Star Wars celebrated Chopper‘s return in Star Wars: The Bad Batch with a new poster. Released to accompany one of young Hera Syndulla, the poster features the cantankerous droid who first appeared in Star Wars Rebels. The eleventh and twelfth episodes of Star Wars: The Bad Batch offer an origin story for Hera, revealing how she and her family escaped the Imperial occupation of the Twi’lek homeworld. Hera later becomes a leader in the Rebel Alliance. Chopper is Hera’s longtime droid companion, and the episodes show how inseparable they were even when Hera was still a child growing up on Ryloth.
Hera and Chopper’s appearances are the latest example of Star Wars: The Bad Batch bridging the gap between Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. The show’s impressive debut episode showed Caleb Dume escaping Order 66. He would later become Kanan Jarrus, a part of Star Wars Rebels’ Ghost crew. Another episode brought back Rex between his escape from the Empire and his return in Star Wars Rebels.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch producer Jennifer Corbett previously discusses the opportunities presented in a series set between Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. “First, because we really haven’t seen it on screen,” she said, explaining why they chose that era for the series. “I know that there’s been other works, but I love the freedom and the uncertainty that is in this time period. As a history buff, I love exploring how one government falls and another regime rises and the issues that follow. Seeing that through the eyes of the Bad Batch seems really compelling … being Republic Clone Troopers, and then how they adapt, and how they interact with the Empire and their problems with that. And then how they’re going to make a change.”
Producer Brad Rau added, “[The Bad Batch] were initially conceived way back with Dave Filoni and George Lucas before The Clone Wars wrapped up the first time around. So it’s always been in the DNA of The Clone Wars and famously, there were some story reels shown to fans at Celebration a few years back, and they were received really, really well. So it became a natural thing to put them in that final season of Clone Wars, which is really fun, really fun just to watch that. I think of those characters as new characters, but fans were familiar with them, and that we could really dig into and learn more about on this show, was a natural fit.”
What do you think? Let us know in the comments. Star Wars: The Bad Batch debuts news episodes on Fridays on Disney+.