While early trailers gave us a glimpse of Star Wars heroes sure to come in The Bad Batch, not everyone remembers the exploits of them all. Saw Gerrera, a fan-favorite from The Clone Wars and Rogue One, pops up once again in the tale of the five enhanced clones (plus one).
Saw Gerrera first appeared in The Clone Wars, working with his sister Steela to overcome Separatist forces on Onderon. Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, Knight Anakin Skywalker and Padawan Asoka Tano, along with Captain Rex, took on the mission to train the hotheaded young Gerrera’s fledgling resistance forces into a unit that could handle the droid armies and their commanders.
When the forces rallied behind Steela Gerrera as their leader, Saw took it upon himself to try to free the imprisoned king of Onderon, ending up behind bars himself. Freeing Onderon came at a dear cost to the resistance fighters, as Steela fell in the final battle. Saw never forgave himself for the death of his sister and never stopped fighting.
In The Bad Batch, we find out what happened to Saw and his fighters following Order 66. Labeled insurgents by Admiral Tarkin and pushed back into the shadows to fight a newly emerging Empire, Saw takes up arms once more.
We know Gerrera survives the early battles with the Empire because he appears again in Rebels, tracing the flow of slaves and kyber crystals in hopes of determining their use. His hotheaded ways put him at odds with the new-formed Rebellion, as he’d rather see an all-out war from the start.
It’s at this time that Saw (played by Forest Whitaker) comes to the aid of the Erso family and takes Jyn Erso under his wing as a member of his resistance group. She later rejoins him on Jedha during the events of Rogue One and the tragic test-run of the Death Star on Jedha City. Saw discovered the real purpose of the tools, slaves and the great weapon all too late to flee its destruction, and he goes down with his base of operations.
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