How “Star Wars” Has Already Met the Limit of Its Shared Universe
"The Bad Batch" is at once the pinnacle and the nadir of Disney's unified "Star Wars" storytelling.
Without putting too fine a point on it, Star Wars: The Bad Batch is the very epitome of the still-recent shared-universe approach that Lucasfilm, under its new leadership of Kathleen Kennedy and under its new ownership of The Walt Disney Company, has been endeavoring to employ. Over the course of its 70-minute series premiere, there is a considerable number of references to other movies or shows set within that galaxy far, far away, along with the on-screen depiction, for the very first time, of a key sequence that was previously kept exclusively within the so-called Expanded Universe, that sprawling collection of novels, comic books, short stories, audiodramas, and videogames. (And though this wasn’t the first time that this has transpired – and though this will probably be far from the last, either – it is arguably going to remain one of the most consequential instances.)
On the one hand, this is a hugely impressive undertaking; condensing 12 films, four previous television series, and a handful of shorts so that a number of them have a logical and organic crossing over with the others is no small feat, and doing so while, say, furthering the character arc of Wilhuff Tarkin or explaining the hitherto-unseen transition from Republic clone troopers to Imperial stormtroopers is all the more intricate still. In fact, here’s a quick rundown of the biggest continuity nuggets that viewers received in this little Star Wars Day feast:
The Bad Batch’s opening is lifted directly from its animated-series predecessor, The Clone Wars (2008-2014, 2020), specifically the title sequence from its final four installments (which, in turn, got it from the original three Star Wars movies from four decades ago).
The opening “news” montage – which, again, is a holdover from Clone Wars – recreates a scene from the live-action Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005) in animated form.
Admiral Tarkin gets more room to maneuver, solidifying his slight chronological introduction in Clone Wars and his quick cameo appearance in Revenge of the Sith – and, thereby, preparing audiences for his eventual (and all-important) presence in the Rebels TV show (2014-2018), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), and Episode IV: A New Hope (1977).
The extremely minor character of Prime Minister Lama Su, a Kaminoan figure originally seen in Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) and who was later trotted out for a brief Clone Wars stint, gets a bit more to work with in the series premiere. It helps to add depth to the background character, and it also portends a larger role in The Bad Batch’s first season, if not longer.
Saw Gerrera, the once and future rebel fighter, gets a moment to shine here. More than merely illustrating the kneejerk reaction to the Galactic Empire’s creation that will eventually coalesce into the Rebel Alliance proper, his inclusion helps to bridge the gap – even visually, in terms of his character design – between his Clone Wars introduction and Rogue One climax. (The filmmakers even got the original voice actor to portray this younger version of the character, as opposed to going back to Forest Whitaker, who played him in Rebels and Rogue One – an especially nice touch.)
On the other hand, however, there are some problems in this narrative consolidation, difficulties that expose the seams between these different patches of storytelling and how Lucasfilm is now attempting to fuse them all together, in a seemingly ad hoc fashion. While these small defects certainly don’t take away from the overall quality of “Aftermath,” this inaugural Bad Batch chapter, they help illustrate how a more disciplined approach will be necessary if the studio does, indeed, want to make Star Wars into the biggest and most cohesive multimedia opus the world has ever seen – because, as of right now, all those true believers who have invested themselves into every step of the storytelling process are now starting to realize that the enterprise is already hitting the limitations of its shared universe.
Establishing the Star Wars Canon for the First Time
Before we can dive into where The Bad Batch is now and where Lucasfilm is increasingly going in the (near) future, we first need to just quickly recount how Star Wars got here in the first place.
When Disney purchased Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise from creator George Lucas in October 2012, it inherited the original, meandering, bloated iteration of the Expanded Universe, which had been officially incorporated in 1991 but whose contents were retroactively made to include a number of publications from the late ‘70s onwards. For a company that wanted to chart its own narrative course for what happened after the original trilogy concluded back in ’83, such a strewn literary field needed to be pruned, at best, or outright torched, at worst. Disney opted for the latter, officially declaring in April 2014 that all the old tales were now null-in-void and paving the way, for the very first time in the property’s history, for a full and proper canon.
The Lucasfilm Story Group was conceived to help maintain continuity from one release to another, thereby rendering each and every book, comic, and audiodrama as fully legitimate as every planned cinematic and television venture was – from here on out, it would all be connected, as Marvel Studios was fond of saying of its own Marvel Cinematic Universe. And although it quickly became clear that most new literary undertakings would be relegated to backstory status, filling in the details of characters and locations and plot points that were being pioneered by their visual brethren, it also became eventually evident that all of this background lore could easily make the transition to the big or small screen itself. The circle could, at some point down the franchise road, become complete, truly creating an entire ecosystem of Star Wars mythology.
The problem was, the second this did start to happen, that meticulously assembled continuity began to fall apart.
(Galactic) Things Fall Apart
Perhaps the biggest – and most flagrant – example of this to date is in “Aftermath.”
The opening minutes of the Star Wars: TheBad Batch premiere come with a welcome surprise: the titular squad of clone commandos come riding to the rescue of not just any random battalion headed by any random Jedi general, but to that of Master Depa Billaba and her still-new Padawan Learner, Caleb Dume (who audiences will get to better know as Kanan Jarrus in Rebels). They are present, then, for the abrupt end of the Clone Wars and the immediate issuing of Order 66 – and, therefore, for the death of Billaba. And in this telling of the story, it is the Bad Batch who plays a pivotal role in Caleb’s escape from the battlefield and in his protection from his clone troops both, thereby ensuring that he is able to go on to meet the destiny that we have already seen throughout the rest of the saga.
Except, in the original rendition of these events – as depicted in the monthly comic-book series Star Wars: Kanan nearly six years ago to the day – it is an entirely different scenario: while the name of the planet (Kaller) is the same, its environment is completely different, as is the color of Master Depa’s lightsaber blade, the markings of her clone trooper unit, and the overall circumstances of the military campaign they find themselves in. And, much more importantly, it is Caleb’s own role in the sudden ambush by the clones that is also substantially altered, showing a young apprentice who fights by his master’s side, killing some troopers in the process, before he is convinced to run off and save his own life. His initial evasion from the rest of the Republic forces comes solely from his own devices, although the intervention of passersby in the days afterwards is still critical to his survival, allowing him to find a place to sleep and grab some food, even if temporarily.
Had this pretty profound discrepancy of a key moment from a key character’s backstory happened in nearly any other franchise with multimedia aspirations, it would probably register as a fleeting annoyance or a misstep borne of inexperience; for a massive cultural juggernaut and the de facto leader of such multidimensional storytelling, however, it’s essentially the equivalent of a terminal diagnosis. All it takes is one decisive crack, and the illusion that every piece of Star Wars content is narratively equal comes crashing down – and the drive that Lucasfilm has been so assiduously building in its audiences to spend the time and money on each and every release is deflated. Yes, such language sounds nothing short of hyperbolic or, even, histrionic, but the reality of the situation nonetheless remains: the Expanded Universe, despite its sheer size and teeming complexity, is still just a house of cards.
And the kicker here is that The Bad Batch doesn’t represent the first time this crack in the shared-universe façade has happened – it’s actually the second. The first major instance belongs to the other big Disney+-exclusive outing in that galaxy far, far away, The Mandalorian (2019-present), whose second-season premiere provided a massively different explanation for how small-town sheriff Cobb Vanth acquired Boba Fett’s iconic suit of Mandalorian armor. And looking to the year 2022, the other streaming-platform initiatives of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Andor also seem ripe for such adaptations and contradictions, given that some material (in the form of comics, short stories, and a junior novel) have already laid out what Ben Kenobi is up to in the Tatooine desert and how Cassian came to befriend the ex-Imperial security droid K-2SO.
How to Fix the Future
We’ve already laid out how such narrative disconnects are a problem, how they threaten the structural integrity of the whole Star Wars initiative, and how the damage threatens to only grow bigger – perhaps exponentially so – over time. All that remains to be discerned now is just what Lucasfilm and Disney can do about it.
For starters, the most obvious tincture is to simply admit that certain mistakes will happen, particularly given how this new unified canon is being constructed by completely different people in completely different decades under completely different corporate oversights; that Mon Mothma may be referred to as being a member of the Imperial Senate in one book, only to see her officially renounce her political status in a later season of Rebels, for instance, or the droid Chopper’s pretty fun cameo in the final season of The Clone Wars would seem to contradict how Hera Syndulla would later come across and adopt him is to be expected. (Perhaps the best example of this approach to continuity misfires comes from writer Chuck Wendig, who penned a comic one-shot that was retroactively inserted into the middle of a previous novel, resulting in something of a jumble of discrepancies: they didn’t think of this new, additional story at the time, he explained to fans on Twitter, so everyone should just cut the creators some slack. There is actually a great deal of truth to this mind frame, it has to be said.)
But the Lucasfilm Story Group was expressly formed to address these precise situations, and with the thoroughness that some members approach their jobs with (and given how creativity can oftentimes thrive in such restricted circumstances, as the Star Trek franchise has ably demonstrated over the years), one has to believe that alternative approaches to these multimedia crossover scenes were possible previously – and one has to hope that they will be applied in the future.
Let’s hop back to Cobb Vanth for a moment: the former slave’s purchasing of Fett’s armor could have been more selectively shown in the television medium, utilizing quick highlights of the story as opposed to a full-fledged flashback sequence; in this way, not only is the collection of small scenes in the Aftermath trilogy of books fully preserved, they are rendered all the more rewarding to future readers, as they would remain the sole source of the full, contextualized tale. (Lucasfilm could’ve even taken a page from the world of traditional comic-book publishing, adding an “editor’s note” at the end of the episode that would direct audiences to the Aftermath installments – there’s no better way to convert viewers into readers! [And then back again, after the next tie-in release has hit bookstores.]) And as for how the Bad Batch could’ve been roped into the pre-existing material that is Kanan Jarrus’s origin story, one doesn’t need to look any farther than how author Jeanne Cavelos brilliantly wove her Passing of the Techno-Mages trilogy of novels into the Babylon 5 television series.
The only other possible outcome that Lucasfilm and its Star Wars behemoth could be forced to face is what ultimately befell – and helped undermine – the Legends incarnation of the Expanded Universe: different releases or, even, media are shoved into an unwieldly hierarchy, in which different tiers of “canonicity” are assigned. This results in the convoluted appellations of “G-canon,” “T-canon,” “C-canon,” etc., and it also results in a constant reshuffling of the continuity deck – a state of affairs that effectively requires a Ph.D to stay abreast of, let alone fluent in, and one that would forever preclude the vast majority of film or television watchers from ever taking the plunge into the literary waters.
Should this be Star Wars’s fate once again, then it would certainly only be a matter of time until the shared, supposedly interconnected universe is purged all over again, resulting in yet another reboot – and an admission of defeat.