In “Hostage Crisis,” the season one finale of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, a new figure emerges. Covered in blue skin, piercing red eyes, with a metallic gizmo attached to the sides of his face and a gigantic hat atop his cranium, this fellow is impossible not to spot in a crowd. Who is this distinctive individual? This would be none other than Cad Bane, a bounty hunter who clinched his deadly reputation a few minutes into his screentime by shooting and kill a senator without ever looking at the alien.
By the standards of Cartoon Network fare, Cad Bane’s arrival was like seeing Gus Fring or Lorna Malvo for the first time. You knew this was someone special. Someone to fear. But also someone you’d never forget.
After that episode, Bane became a regular presence in an assortment of Clone Wars story arcs, including one where a disguised Obi-Wan Kenobi must work alongside the bounty hunter to gather valuable information for the Republic. All the while, Bane had a sense of coolness about him that didn’t feel like the kind of “cool” most kids shows try to emulate. For one thing, he wasn’t channeling a studio executive’s idea of what “kids these days” think is cool. By channeling the look and feel of someone from a Sergio Leone Western, there was a timelessness to Bane’s aura. He wasn’t chasing the trends of what was hip in 2009, he was emulating the kind of visual elements that were around back when George Lucas was first creating Star Wars.
It also helped that the show wasn’t afraid to get unapologetically dark with Bane. Like so many Clone Wars foes that weren’t Zirro the Hutt, Bane wasn’t above torturing, executing, or doing all sorts of other cruel actions to other people. This behavior was complimented by an unnerving sense of detachment, with Bane at one point telling Darth Sidious that he’s fine with any sort of nastiness. “So long as I’m getting paid, it doesn’t matter to me,” he murmurs in only his second appearance.
The delivery of that line ties into the other great detail about Cad Bane. Corey Burton’s vocal work as the character was the ribbon that tied the whole character together. Burton’s primary role in the cast of The Clone Wars was to deliver an uncanny Christopher Lee impression as Count Dooku. He did commendable work in the role, but you could tell Burton relished the chance to breathe life into his own unique creation in portraying Cad Bane. His voice work for the slimy bounty hunter exuded a consistent sense of calmness that provided both a sense of authority and an appropriate unsettling quality with how it juxtaposed against Bane’s behavior. Bane had an instantly memorable design to his name, but Burton’s vocals are what cemented this character’s equally idiosyncratic personality.
Bane also got a boost from being a totally new addition to the Star Wars canon. The Star Wars prequel trilogy had shrunk down this galaxy far, far away so that everyone was related to or knew about everyone else. But here comes Bane as a total wild card from out of nowhere, a figure that confounds the Jedi and even Palpatine can’t fully control. His detachment from everyone else makes Bane a formidable opponent but it also makes him an exciting tease of larger stories out there. With a compelling new character like this one, the Star Wars universe started to feel a little more expansive again.
All in all, Cad Bane was an incredibly engaging character in his ten physical appearances throughout Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Even when the show came to a sudden conclusion in the Spring of 2013 thanks to Disney’s purchasing of Lucasfilm, it seemed doubtful that Bane’s story was over. After all, Clone Wars producer Dave Filoni was sticking around for Star Wars: Rebels, and by the end of that show’s first season, it became apparent that fan-favorite Clone Wars characters would be more than welcome on that new program
Plus, Disney was planning all kinds of new projects, like Solo: A Star Wars Story and The Mandalorian, taking place in the seedy underbelly of the Star Wars universe. Those could have been not just perfect places to feature Cad Bane but exciting opportunities to bring the character into live-action and to a wider audience. It’s one thing to be a cool character on a Cartoon Network show that airs on Saturday mornings. It’s an entirely different ballpark to be a cool character on a high-profile streaming show aimed at the general public.
With his great design, unique voicework, and unique places in the franchise’s mythos, Bane seemed destined to be a fixture of all things Star Wars. Unlike many of Cad Bane’s own master plans on Clone Wars, though, Bane’s future in Star Wars did not pan out as expected.
Aside from a series of appearances in some Darth Maul comics adapted from unmade Clone Wars scripts, Bane has been MIA from all Star Wars media for nearly a decade now. This means that not only has Bane been absent from newly produced Star Wars shows and movies, he hasn’t even been able to eke out further Clone Wars appearances. Despite garnering two additional seasons since it got initially canceled, Bane was absent from the final episodes of the flagship Clone Wars TV show. Anyone wanting even just one more appearance from this unforgettable bounty hunter was bound for disappointment.
This glaringly obvious lack of Bane appearances can’t help but leave one wondering where the character is and why he’s been absent from Star Wars media for so long. On the one hand, it could have something to do with his original Clone Wars fate. Animatics for an unmade story arc in the show involved Cad Bane working with Boba Fett, in the process helping this Star Wars icon become a more ruthless bounty hunter. This storyline would have eventually involved a scene where Fett and Bane had a shoot-out, with each firing at the other.
It appears that Bane perished in this sequence, thus setting Boba Fett on his path to being someone who takes out people without blinking. Given that the producers of Clone Wars have said on differing occasions these episodes are thought to be canon, this could explain Bane’s absence. However, several elements in other unmade story arcs have been rendered non-canon and there’s currently nothing in the official Star Wars canon suggesting that Bane is dead after the Clone Wars ended.
Bane’s absence could also be attributable to how there hasn’t quite been a place for him in the last five years of Star Wars media. The final Clone Wars arcs, for example, were exclusively focused on wrapping up key storylines for principal characters like Anakin and Ahsoka rather than fleshing out supporting characters like Cad Bane.
As for other recent Star Wars properties, they’ve largely been focused on aspects of the franchise’s lore, like Mandalore, that don’t directly connect to Cad Bane. While Clone Wars characters have appeared in properties like The Mandalorian, they’ve been ones linked to Mandalore like Bo-Katan and Ahsoka. There’s a reason other fan-favorite Clone Wars characters like Embo haven’t factored into the first two seasons of live-action Star Wars television. Like Cad Bane, they just don’t fit into the corners of lore the franchise is zeroed in on right now.
But just because there hasn’t been an obvious spot to bring back Cad Bane up to this point doesn’t mean the character could never return. Several Star Wars properties offer up plenty of fresh opportunities to further explore this bounty hunter. For starters, The Bad Batch, a follow-up show to The Clone Wars, could be an ideal place to utilize Bane. If the show is looking to continue with storylines from its predecessor, why not also pick up on the further exploits of Bane?
However, why just stop at animated properties? The second season of The Mandalorian solidified that Clone Wars characters could make the jump to live-action with ease. Perhaps future live-action Disney+ Star Wars shows could see Bane follow in the footsteps of Bo Katan and Ahsoka Tano and be realized as a flesh-and-blood creation. The expansive slate of upcoming Star Wars series offers plenty of opportunities for that to happen. Perhaps Ahsoka and Bane can once again cross paths on her solo Disney+ program. Maybe he’ll be one of the many unsavory criminals appearing on The Book of Boba Fett. Even the Lando show could be an intriguing place to have Bane re-emerge in the Star Wars mythos.
There are lots of opportunities for Cad Bane to make a splashy return to the forefront of Star Wars entertainment. It’s been far too long since this ruthless alien played a significant role in this franchise, but that doesn’t mean his impact on The Clone Wars has been forgotten. On the contrary, as the years go by, Bane still stands as one of the most impressive original creations to emanate from Star Wars in that period between The Phantom Menace and Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm. With such an accomplishment under his belt, isn’t it time Lucasfilm gave some concrete answers as to where Cad Bane has been?
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