Star Wars: The Bad Batch Drops A Clever Rogue One Easter Egg
Spoilers for "Star Wars: The Bad Batch" Season 3 Episode 12 "Juggernaut" follow.
The third and final season of "Star Wars: The Bad Batch" moves on, this time bringing us back to the original status quo of the season. In the epic previous episode, Omega sacrificed herself to prevent the utter destruction of their paradise refuge of Pabu, and the Empire takes her right back to Mount Tantiss. Desperate to find Omega and stop the Empire's experiments once and for all, the Bad Batch looks for any lead they can in order to find the location of the secret facility.
That brings them back to Admiral Rampart, who was arrested in earlier seasons as a scapegoat for the genocidal destruction of Kamino. He was sent to an Imperial labor camp, which offers a pretty neat, direct tie to "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story."
Wobani and Rogue One
When we catch up with Jyn Erso after the time skip at the beginning of "Rogue One," we learn that she's in an Imperial Labor Camp on the distant planet of Wobani. As the Rebel Alliance works to extricate Jyn, they break aboard a tank that's been double-purposed as a prisoner transport and bust her out. Although Admiral Rampart is held on a different prison planet — Erebus — the visual flourishes are straight out of the production design of "Rogue One." Even the transport is the same. As the Bad Batch infiltrates the prison, they have no problems breaking through all of the Imperial protocols and seem to recognize everything — which makes a certain sort of sense. They're a special forces team with extraordinary abilities. If anyone could break into a camp like this, it would be the Bad Batch. It leaves one to wonder if they had any hand in the Rebellion being able to learn how to do it with equal aplomb in "Rogue One."
The A9 turbo tank
One of the more unifying Easter eggs across these labor camps is the A9 turbo tank. These transport tanks were first adapted from massive Clone Wars-era tanks called Juggernauts, first seen in "Revenge of the Sith" and again in "Star Wars: The Clone Wars." Repurposed and updated for prison labor camps, these tanks were first seen in this capacity in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," which tells a story through the design about repurposed military equipment from the Clone Wars being taken over by the Empire. What's interesting is how these tanks seem quite specifically used for labor camps like this. It makes one wonder how many labor camps there really are — and it's interesting to see the Bad Batch comment similarly. There are a lot of them in the Empire, acting as just one more example of how oppressive the Imperial regime is.
Universal cohesion
These small details that evoke a similarity of set and scene across "Star Wars" projects bring a sense of cohesion. These moments help bridge the gap between live-action and animation and make the stories feel as though they're all happening in the same universe. The tank ties this episode to "Rogue One," but what they do with the transport is much more evocative of the train heist sequence in "Solo: A Star Wars Story." Instead of a tracked train, the transports chase along the edge of a cliff. It maintains the same danger and energy, but adds to the overall cohesion of the universe, thematically tying one back to the other. Some feel this makes the universe too small, but to me, it ties the entire galaxy together, and echoes of "Rogue One" and "Solo" in "The Bad Batch" add to that broader "Star Wars" tapestry.
Episodes of the final season of "Star Wars: The Bad Batch" premiere on Wednesdays on Disney+.