Warning! Spoilers ahead for the season finale of Star Wars: The Bad Batch, “Kamino Lost”!
The first season finale of Star Wars: The Bad Batch has finally arrived, wrapping up 16 episodes of adventures for the members of Clone Force 99. Fans were awaiting the season finale with great anticipation, and in the end, it turned out that they would learn the fate of one of Star Wars’ most important planets: the clone homeworld of Kamino.
First appearing in 2002’s Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, the planet Kamino was an aquatic biome populated by the native Kaminoans. Shrouded in secrecy, Kamino didn’t even appear in the maps on the Jedi Archives, and to those who knew of its existence, it was assumed to be a mostly inconsequential planet.
However, Kamino’s only major metropolis, Tipoca City, ended up being the birthplace and production facility of the clone troopers. The clones fought alongside the Galactic Republic and the Jedi throughout all of the Clone Wars, and a number of campaigns were fought around the planet itself as the Separatists fought to take it over. The Republic even formed a blockade around the planet due to its significance to the war effort.
Despite being allied with the Republic, though, the clones held a much darker truth: they were actually engineered as part of a secret plan, Order 66, which would serve to eradicate the Jedi from the galaxy and form a new Galactic Empire.
What happened to Kamino?
The season finale of The Bad Batch, “Kamino Lost”, picks up just as Darth Sidious and the Empire are completing their stranglehold across the galaxy. Unfortunately, in this episode, it is revealed that, with the clone trooper program being shut down after the war, the Empire no longer saw Kamino as a necessary asset.
On orders from Grand Moff Tarkin, Kamino is rocked with a barrage of Star Detroyer fire from Vice Admiral Rampart, whose goal is to destroy all evidence of the clone production facilities and eliminate any remaining trace of civilization on the planet. Rampart mostly succeeds, and by the end of the episode, Tipoca City lies in ruins, and it can be assumed that the majority of the Kaminoan race was eradicated.
However, not all hope is lost. While Kamino’s only settlement was reduced to rubble, the Bad Batch and Omega (who had returned to the planet during the finale) were able to escape the burning planet to safety. With the announcement of a second season of The Bad Batch arriving in 2022, perhaps we will see Omega, the Bad Batch and the others attempt to rebuild some sort of home on Kamino.
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