The pilot episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch sees the return of a Legends-era Jedi ability, first shown in a 2009 Star Wars video game. The Star Wars franchise has two timelines: Canon and Legends. Legends, formerly called the Expanded Universe, was the original continuity, beginning in 1977 with the first Star Wars film and building on the eventual original and prequel trilogies with spinoff films, TV shows, comics, video games, and novels. In 2014, Lucasfilm made Legends an alternate timeline, allowing the then-upcoming sequel trilogy more creative freedom. The only previous Star Wars content that was included in this new Canon were the original six films and 2008’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars, though some fans don’t consider the newer Clone Wars series to be part of Legends.
The 2009 video game Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes was tied to the 2008 animated series. Steven Melching, who wrote many episodes of The Clone Wars, co-wrote the game as an epilogue to the first season’s Ryloth trilogy. While the game is officially part of Legends, it makes no references to Expanded Universe lore and fits well between the episodes “Liberty on Ryloth” and “Holocron Heist,” leading some fans to consider it part of the 2008 series and therefore Canon. Unintentionally, Republic Heroes can be connected to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, thanks to the Separatist’s superweapon, which is built into a massive planetary facility, not unlike the First Order’s Starkiller Base.
In the first episode of The Bad Batch, "Aftermath," the commandos of Clone Force 99 are tested on Kamino via a battle simulation. Wanting to push the clones to their limits, Admiral Tarkin deploys deadly training droids with blasters set to kill. With their training blasters proving ineffective against the droids, the Bad Batch clones improvise, employing a strategy they’d used on Felucia during the Clone Wars. While the other commandos distract the droids, Wrecker subdues one and Tech reprograms it, riding on its shoulders as it blasts the other droids, destroying them. This is nearly identical to “droid jacking,” a move that players can use in Republic Heroes.
“Droid jacking” is an ability that Jedi characters can use against Separatist droids in Republic Heroes. Jedi can jump on top of droids, stab into a specific spot on the droid’s head, and control the droid’s unique abilities for a brief time before the lightsaber blade fully destroys it. The roster of player characters in Republic Heroes includes Jedi, clones, and the bounty hunter Cad Bane, but droid jacking is exclusively a Jedi move. As clone super-soldiers, the Bad Batch’s use of an ability typically associated with Jedi is fitting.
The Bad Batch notably employed droid jacking on Felucia, an Outer Rim world that Republic and Separatist forces fought over throughout the Clone Wars. The first battle on Felucia shown in The Clone Wars appears in the episode “Holocron Heist,” which is chronologically the first episode after “Liberty on Ryloth.” The assumption that Republic Heroes fits into the Canon timeline is even more fitting, since the game, and subsequently the first appearance of droid jacking, takes place in the immediate aftermath of the Ryloth trilogy. Clone Force 99 may have fought on Felucia at any point in the war, but all conflicts on Felucia occurred after the Battle of Ryloth. Although Republic Heroes is officially part of Legends, the inclusion of its Jedi powers in Star Wars: The Bad Batch proves that the game fits into the Star Wars Canon timeline.