Star Wars: The Bad Batch continued Disney's strange habit of retconning its first big Star Wars transmedia story. The Star Wars sequel trilogy introduced viewers to a very different galaxy, one where the period of peace after the Empire's collapse had come to a tragic end. It fell to author Chuck Wendig to begin exploring just how that future came to be, in his Aftermath trilogy.
Looking back, the Aftermath trilogy set in place many of the ideas Star Wars would build upon in the years to come. Oddly enough, Wendig did more for setting up Palpatine's eventual return than the sequel movies themselves, because one plot featured a Sith cultist who was convinced the Emperor would be resurrected somewhere in the depths of the Unknown Regions; he even rhapsodized about the powers of the Sith to a prisoner, describing the Force Drain power audiences saw in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. And yet, as prescient as the Aftermath trilogy may have been, Lucasfilm has developed an odd habit of ignoring, retconning, and/or substantially rewriting aspects of it.
Take, for example, Star Wars: The Bad Batch episode 2, which sees Clone Force 99 visit Cut Lawquane, a former clone trooper who is now living as a civilian, and help him and his family flee the planet Saleucami. As enjoyable as the plot may be, it appears to contradict the Aftermath trilogy, where one of Wendig's cut-scenes revealed the elderly Cut was still living on Saleucami shortly after Return of the Jedi. The continuity problem isn't too major - a lot can happen over the course of 20 years, so Cut could simply have returned to Saleucami - but it's eyebrow-raising all the same.
This isn't the first time Lucasfilm has seemed to forget details from the Aftermath trilogy, or even substantially rewritten them. The Mandalorian introduced viewers to Cobb Vanth, a Marshal on Tatooine who'd worn Boba Fett's armor and brought peace to the desert planet using it; he was actually created by Wendig in the Aftermath trilogy, but his origin story was rewritten for the TV show. Meanwhile, another Palpatine-centric plot could have served to set up the Emperor's discovery of the Sith redoubt of Exegol, but Greg Pak's current Darth Vader run contradicts that. It's all rather odd.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch already seems to be developing quite a reputation for causing continuity problems. The first episode, for example, explained how Jedi Padawan Caleb Dume had survived Order 66; that story had already been told in comic book form, and Clone Force 99 wasn't a part of it. Now there is a further wrinkle around Cut Lawquane, one that is by no means impossible to resolve but nonetheless feels awkward. It's curious, because not many Star Wars stories have been told of the Dark Times, so one wouldn't expect there to be so many issues. What problems will episode 3 cause?
