Warning! Full spoilers follow for the Season 7 premiere of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, titled “The Bad Batch.” Be sure to check out our spoiler-free review right here.

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During the Season 7 premiere of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, titled “The Bad Batch,” Captain Rex gets the feeling that an old comrade may be responsible for the recent successes that the Separatist forces are having against the Republic’s army. Rex drops the name Echo, claiming that he might be alive since the battle plans being used by the enemy are the same ones the Clone Troopers used to use. By the end of the episode, there’s little doubt that Echo is somehow alive as we hear the eerie message repeating, “CT-1409, CT-1409, CT-1409…”

For those of you in need of a Clone Wars history refresher, read on to learn more about Echo and why he’s so important to this particular corner of the Star Wars universe.

Who Is Echo (CT-1409) in Star Wars: The Clone Wars?

CT-1409, or Echo, was a Clone Trooper who served in the army for the Galactic Republic. Sadly, the dedicated soldier was killed (or so we thought) during a rescue mission in the third season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, in the 19th episode called “Counterattack.” After Jedi Master Even Piell was taken captive by Separatist forces, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Cody, Rex, Echo, and Fives all embarked on this dangerous mission. The last time we saw Echo he was bravely charging into the line of fire before an explosion engulfs him.

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Echo’s helmet after the explosion in “Counterattack.”

We recently chatted with Clone Wars creative director Dave Filoni about why he wanted to revisit Echo’s story. “We took note that when Echo got blown away on the Citadel, we saw more reaction than normal for that and it was like, ‘Aw man, we loved Echo,'” Filoni told IGN. “And so we thought, ‘well we all liked him too. But I wonder if nothing was definitive the way we did it. Is there an avenue where we bring him back?’ And then you wonder, ‘well is that worth it? Does that make sense? What are we saying?’ And in the end, I think we arrived at a story that we thought was good enough to tell and that we were interested in.”

The “Bad Batch” Unaired Clone Wars Episodes

When Clone Wars was cancelled, nearly seven years ago, Filoni still had plenty of episodes in various stages of development. Some of those story arcs, like Darth Maul – Son of Dathomir or the Asajj Ventress-focused Dark Disciple, were brought to life in the form of comic books and novels respectively. Other unaired storylines, such as “Crystal Crisis on Utapau” and “Bad Batch” remained as unfinished story reels. If you were lucky enough to attend Star Wars Celebration back in 2015, Dave Filoni screened all four rough-cut episodes of “Bad Batch” to a packed house.

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Filoni talked with us about the difficulties of revisiting the dated “Bad Batch” story reels and trying to properly bring them up to today’s animation standards. “They have to be vetted and you have to go over the plot and you check it again and again and again and it’s like raw footage that you’re working on,” Filoni explained. “So I had to go back in and look at all the pieces that we had and look at all the story points — were they still true, given the work we had done on Rebels? There are things that changed over time. So it wasn’t a cut and dry process of just turning the Clone Wars machine back on. We had to make a lot of choices about how that would even look. Hopefully, people enjoy the outcome.”

Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 7, episode 2, titled “A Distant Echo,” will premiere on Disney+ on Friday, February 28, 2020.

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David Griffin still watches DuckTales in his pajamas with a cereal bowl in hand. He’s also the TV Editor for IGN. Say hi on Twitter.

Source: IGN.com Behind That Character's Surprise Return in The Clone Wars Season 7 Premiere