New Star Wars animated show "Rebels" coming fall 2014

How much does the galaxy know about the death of Darth Vader anyway? While I'm sure the Rebel Alliance/New Republic put out information on it, there are going to be "Vader truthers" out there that insist he's still alive on a backwater planet, waiting to return.

So if someone could find a suit of armor like Vader, he could pretend that Vader has been alive all this time, rallying former supporters to his side.....

 

They pulled the same shit with Thrawn.

 

This was actually the original idea of Dark Empire.

 

I'd be a pretty happy camper if they would leave cloning out of the future of the Star Wars universe. Really enjoyed the PT, Clone Wars, etc but I'm all cloned out.

 

Well, even Lucas and his people once suggested that by the time of the OT cloning was no longer as common and a large percentage of the Imperial military was comprised of volunteers and recruits drawn from all across the Empire. I remember someone saying that by the time A New Hope rolls around perhaps just one-quarter of all the Clones bred on Kamino were still alive, and many of those were no longer considered combat-effective due to accelerated aging upon maturity and other degenerative factors originally programmed into them by the cloners.

 

Yeah, hard as I try I just cannot imagine the Stormtroopers of the OT being a bunch of clones. I know the concept has been around a while, but it still somehow seems a little too "21st century" for the classic, old-school scifi style of the OT.

 

I'm sure some aging Jango clones from the days of the Republic are still manning posts and landing platforms somewhere and telling stories about all the old battles they fought in, but by the time Luke rises to prominence and the Emperor and Vader are vanquished most of the Imperial troops seen in the original films are guys and gals who joined up because it paid well and it gave them a steady career, or because they genuinely believed in the cause and wanted to serve their Empire.

 

Since 1978, in fact.

There's a clone in Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor who's a veteran of the Clone Wars. Also, the narrator of the Rise of the Empire campaign in the Battlefront II video game is apparently a clone who survives all the way from Geonosis into the OT.

 

Most of the 501st the stormtroopers who engage the heroes in ANH and ESTB I think are suppose to be clones.

 

Source?

 

The EU has gone back and forth. Before AotC the Thrawn trilogy portrayed cloning as something done by 'clonemasters' and the technology had been all but destroyed during the 'Clone Wars'. Somewhere along the line Zahn shoehorned the Kamino technology in there (I think it was in an Insider-only short story series) as something similar but different.

The Republic/Imperial Commando books portray the clones as having a shorter lifespan (due to accelerated aging) without some other medical intervention that the Kaminoans know about - that 'cure' is part of the plot of one of the later books.

 

Suffice to say, there's enough ambiguity that if either Rebels or the new movie wanted to incorporate clones, they definitely could (the wisdom of such a choice would, certainly, be debatable depending on how it would be implemented).

 

Yeah, if even 10-20% of the original Clones bred during the wars were still alive during Rebels and then the OT that's still quite a lot of guys who look like Jango and Boba Fett wandering around the Empire and even outside Imperial space. They wouldn't all just die off or be eliminated and the Empire would probably always have some practical nuts-and-bolts use for a genetically-engineered ex-soldier who followed orders pretty easily, even if he were aging and no longer the kind of guy you'd want wielding a blaster rifle in the field.

 

Kamino keeps cloning after Yavin according to the EU. It would be nice to see other clones besides the ones in the Republic Army.

 

Disney seems determined to undermine anything that took place before ROTS but I still think it would be fascinating to see how the galaxy reacts to those clone soldiers post-Clone Wars. I'm sure they aren't a slave race or anything but would they be welcomed anywhere? What would they be doing - would they band together or populate the far corners of space?

Nah - I've bored myself already. Time for something new.

 

Do you have evidence?

 

Interesting question. Unless accelerated aging or some violent purge to "cleanse" the Imperial military of old blood depleted their numbers to a mere shadow of their old levels and made Republic-era clones a rare sight, I imagine it might be a mixture of aging clones serving in support and administrative units and ex-troops who receded into civilian life somewhere to live out the remainder of their lives as quietly as possible. Who knows, really.

 

Well, let's see. They cancelled TCW, a series with at least three more seasons left in it. They want to market Darth Vader. Can't do that before ROTS.
This summer there is still a as of yet unknown "Darth Vader hour long TV special" set to air. It may be one of those little Lego movies but it may also tie in with Rebels and / or the sequel trilogy.

IIRC, the showrunners of Rebels denied that any Clone Wars era characters will appear along with a recent interview.

I was also thinking about how the average Joe or Jane in the SW universe may react to seeing a clone trooper well after the war. It would probably bring up bad memories for some... maybe others would regard them as heroes? Were I a Clone, I would be determined to go around with a helmet on (not a clone trooper one, either).

 

Could you link that for me?

 

Of course, the producers can say that now but they could very well have Ahsoka or a former Clone unit commander or somebody else from the previous series written into the new show if the opportunity and an interesting story idea arose. Hollywood's replete with statements that "we're not going to do this or that" and then when the ratings dip or the writing gets a little stale (or both) they change their minds.