“Rampage” brings the Bad Batch to Ord Mantell, where underworld player Cid hires them to rescue a child named Muchi from slavers. Muchi turns out to not be what they expected, and the bounty hunt nets them more than they bargained for. Along with the new characters come a wide variety of connections to other parts of the saga, as well as some video game in-jokes. Take a look at all the Star Wars references and connections we found this week:
Cid and Rhea Perlman
– Cheers comic legend Rhea Perlman makes her Star Wars debut as the criminal Cid. As Lucasfilm Development & Franchise guru Pablo Hidalgo points out, she’s the third Cheers veteran to join the space opera. Stream your Star Wars favorites right here!
Muchi the Rancor
– Muchi isn’t the same rancor as the famous one who Luke Skywalker fights and kills in Return of the Jedi. That creature was named Pateesa, and he was similarly procured by the crime lord’s majordomo Bib Fortuna. Jabba’s Palace presumably needs multiple rancors to keep up with the demand for eating people who have been thrown into pits. – Rancors are a reptilian species native to the planet Dathomir, which is also home to the Force-using sect known as the Witches of Dathomir. Rancors are “semi-sentient,” or not quite as self-aware as a person but no mental push-over either. As demonstrated in this episode, they follow a pack hierarchy and will obey people or rancors they see as dominant over them.
Bib Fortuna and Jabba the Hutt
– Jabba the Hutt’s majordomo appears in younger form in The Bad Batch. He debuted in Return of the Jedi as the first on-screen member of his species, the Twi’leks. – He’s voiced by Matthew Wood, who also portrayed him in The Phantom Menace and works as a Lucasfilm sound editor. Wood most recently portrayed the character on The Mandalorian, when Boba Fett unceremoniously dispatched him at the end of season 2. – Ord Mantell is one of the planets players can visit in The Old Republic, and in Shadows of the Empire — Dash Rendar also finds trouble there. – In canon, Darth Maul’s criminal forces fought the Confederacy of Independent Systems on Ord Mantell as part of the dark-side in-fighting into which Maul dragged his Shadow Collective criminal syndicate.
Enemies, Aliens, and Other Easter Eggs
– Zygerrian slavers first appeared in The Clone Wars episode “Kidnapped.” Their slavery business is state-sponsored, with their queen trying to build an empire on the backs of captured people.
They first appeared in the roleplaying game sourcebook The Star Wars Sourcebook in 1987, where they were described as humans with spikes on their faces and some other minor cosmetic differences. For The Clone Wars, executive producer Dave Filoni wanted to avoid them looking like live-action aliens from a show with a limited budget, so he redesigned them, using coyotes as inspiration.
– The Zygerrians ride a brezak, a giant “reptavian” (the term used to describe a type of animal that is both reptile and avian) that first appeared in The Clone Wars episode “Slaves of the Republic.”
But one of the most recent appearances by this species was Ziton Moj, leader of the Black Sun syndicate during the time when it was part of Maul’s crime ring.
– Wrecker mentions the Bad Batch’s mission being as easy as a “simple smash and grab that time on Kuat.” Kuat is another relatively well-known Expanded Universe planet, site of a tactically important shipyard.
