The studio behind the acclaimed animated series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, is serving up another season of Star Wars: The Bad Batch soon. The “bad batch” refers to a group of defective clones with various mutations, who later refused their orders to turn on the Jedi. After the events of Star Wars: Episode III, they become mercenaries for hire while avoiding the Empire. Legendary voice actor Dee Bradley Baker reprises his role - or roles, rather - as the clones Hunter, Wrecker, Crosshair, Echo, and Tech, while Michelle Ang returns as Omega, a young girl who is the only female clone of their progenitor, Jango Fett. Both voice actors talked with Collider about the upcoming second season, with Ang promising we will see more themes about identity in the upcoming season:

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“I think it was a little bit there in season one, and it gets developed more in season two… this idea of free will and choice coupled with identity. I think season two is a lot about understanding who she is as an individual, but also she becomes very strongly focused on her people, her brothers, how others in the empire view clones. And I think she takes that and takes it on board quite strongly and wants to advocate for them as a race with rights.”

The Empire is More of a Threat in Season 2 of The Bad Batch

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The Empire, run by the evil sith lord Darth Sidious, was in its infancy in the first season of The Bad Batch, but is now a growing threat, according to Dee Bradley Baker. But the show isn’t just about gunslinging missions and narrow escapes, but it’s also about family, says Baker:

Fighting is all that the “batch” has ever really known, having grown up learning to do little else. Omega, however, hasn’t had the same upbringing and longs for a home and family. Adults learning from a more emotionally intelligent kid is a familiar theme, but one that hasn’t been explored with such depth in the Star Wars universe until now. The misfit clones form a strange family, but one that is no less close to each other than a regular family that wasn’t grown in test tubes.

“They have Omega, a child in their midst now who wants to have a family and sees them and their ship as home and family, and they have a lot to learn, it turns about, from her. From her improvisational open-hearted stance towards the universe and towards what is fair and what is just and isn’t. And that she has a lot to teach them, as children often do. They have a lot to teach a grownup. And so they’re both learning from each other under these increasingly challenging conditions.”

The second season of Star Wars: The Bad Batch begins streaming on Disney+ on January 4th, 2023, and will run for sixteen episodes. The series is created by Dave Filoni and produced by Josh Rimes. It stars Dee Bradley Baker and Michelle Ang, with the supporting voice cast including Ben Diskin, Bob Bergen, Gwendoline Yeo, Noshir Dalal, Tom Kane, and Ian McDiarmid.