Warning! This story contains spoilers for The Bad Batch season 1.
A spinoff of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the new series The Bad Batch is a unique one. It fills the gaps between the events of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Episode IV: A New Hope — all by looking at events from the perspective of the clones.
And if it weren’t for these two animated series, we would hardly know anything about the clones other than who they fought for and how they turned on their allies during Order 66. But it’s The Bad Batch especially that’s pulled back the curtain even further as we learn what happened following the large massacre of all the Jedi.
In the premiere episode of The Bad Batch, we saw that the clone troopers would have a new allegiance to Emperor Palpatine and the Galactic Empire. Because of their inhibitor chips, which makes them follow orders, they simply complied with the new direction. And all but Omega, Hunter, Wrecker, Echo and Tech (and a few other stragglers) went on to become soldiers of the Empire.
That is, Tarkin didn’t quite care for the clones once he was in charge. And the soon-to-be Grand Moff tasked Vice Admiral Rampart with creating a new task force that would include a mixture of humans and clones. Called Project War-Mantle, this was the plan — to integrate human soldiers into this new army. But that didn’t last long…
The transition to humans
In episode 14, when trying to save the clone Gregor, they noticed the troopers got new armor. But those weren’t clones, those were all human soldiers. Gregor informed them of the change, and they knew something was up with the Empire.
And by episode 15, once they returned to Kamino to find Hunter (who had been captured), they were in for an even bigger surprise: there were no clones to be found at all. Crosshair, who was with the Empire, was technically one of the only clones in service at the time there, and everyone else was human.
It was clear that in just a short amount of time, the Empire had made its decision. They would no longer be needing clone troopers, and the cloning facility was to be destroyed completely. Rampart and his troop opened fire, and the city as we knew it came to a disastrous end.
Where did the clone troopers go?
While we don’t know the full story about what happens next, we do know that the clones have been moved off-world somewhere. Though, aboard Rampart’s ship, for example, there still seemed to be a clone there with him. But otherwise, their plans for the rest of the clones are not made clear in the series.
Once we get to season 2 of the series, the story will likely deepen. And we’ll see what happened to the clones who had no choice but to retire. (Hopefully, they have the benefit of retiring and not being executed by the Empire.)
But, season 2 won’t come out until next year. So the mystery of the clones will continue to linger until then.