One of my bigger nitpicks with the Disney era of Star Wars storytelling has been the sheer number of Jedi who are now depicted as having survived Order 66. Obviously from the Original Trilogy we knew Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda made it out alive, but in recent years we’ve seen Kanan Jarrus, Cal Kestis, Cere Junda, the Inquisitorius, and Grogu, not to mention former Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano.
The reason this bugs me is that it’s steadily eating away at the import of Yoda’s line on his deathbed spoken to Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi, “When gone am I, the last of the Jedi will you be.” I get that people want to see Jedi in Star Wars content, but it continually begs the question, if all these characters are still around (outside of the ones that were later killed off, like Kanan in Rebels), why didn’t they help Luke fight the Empire during the Galactic Civil War? That issue comes up again in the latest episode of Lucasfilm’s Disney+ animated series Star Wars: The Bad Batch, in which the members of Clone Force 99 meet a familiar Wookiee Jedi.
The Bad Batch season 2, episode 6, entitled “Tribe,” begins with Clone Force 99 arriving at a space station operated by the Vanguard Axis, a newly introduced criminal organization run entirely by droids. The clones (voiced by Dee Bradley Baker) are there to sell pirated Imperial chain codes, but during their visit Omega (Michelle Ang) discovers that the droids are also smuggling a young Wookiee named Gungi, who fans of Star Wars: The Clone Wars will recognize as a recurring Padawan character from that popular animated series. Naturally, Omega being who she is, she insists that the Bad Batch help rescue Gungi from the Vanguard and then return him safely to the Wookiee home planet of Kashyyyk. Arriving on the heavily forested world, Gungi and Clone Force 99 encounter a variety of flora and fauna before finding that the Empire has beat them there, already laying waste to Wookiee villages with the help of slimy Trandoshan mercenaries armed with flamethrowers. After a well-choreographed battle sequence that sees some of the Trandoshan warriors taken out by our heroes (with the help of the Kashyyykian wildlife), Gungi is finally reunited with those of his kind.
The Bad Batch spend some time hanging out with the Wookiees, learning a bit about their culture, and then help them combat another battalion of Trandoshans and clone troopers. It’s nice to see Omega bond with someone of her own age, but as Hunter remarks, she and Gungi are both young fighters who never had the chance to be children. I thought this was a very good episode overall, and it contains a number of memorably emotional moments, but it still begs the question of what will happen to Gungi in the long run. We know that Kashyyyk becomes completely overrun and occupied by the Empire as the galaxy’s “Dark Times” continue and the Wookiees are largely sold into slavery, so does that mean that Clone Force 99’s efforts to reunite his new friend with his brethren were all for naught? It’s something I could theoretically see The Bad Batch revisiting in future episodes, but until then I think we very sadly have to assume that Gungi likely doesn’t make it out alive in the end. Either that, or there’s a skilled Wookiee Jedi in hiding somewhere out there throughout all of the Original Trilogy, and that somehow feels even darker.
New episodes of Star Wars: The Bad Batch are released Wednesdays, exclusively via Disney+.