General Star Wars Animated Series

Yeah I think Cad Bane is just an arsehole.

He's also... kinda pathetic when you think about it?

For all his skill and bravado, Cad Bane doesn't really have a life outside of bounty hunting - he doesn't even seem to spend his credits on any comforts, as far as we're aware.

And the best end he could envision to his life is getting killed on the job, which finally happens to him in Book of Boba Fett. By that point he didn't even have his sycophantic droid todie anymore.

At the end of his life Cad Bane was just an old man who got pissed over his former protegé trying to gow beyond being a killer for hire and all that got him was dying alone on a street on Tatooine.

Heck, even Jango Fett - the man he admired - had somebody he cared about.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Apr 8th 2024 at 7:09:10 PM

On the topic of Bane and dying, as a bounty hunter, he had a really good chance of getting merc'd often. Do you think he was fine with the notion that one day he'd totally get killed on the job one day? If you'd have told him that, say, he'd get killed by a Jedi during the war, how do you think he'd react? Would he shrug it off and say, "That's just business"?

Edited by WillKeaton on Apr 8th 2024 at 12:10:09 PM

This is a Doylist observation, I think it's really interesting how Star Wars maintains, like, a gradient of bounty hunters and mercenaries in terms of what kind of role they're going to have in the story.

There's the evil ones who exclusively take jobs for the bad guys and are basically just the villains' attack dogs, there's ones that are never written as bad guys and only ever take jobs for the good guys. And there's ones in the middle who range between evil leaning, good leaning, or just neutral guys out to make a buck. It allows them to have a bounty hunter for any kind of plot they need, making them the only "faction" (so to speak) that really offers that in the franchise.

I started noticing it with Fennec, who seems to have been introduced specifically to fill the niche of purely neutral but major Boba-type bounty hunter who could believably be slotted as a good guy or a bad guy in any particular story. There's been others like that in the past, like Embo, but none of them had been major antagonists or supporting characters in the same way before then.

On his end, Cad Bane almost feels like the new version of old Boba. Boba has a long history of being written as one of those "villains' attack dog" characters (especially in the video games), with very specific stories in Legends previously trying to spin him as a more honorable character - and those honorable Boba ideas were basically what canon ran with. But with Boba not really being used as that kind of character any more, we get Cad Bane, who is everything Boba used to be portrayed as with none of the nobility.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Apr 8th 2024 at 11:09:35 AM

Amusingly, the backstory of Bulduga, the Ithorian Bane killed for his hat, describes him as a Loony Fan of Bane’s who actively tries to dress and fight just like him, ultimately hoping to meet and test his mettle against the real thing.

He got his wish and, uhh, didn’t measure up.

I mean, that's pretty much why he took Boba under his wing when the latter was still younger - he always wanted to try and surpass Jango one day, but Jango died without Cad ever being able to settle that score.

So he basically mentored Boba as a Replacement Goldfish - either he beat Boba and surpassed Jango by proxy or Boba beat him, meaning he'd now be the best bounty hunter in the business.

No wonder Cad Bane got along so well with Sidious.

Cad Bane is probably one of the few bounty hunters who could have actually afforded not to die on the job - he was ridiculously well paid and could have probably easily retired.

Yet he's still doing merc work pushing 70 in Book of Boba Fett; he really wanted to die on the job rather than just in his sleep.

Guy is a workaholic, likely struggles to make sense of his life outside of his work.

Well yeah, he doesn't really have a life outside of work - the closest he's got to a companion is Todo whom he constantly mistreats (and at least once blew up) and who isn't around anymore by the time of Book of Boba Fett (wonder if we'll ever find out why).

At most he's respected for his skills and feared - but I don't think anybody actually likes the guy. Most other bounty hunters we see tend to have at least somebody they actually get along with in a more personal fashion.

Even Boba had a friendly relationship with Bossk, at least during the Clone Wars.

Cad Bane immediately getting aggressive at the other guy wearing it and going "where did you get it?" definitely made it seem like it was the same hat that had somehow made the trek onto the other guy's head.

So Rampart is back, and He’s got a beard now, and now he is forced to work with the Bad Batch. This is gonna be interesting.

Assuming next week is the finale. Not sure if it'll be a two-parter or not.

I remember running into Rampart a bunch, but I don't recall what he did last time to get thrown in prison.

So, I guess Omega isn't a straight up clone of Jango, they threw in DNA from someone else who is Force Sensitive. That's probably why she's female too.

We still have two episodes to go before finale.

Rampart was Imperial Admiral who was in charge of suplanting Clones with Stormtroopers and was Crosshair superior. He got thrown in jail when Bad Batch revelated that Empire destroyed Kamino to the Imperial senate, so Palpatine has personally framed him as Rogue agent since he was one to carry it out.

Odd that there would be that many episode left. Usually you get seasons in batches of 13.

He was scapegoated by Palpatine after the destruction of Tipoca City was revealed to have been intentional during an important Senate sesion Rampart was attending.

EDIT: 'd

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Apr 10th 2024 at 6:50:28 PM

I think it has to do with Bad Batch being current flagship for star Wars animation. Mandalorian has eight episodes and since bad batch is half hour show in contrast to Mandalorian’s around hour normally, it has double lenght of episodes. With this season having episode less because premiere is hour long.

Granted Young Jedi Adventures first season has 25 episodes, all butlast divided into two segments. So it may simply be that animation gets more episodes since it costs less than live action (not to say it still isn’t expensive).

Both in live action and animation, and from all sorts of studios not just Disney, I haven’t seen a show get a traditional thirteen episode in a while.

The season premiere was 33 minutes.

You are right. I could have swore it was longer. Guess I got something mixed up.

X-Men '97 is killing this show.

Anyway, it's called into the Breach, and that's exactly what they do.

What do you mean by that…?

because nobody’s talking about today’s ep at all.

That's because the episode is still setting up the Grand Finale and there's no new revelation that hasn't been guessed already (Echo returning and Omega staging a breakout).

Rampart was fun in this one, and for the first time in his life, his immense dickishness was used for good.

Finally got to catch up on this. Glad I got to it before the finale.

Honestly did not expect to like the dynamic between Rampart and the Batch as much as I did, Enemy Mine at its finest.