Warning: Spoilers for Star Wars: Hyperspace Stories – The Bad Batch: Rogue Agents #2

The Bad Batch: Rogue Agents puts the team of four unique clones on a new mission in the midst of the Clone Wars. This time, while searching for a scientist who’s created a powerful weapon, they run into another team of clones. Issue one revealed these clones to be defectors from the Republic that picked up a bounty from the Separatists to hunt down the same scientist as The Bad Batch. This issue reveals that this new group of defecting clones are not working alone, but with Aurra Sing, a bounty hunter that The Bad Batch has dealt with before.

Timeline: 21 BBY

In the second year of the four year Clone War, The Bad Batch: Rogue Agents allows us to see the Bad Batch in the first half of the Clone Wars, since we were only introduced to the team in the final season of The Clone Wars TV show. This is the third Bad Batch comic story, all of which take place back-to-back between The Clone Wars episodes “ARC Troopers” (S3, E2) and “Sphere of Influence” (S3, E4). The first was a one-shot story in the main Hyperspace Stories (2022) run, and the second was titled The Bad Batch: Ghost Agents.

Clones Have Defected Before, but These Are the First Clone Trooper Bounty Hunters

Sergeant Cole and his unit are not the first clones we’ve seen that have gone rogue. In season two of The Clone Wars, we’re introduced to the former clone trooper Cut Lawquane, who deserted the army when he was left as the only survivor of a Separatist attack. He no longer believed there was any meaning in his life until he found his future wife. In season one, Sergeant Slick became a clone deserter when he thought the clones as slaves to the republic, and traded Republic intel to the Separatists in exchange for money and the promise of freedom.

Now technically, Cole and his unit are not the first clones of Jango Fett to become bounty hunters. Boba Fett was also one of Jango’s clones that he raised as his son, but Boba was never a member of the Republic’s Grand Army, meaning he could not be a clone trooper bounty hunter. Cut Lawquane deserted to find meaning, Slick went rogue in exchange for freedom, and Cole and his unit defected because they saw money as more valuable than loyalty to the Republic. That love of money led Cole’s unit to work with another bounty hunter named Aurra Sing.

The Bad Batch Bested Aurra Sing Before, and Now She Wants Revenge

In the last Bad Batch mini comic series, Asajj Ventress hired Aurra Sing to assassinate a list of Republic double agents working within the Separatist Alliance. The Bad Batch foiled Sing’s plans, took the list back, lost her the payout, and embarrassed her in front of Ventress. Now it seems like Aurra is working with Cole and his unit of rogue clones to exact her revenge. Aurra is no stranger to deserting the Republic like these clones, because before she was a bounty hunter, she was a member of the Jedi Order who left to be trained as a killer.

I really like getting to see The Bad Batch in the height of the Clone Wars. We missed a lot of their adventures, because they didn’t often work with the other characters that the show focused on. In The Bad Batch TV show, we saw the team face off against armies of stormtroopers and their Imperial nemeses like Vice Admiral Rampart, so it’s nice to go back and see what villains from the Clone Wars era they often crossed paths with. I’m excited to see how The Bad Batch deals with Aurra Sing, and who they face off against next.

Star Wars: Hyperspace Stories – The Bad Batch: Rogue Agents #2 is available now – Star Wars: Hyperspace Stories: The Bad Batch Rogue Agents #2 (Cover A)

Next Week’s Comic Review:

• Imperial Guardians #1