The newest Star Wars hero is a bit of a mystery. Omega, a young clone who joins the titular heroes in The Bad Batch, is a mix of audience surrogate and riddle. She’s eager to join the fight, and has some skills of her own, but she’s obviously not cut from the exact same cloth as the other clones. That serves her well as she escapes Order 66 from the clones’ side, with her and the Batch some of the few residents of Kamino who don’t go all-in on the Empire’s slaughter. So, who is Omega, really? At a press conference held over Zoom last week, lead The Bad Batch actor Dee Bradley Baker described Omega’s relationship with the other clones of the Bad Batch as familial. “It’s a fascinating relationship that unfolds,” he says. “Because at first of course the team [is] their own sealed unit not used to having anyone along or working with everyone else.” Ultimately, Omega does end up joining the Bad Batch, and this newfound friendship among “genetic mutants” will inform the 16-episode season as a whole. “It’s interesting in terms of the story and the writing to have this kind of personal relationship with a younger character and to see how that changes and how they accommodate that,” Baker says. “It’s more of an uncle-niece or father-child dynamic, but not entirely, because Omega has her own potential powers maybe. It’ll be interesting to see that unfold. It connects you to the story in a personal way.”
Just the Facts
Omega, played by Michelle Ang, follows in the tradition of protagonists like Ahsoka Tano, Ezra Bridger, and Luke Skywalker himself as the audience’s eyes into a new world. She’s also plainly familiar with the Bad Batch, knowing them by name even though they aren’t familiar with her. We’re first introduced to her as a “medical assistant” for Nala Se, the Kaminoan scientist seen often in connection with the Republic’s clones. Omega is confirmed to be a clone, but what exactly that means lives in the realm of theory for now. More on that later. What we know for sure is that she certainly doesn’t look like Jango Fett, the template for the Clone Army, which seems odd since the deceased bounty hunter was the only genetic template the Kaminoans used…right? Another mystery. Stream your Star Wars favorites right here! One clue as to who Omega is seems to be in her headpiece, which looks like Lama Su’s. Omega’s jewelry holds something hidden in a locket that’s important to her, but as of the first episode, the audience (and the Bad Batch) don’t know what that is, either. It could be a personal curio or a key to a larger story. We’re going to bet on the latter. Producer and head writer Jennifer Corbett told us that Omega’s character didn’t go through a lot of different iterations when she was being developed. “We started by thinking what challenges would push the Batch out of their comfort zone. A young child would challenge them at every turn. We didn’t go back and forth much. She just fit the story, and when Michelle came in and read for her, we knew we had it.” There’s nothing in the show that suggests she’s the final clone, and, in fact, you can see Jango clones of Omega’s age or younger in the background of some shots. There’s also no precedent for it, no clone named Alpha, at least not in the current canon. There were a few clones named Alpha in the Legends continuity, though, including one introduced as a clone of Jedi Master Kam Solusar in the novel Crosscurrent by Paul S. Kemp. Interestingly enough, that Alpha traveled with a female clone named Hunter… Strange coincidence coming from Corbett and Dave Filoni, a veteran Star Wars creator who loves re-canonizing elements from Legends in new ways. We won’t jump to any conclusions just yet, though. But going back to the meaning of Omega’s name, there are already a line of canon “last” troopers, the Purge troopers “from the very last production line,” who look like the usual Jango template. Their existence isn’t proof that Omega is one of them; in fact, we’d argue it’s the opposite. But again, that’s all speculation. It is canon that Jango Fett’s DNA is being “stretched” thin by the cloning process. This bit of pseudoscience explains why the Bad Batch themselves are different, which Omega seems to relate to. So the theory that she might be one of the last because the science simply can’t produce that many, or that the Kaminoans had to make changes in order to make it possible to create more clones, isn’t totally impossible, either.
Is She a Clone of Palpatine?
Is Omega’s history more ominous? Emperor Palpatine has cloned himself before. Depending on which story you’re experiencing, the clone might be a shell for his Force presence to ooze into after his own body’s death or a brand new person. In The Rise of Skywalker, we learned Rey’s history is closely intertwined with cloning. Palpatine created a clone body for himself to carry on his legacy, but the science was inexact and the body weak. One of his many other plans resulted in the creation of a strand-cast(different from cloning, but it hasn’t exactly been detailed how.) This strand-cast was Rey’s father, intended to provide Palpatine a Force-sensitive genetic match Palpatine could transfer his own spirit into. But now we’re getting a bit far afield. The point is that Palpatine was trying all kinds of things to figure out how to extend his own life past death, and needed a Force-sensitive vessel to do it. Could Omega be an early prototype? Even if she isn’t Force-sensitive, there would be plenty of opportunities for her to be an offshoot of Palpatine’s plans. As seen in The Mandalorian and The Rise of Skywalker, when the Emperor starts a project, he makes a lot of backup copies. Omega also looks a lot more like Palpatine than like the Jango clones, although her face shape is reminiscent of the young Boba Fett’s character model in The Clone Wars, but the blonde hair and light skin might suggest something different.
