This first season of Star Wars: The Bad Batch gave us the most important kid in Star Wars canon. Omega (Michelle Ang) is the heart and soul of the series, and that can't be said about other kids in canon – except maybe Grogu (more on him later). Omega also has greater significance to the Clone Wars that just ended and the growing Empire that she tries to navigate with the Batch (all played by Dee Bradley Baker). The films, animated series, and live action series have not given us many kids to either to like or dislike, but the ones that have appeared are a mixed bag to say the least.
The first kid that comes to mind is Jake Lloyd's Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Some could arguably say that he is the most important kid in canon, but he really comes up short as a character (no pun intended). Yes, he can build a droid from spare parts and handle a pod-racer like an ace, but overall he's not that impressive. Despite all those midi-chlorians that impressed the hell out of Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson), it's hard to imagine this kid growing up and becoming Darth Vader. Maybe that was Lucas's whole point, but it didn't work for me.
Then there is Kazuda "Kaz" Xiono, voiced by Christopher Sean in Star Wars: Resistance (2018-2020). My son and I stuck with the show for its two seasons, hoping something would happen, but nothing much did. Part of the problem was comparing it to Star Wars Rebels (2014-2018) and Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008-2020), which had superior animation and story telling. Unlike Ezra Bridger (Taylor Gray) in SWR and Ahsoka Tano (TCW), Kaz never grows as a character or learns from his mistakes. My son would ask, "Why do they make him so dumb?" I wish I had an answer, but I still don't.
Getting back to Ezra, he did grow as a character. Taken under the wing of Jedi Knight Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), Ezra blossomed as a Jedi and as a person. There were some annoying traits Ezra had, and many times he unnecessarily clashes with Zeb (Steve Blum), but overall he redeems himself in the last episode of that series and then some.
Ashley Eckstein's Ahsoka first appears as a young teenager. She is probably the one to give Omega a challenge – depending how Omega changes as she grows up. Ahsoka is impetuous and annoying, but she is assigned to Anakin (Matt Lanter) as his padawan by Yoda (Tom Kane) himself. I always questioned this pairing because Obi-Wan (James Arnold Taylor) would have seemed better suited to train her, but it could be that Yoda wanted her to keep Anakin's dark tendencies in check. She is a wonderful character and beloved by many fans, but she also grew up while Omega is still a kid. Ahsoka is fondly remembered for the things she does at the end of TCW (and in SWR) and not for how she started as a padawan.
We see Boba Fett (Daniel Logan) as a kid in TCW, and his impact on the canon as an adult is undeniable, but in kid form he was a bit one dimensional. He is an angry and revengeful boy, and he never gets far beyond that. Perhaps the greatest importance of him appearing as a kid is to have us understand the man he becomes. It must not have been easy to see all the clone troopers who looked just like his father – all clones were based upon Jango's (Temeura Morrison) genetic material.
I know that the emotional one to talk about is Grogu (he will always be Baby Yoda to me) in the live action series The Mandalorian (2019-). There are all the cuteness factors at play here, and our love of Yoda (Frank Oz) from the films, but his importance is yet to be determined. Granted the story line of the series revolves around Mando (Pedro Pascual) protecting the young one and then eventually trying to reunite him with his kind – the Jedi! But the impact on the larger galaxy and other characters is yet to be determined, though we know that remnants of the defeated Empire want to harvest his blood, so this is an evolving situation.
There are kids seen in flashbacks of characters like Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Mando, but most of this is character building and has nothing to do with the bigger events in the galaxy. We see the young padawans slain by Anakin in Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith, and even Broom Boy (Temiri Blagg) at the end of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but the importance of the former is to note Anakin's devolution to the Dark Side, while the latter is still annoying because it seems like an insignificant moment seemingly tacked on at the end of the film.
Omega is the most important kid in canon for a number of reasons. She is a first generation clone from Jango Fett's DNA. That makes her his "daughter" and Boba's "sister" in a more direct way than she is related to the Batch. She worked with Nala Se (Gwendoline Yeo) on Kamino making clones, including the Batch themselves. Omega's knowledge of clone making and her prized DNA make her important to the bigger picture. Omega helped create the clones who fought the war and killed most of the Jedi because of Emperor Palpatine's (Ian McDiarmid) Order 66. This means she has a hand in everything that takes place in the Original and Sequel Trilogies after Order 66.
Omega is also important because she is a female clone. With all the rest of the Kaminoans dead, only Nala Se knows why Omega is a female and not male like the rest of the clones. At the end of season one, Nala is now in custody of the Empire and no doubt expected to bring her cloning expertise to do the Emperor's bidding. We can just imagine the implications of that as we wait for season two.
When I was preparing to write this, I did ask a few Star Wars fans how they felt about my opinion. Some thought Grogu was most important, but one person caught me completely by surprise – he said babies Luke and Leia were most important. While I can see that they were important to the larger story to be told, those babies had about ten seconds of screen time. They would become important later on but at that point they were just babies.
I am always open to things changing – since both TBB and TM are still ongoing – so we will have to see where Omega and Grogu's stories are going. Right now, I believe Omega is the most important kid to appear in canon, but there's still a chance that Baby Yoda will prove me wrong.
Until next time, may the Force be with you!
No comments:
Post a Comment