Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Season 2 Episode 8 of The Bad Batch.This week's double feature in The Bad Batch was definitely one of the highlights of Season 2, even with possible ties to The Rise of Skywalker, the finale of the Skywalker Saga in Star Wars. In "The Clone Conspiracy," the animated series further expands on the arc of the clones that was started in The Clone Wars, and is now gearing towards its end - and a tragical one at that, pitching clones against clones.
The new episodes make up for a good political thriller story in the middle of Season 2, and one of this small arc's most chilling moments came at the end of "The Clone Conspiracy," as Captain Rex (Dee Bradley Baker) interrogates a clone assassin hellbent of eliminating Senator Riyo Chuchi (Jennifer Hale) due to her investigation on the conspiracy behind the destruction of Tipoca City in Kamino, where the Clone Army was made during the Clone Wars. Rex does his best to get any information at all from this clone, who has no identification number and answers to no name. The only thing the assassin says before biting his suicide shocker is that he is "a believer". That leaves us with even more questions, and the answers might lead us far away, to the Unknown Regions of the galaxy...
The Conspiracy Is Much Larger Than The Clone Army
The word "believer" immediately brings to mind an episode of The Mandalorian, "The Believer", when Mando (Pedro Pascal) and Migs Mayfeld (Bill Burr) infiltrate an Imperial Remnant base to try and find out where Grogu was being kept by Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito). It's easy to mix things up here, but this Mandalorian episode has nothing to do with the clone assassin from The Bad Batch (that would be quite a stretch).
Instead, when the clone assassin describes himself as "a believer", he's talking about faith of the religious kind. Not much is known about this character, almost nothing, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for theories. What we know about this clone is that he has no identification number, no name, wears a special pressurized armor and is involved in a conspiracy created by Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) himself to phase out the Clone Army and make way for a new military, made against conscripted soldiers, the stormtroopers. Why would a clone fight against the interests of his own brothers?
Parallel to the arc about the end of the Clone Army, there's another important story being told, that of the Empire's own research of cloning. The destruction of Tipoca City and the Kaminoan genocide was important to allow the Empire to be the only ones with access to this kind of technology. We see this being carried on the Mount Tantiss research facility, where Nala Se (Gwendoline Yeo), the last Kaminoan cloning specialist, is being kept hostage. There's also signs of this in The Mandalorian, with the experiments The Client (Werner Herzog) and Doctor Pershing (Omid Abtahi) carry out on Grogu) in the Nevarro facility. The goal is to perpetuate Palpatine's own hold on the galaxy and allow him to rule as Emperor forever.
After the Emperor's alleged death in Return of the Jedi, though, the efforts are limited. Darth Sidious did manage to thrust his consciousness to a clone body, but one that was not capable to sustain his power. The attempts to produce a Force-sensitive clone continue to be carried out, including in Nevarro, but these experiments take place mostly elsewhere, in the hidden world of the Sith, Exegol. There, a cult of fanatics, the Sith Eternal, continues to work tirelessly on Palpatine's behalf.
Could the Clone Assassin Have Ties to The Sith Eternal?
There are many signs indicating that yes, the clone assassin may be tied to the Sith Eternal. Over the centuries, there were many Sith cults, the Sith Eternal being the oldest. Their only goal is to make Darth Sidious' vision of a Sith Empire come to fruition, and they are true believers in the Dark Side of the Force, even if they are not Force-sensitive. While Sidious worked publicly under his Palpatine persona, the Sith Eternal worked in secret to aid him. We see them at work in the recent Darth Vader comics by Greg Pak, in which Vader himself travels to Exegol and is challenged by countless Sith cultists and assassins.
Knowing that all the conspiracies seen so far in Star Wars are connected and all lead to Darth Sidious, we must keep in mind that they are all being conducted simultaneously, too. The Bad Batch is happening in the first years of the Galactic Empire, but the Sith Eternal are already hard at work both on Exegol and with cultists infiltrated in the ranks of the Empire, especially in the Mount Tantiss cloning research facility. By the time The Rise of Skywalker takes place, all these people are close to having their goal come true. We are not talking about just a few people, though, rather thousands - and maybe even millions.
An interesting exchange in "The Clone Conspiracy" takes place between Senator Chuchi and Vice Admiral Rampart (Noshir Dalal), the Imperial officer responsible for the phasing out of the clone army. As they debate how to tend to the needs of the clone soldiers after they are phased out, Rampart asks if what Chuchi wants is to pay full pensions to "millions of clone troopers". This is the first time such a big number is used to quantify how many clones were made by the Kaminoans. Originally, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) found out 200,000 clones were ready at the beginning of the Clone Wars in Attack of the Clones, with a million more on the way. This means there were far more clones by the end of the war than anticipated, too many to be phased out and incorporated into society, especially given that they have accelerated aging.
We also know from how fanatical the stormtroopers are that the Empire brainwashes their troops to ensure their loyalty. Even after the Galactic Civil War, the First Order continued to do so under General Armitage Hux's (Domhnall Gleeson) orders, with very few soldiers managing to escape this kind of mind control, like Finn (John Boyega) and Jannah (Naomi Ackie).
These two pieces of information lead us to the very real possibility of the clone assassin from "The Clone Conspiracy" being connected to the Sith Eternal. They had assassins deployed throughout the galaxy, like Ochi of Bestoon, and their members were numerous. The novel Shadow of the Sith gives a good idea of how spread out they were through the galaxy, as Sidious clone son tries to run away from them with his wife and daughter, who would grow up to become Rey Skywalker (Daisy Ridley). We can only wait to see how this conspiracy will play out, and what will happen to the clones as they face the end of their journey. What we know now is that there are many forces at play in the galaxy with interest in their skills.