinct who just wants to get the job done. When the team was faced with Order 66 for the very first time, where Hunter and the rest of Clone Force 99 were apprehensive at the new orders to kill any and all Jedi (including children), Crosshair accepted the task with open arms. When the Bad Batch decided to leave the newly formed Empire behind, Crosshair embraced it, joining them as an elite assassin and leading the mission to hunt down his former teammates. Our heroes assumed this was because of Crosshair’s inhibitor chip, but it was later revealed that the traitorous sniper had his chip removed to prove his loyalty to the Empire. Omega still thinks there’s hope for her former hero, but the Crosshair she thinks she knows may have been lost a long time ago.
Rhea Perlman as Cid
A recurring character to whom the Bad Batch finds themselves unwillingly indebted is Cid, a Trandoshan fixer with no love for the Empire, played by Rhea Perlman (Cheers).
As the Galactic Empire begins to extend its reach and the environment around the galaxy remained uncertain, the Bad Batch needed shelter, information, and money. That led Echo to track down Cid, who during the Clone Wars, had served as an informant to the Republic. In exchange for information, the squad has run up something of a tab for Cid, thus performing a variety of dirty jobs for the criminal underworld and starting their journey as guns for hire. While Cid isn’t exactly a friend, she’s not a foe either, helping her new employees where she can.
Dee Bradley Baker as Captain Rex
Outside the Bad Batch, a few other clones are returning, the first being the most popular one of them all, Captain Rex.
Despite not having the rank of commander like many of his peers, Rex was a highly respected and impeccably skilled clone leader, answering directly to Anakin Skywalker (Matt Lanter) himself. He also had a deep, personal relationship with Skywalker’s young padawan, Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), who would ultimately save him more times than he can count. While Rex is fiercely loyal to the Republic, he very much inherited Anakin and Ahsoka’s willingness to overlook the rules for the greater good, such as when he let the clone deserter live his life with his new family and when he led a justified rebellion against a treasonous Jedi general on Umbara. When Order 66 reared its ugly head, Rex got lucky and was able to resist the programming long enough for Ahsoka to remove his inhibitor chip, with the two making a daring escape from the genocide.
Years later, Rex would prove himself a great ally to the growing rebellion across the galaxy, such as with the Bad Batch as mentioned above and even later with the team seen in Star Wars: Rebels.
Dee Bradley Baker as Commander Cody
Another major protagonist from The Clone Wars who fans have been speculating the fate of for quite some time, Season 2 of The Bad Batch will see the return of Commander Cody.
Cody was one of the few clone troopers to have made an appearance in both The Clone Wars and the prequel trilogy, having a notable role in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (2005) when he served his general Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) until Order 66 kicked in, and he ordered the other clones to open fire on their Jedi leader. Before that unfortunate turning point, Cody had a bond with Kenobi as strong as Rex did with Anakin. Speaking of Rex, Cody and him were staunch allies and close friends, repeatedly working together side by side. With Rex free of his control and Cody still serving the Empire, the two confronting each other seems almost inevitable, as the programming that has a hold of the clones is beginning to somehow fade.
Dee Bradley Baker as Scorch
Fans of the gaming side of Star Wars were treated to a shocking cameo last season when Scorch, a character from Star Wars: Republic Commando (2005) made a surprise appearance in Season 1 of The Bad Batch, and he’ll be returning for Season 2.
In the criminally underrated first-person shooter, Scorch was a member of Delta Squad, a clone commando unit consisting of himself, Boss, Fixer, and Sev. While the game is technically no longer canon, the protagonists of the game are, as they also had a cameo in The Clone Wars. The clone commandos are actually a majorly important aspect of Star Wars lore, because as we saw in The Bad Batch Season 1, the commandos were the few clones chosen by the Empire to remain as soldiers as production of new clones were ceased and Kamino’s facilities were sacked. They were kept around both for their advanced combat skills and to train a new generation of soldiers who would ultimately become the Imperial Stormtroopers.
Wanda Sykes as Phee Genao
As the most recent trailer for The Bad Batch Season 2 showed, stand-up comedian and recent Academy Awards host Wanda Sykes will be joining the franchise as a character known as Phee Genao.
We don’t get too much of a grasp on who Phee is, other than she has some sort of connection to Cid and probably has a job for the Bad Batch.
Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine
Many actors have voiced the Dark Lord of the Sith over the years, such as Tim Curry (Rocky Horror Picture Show) and Ian Abercrombie (Army of Darkness), The Bad Batch‘s version of the character will be voiced by none other than the original man himself, Ian McDiarmid.
McDiarmid has played the iconic villain each time the character has appeared in live-action, serving as the main big bad of the Skywalker Saga. Over several decades, Emperor Palpatine, also known as Darth Sidious, manipulated the chosen one in the prequel trilogy, oversaw the Galactic Empire in the original trilogy, and somehow returned to sow chaos in the sequel trilogy, having a hand in almost every major conflict during this galactic period. Recently, McDiarmid has been reprising the role outside of the films, returning the voice the role he started in Star Wars: Rebels, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Tales of the Jedi, and is now lending his memorably sinister voice to The Bad Batch.
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