With two seasons of the Bad Batch down and one more to go, there’s been a few details that I haven’t seen much discussion over.
Where are the Kaminoans in all of this? We know from the season one finale that Tipoca City, the last and only bastion of Kaminoan society, had been destroyed by Admiral Rampart on Palpatine’s orders.
However, we saw that the entire city was abandoned before the city’s destruction, excluding the Batch and Crosshair’s team. So here belies the question were the Kaminoans wiped out off-screen due to the sheer magnitude of their destruction and to keep the show at a PG-13 rating? Or has this all been a lie perpetuated by the Empire to cover their research into cloning technology? We know that researchers like Nala Se and key political figures like Lama Su are being held captive at the Mount Taniss facility, but was that all that was taken?
For some of you who don’t know that Kamino, hundreds of years before the events of AOTC, was a lush planet with mountains, plains, forests, etc. Due to an environmental disaster, the planet’s glaciers began to melt causing the entire world to be engulfed by its oceans. In response, the Kaminoans built what is now Tipoca City and resorted to intense eugenics to sort out those that would genetically prosper in the coming apocalypse, thus resulting in their renowned affinity for cloning technology and genetic manipulation. As a result of their living conditions, every Kaminoan citizen is genetically tailored to aid in the pursuit of Kamioan scientific advancements meaning every citizen contributes from medical scientists to agriculturalists.
So by default, the Empire would have no choice but to take practically every Kaminoan citizen with them to Mount Taniss to keep the entire Kamioan program intact. Which seems uncharacteristically merciful of the Empire, but still a possibility.
The other option is that the Kaminoans actually were wiped out off-screen and the entire race is doomed to eventual oblivion. Or are they? Now some may remember the facility on Bora Vio in season one where Omega was kidnapped by Cad Bane on orders from Taun We. Here we see multiple vats of unknown failed Kaminoan experiments, to what end we don’t know. It is possible that in the case of a civilization-ending catastrophe the Kaminoans had prepared a contingency plan in an effort to save the last of their race from extinction. Having made a deal with a known Sith Lord, whether it was Tyranus and/or Sidious, the Kaminoan elite would’ve been wise to air on the side of caution as betrayal was inevitable.
Here’s where Omega fits in, many who have studied Biology know that all living cells contain chromosomes that store genetic information; for males, they are represented as XY, and for females, they are XX referring to the shape/amount of chromosomes present in one’s cells. So in order for Omega (and her sister) to exist the Kaminoans must have discovered a way to add chromosomes to a single parent cell creating a female pattern where only males were possible to be replicated. With such technology, the Kaminoans wouldn’t be far behind mixing and creating new genetic makeups of their species. All they would need is a large enough genetic library to diversify their genetic material and they may have more than one secret facility that we haven’t seen yet. This may have been Taun We’s mission had Fennec Shand/The Batch failed to rescue Omega and why Omega is so important to many cloning operations for both the Empire and Kaminoans. A contingency plan that may come to fruition in the final season of The Bad Batch.
So what do you think? Are the Kamioans gone for good? Have they been kept off-screen or are they obliterated for the time being?
Lemme know what you think in the comments and May the Force Be With You, Always.