Warning: SPOILERS for the Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2 premiere are ahead!
Count Dooku has been dead for a while by the time Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2 begins, but the aftermath of his actions during the Clone Wars is still being felt. The new season’s first two episodes, “Spoils of War” and “Ruins of War,” saw Clone Force 99 traveling to Castle Serenno, Dooku’s fortress on his homeworld of Serenno, to retrieve some spoils from the late Sith Lord’s war chest before the Empire took it all. But The Bad Batch Season 2 premiere didn’t just take our protagonists to Castle Serenno because it made for a nice action set piece; it was also to deliver another perspective on the Clone Wars.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Star Wars: The Bad Batch executive producer/head writer Jennifer Corbett ahead of the Season 2 premiere, and among the questions I asked her and fellow executive producer/supervising director Brad Rau was why they decided to center these first two episodes around Count Dooku’s castle. Corbett informed me it was a combination of both giving them a risky mission and making it clear to Disney+ subscribers just how Dooku collected so much wealth during the Clone Wars. She explained:
We wanted that first mission to be one that was very risky because the Batch, since the end of Season 1 has maintained being off the Empire’s radar. So we wanted that element of, if they can pull this off, this may be a great win for them, but if complications happen, this could really put them into trouble. And when we were talking about it, we really wanted to explore worlds that were affected by the Clone Wars, and we wanted to really focus on this Separatist planet and the idea of Dooku’s castle… showing all of [Dooku’s] war chest and things that he had acquired during the war, and allowing our team to see the opulence and to see what was happening on a different side of the war that they didn’t know about, and Omega just being oblivious to what was happening during the war and catching up and learning from that.
Castle Serenno was seen in multiple Star Wars: The Clone Wars episodes between Season 3 and 6, but with Star Wars: The Bad Batch taking place after Revenge of the Sith, when Anakin Skywalker decapitated Count Dooku, the fortress has fallen into a state of disrepair. So with the Empire clearing house and believing that Clone Force 99 died during the Imperial bombardment of Kamino in Season 1, there was definitely no shortage of risk in Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, Echo and Omega trying to snatch a portion of that treasure so they could, as Cid put it, buy their freedom. Sure enough, the mission didn’t go swimmingly, and while our heroes made it off Serenno alive, none of the war chest’s contents came with them.
More importantly though, the Castle Serenno mission showed that Count Dooku, a man who already had a wealthy and prestigious background, didn’t just loot other worlds during the Clone Wars; he also took from his own people, including Hector Elizondo’s Romar Adell, who’s been in hiding ever since the Empire bombarded his world. Even Tech, the Bad Batch’s resident brainiac, admitted he never considered this in all his time fighting the Separatists and afterwards. And for Omega, who had never left Kamino before Clone Force 99 came into her life, she acquired more information and context regarding the horrors of the Clone Wars.
While we wait for the next episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch to arrive, don’t forget to read Jennifer Corbett and Brad Rau’s comments on looping Ian McDiarmid’s Emperor Palpatine into Season 2, as well as check out what Dee Bradley Baker had to say about revisiting Commander Cody later this season. You can also stick around Disney+ to watch the Star Wars movies in order, or look through our guide on upcoming Star Wars movies and TV shows.
