Who is Cad Bane?
How does his origin tie to the original Star Wars trilogy?
And is he really just a Boba Fett clone?
Keep watching for the untold truth of the galaxy's most terrifying bounty hunter.
Today, it's hard to imagine the era of Clone Wars-dominated Star Wars media without thinking
of Cad Bane, arguably one of the most famous characters created for that original series.
Initially, though, Cad Bane wasn't supposed to be a part of the show at all.
In fact, the original landscape for The Clone Wars had no room for third-party players like
bounty hunters.
Instead, the focus of the show's stories would exclusively remain on Republic and Separatist
forces.
As production on the show progressed, however, these plans changed.
Bounty hunters gradually began to be incorporated into the show's story, though even by that
point Cad Bane's introduction was no sure thing.
On the contrary, his role in The Clone Wars was to be filled by pre-existing characters
from Star Wars lore, such as Durge.
However, once George Lucas suggested taking the character in a visual approach more inspired
by Westerns, a more original idea emerged.
From the ashes of these inaugural concepts came Cad Bane.
The distinctive look of the aliens in the Star Wars galaxy is one of the best parts
of this franchise.
Honing down the finer intricacies of the appearances of these creatures is a difficult task, however,
and inspiration for an alien design can strike from anywhere.
In the case of Cad Bane, the Clone Wars crew found his look in the distant past.
Specifically, his design came from a piece of unused concept art for an alien character
in the original Star Wars trilogy; one with guns in holsters and a gigantic-rimmed hat.
The artist could never have imagined it decades earlier, but this figure was exactly what
the Clone Wars team was looking for when it came to Cad Bane.
Clone Wars producer Dave Filoni has since explained that, although this may sound like
an unlikely scenario, it's a common practice for Star Wars media.
George Lucas and other artists would often come up with character names or alien designs
in the 1970s and promptly abandon them, only for them to find the perfect home for them
decades down the road.
When you're a franchise like Star Wars that spans for years and years, you never know
when an idea might get a second lease on life.
Cad Bane engages in a lot of behavior that's pretty harsh by the standards of villains
on animated kids TV shows.
In his first appearance on The Clone Wars, he kills a Galactic Senator by shooting them
in the back, while a subsequent appearance depicts him torturing a Jedi for important
information.
Whenever Bane shows up, he's bound to engage in ruthless violence — which is exactly
why this particular bounty hunter has secured such a formidable reputation among fans of
the franchise.
However, one place Bane couldn't cross the line was smoking.
On one of the bonus features on the box set for the fourth season of The Clone Wars, Dave
Filoni comments that Bane's trademark toothpick was originally supposed to be a cigarette.
This would've aligned with the Western and noir inspirations for the character, as these
two genres are known for feature characters who aren't afraid to light one up every now
and then.
The difference was, of course, that Bane featured on an animated kid's show, rather than, say,
Casablanca.
"Here's looking at you, kid."
So the cigarettes were ditched, and Bane was forced to satisfy his penchant for unruly
behavior in other, more vicious ways.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars ground to a halt in the spring of 2013, just a few months after
Disney purchased Lucasfilm — a sudden development that left multiple seasons' worth of stories
on the back-burner.
Even after two bursts of Clone Wars episodes were released across 2014 and 2020, much of
the show's content remained unreleased.
This is the fate that befell a proposed storyline that would have seen Cad Bane returning, this
time as a mentor to a young Boba Fett.
Though Bane was a central figure in these episodes, this arc was primarily a Boba Fett
origin story, right down to him getting his iconic Mandalorian armor.
The latter development was supposed to occur during a shoot-out between Bane and Fett,
which would have capped off the duo's journey from student and master to straight-up enemies.
Made for the Season 5 development cycle of The Clone Wars, it's unknown why this storyline
wasn't finished and released for either of the show's brief revivals.
However, one reason could be that the Fett v. Bane showdown ended with Bane's death.
It's possible that the creative team behind The Clone Wars opted to scrap this episode
so that Bane could remain alive and well for future appearances.
It's hard not to see some similarities between Cad Bane and Boba Fett, and not just because
they're both bounty hunters.
Both are men of few words, but aren't afraid to show force when the moment calls for it.
They also sport some of the most distinctive outfits in the Star Wars galaxy, and are particularly
well-known for their snazzy headgear.
However, the team behind The Clone Wars was particularly conscious of Bane coming off
as just a clone of a more popular bounty hunter, and did everything they could to make him
unique.
Talking to StarWars.com directly after Bane's first appearance on The Clone Wars, director
Giancarlo Volpe made sure to emphasize that, unlike Fett, Bane "doesn't take prisoners."
Though a small distinction, this detail already suggests a world of difference between the
two bounty hunters.
Bane is supposed to be an even darker version of Fett, and he's an important entity to have
lingering around as an adolescent Fett navigates the hate he has in his heart over the death
of his father.
Notably, Bane's ruthlessness and capacity for evil serves to demonstrate what Fett might
become, if he doesn't change his ways.
Quietly introducing this thematic detail is one of the many reasons that Bane comes off
as more than just a Boba Fett doppelganger.
Cad Bane, like so many other important aspects of the Star Wars mythos, is heavily-inspired
by classic cinema.
In particular, everything about the character's fashion sense owes much to Western protagonists.
Elsewhere, one of the character's earliest appearances introduces Bane draped in darkness
and shards of light, like a character from a noir movie.
Though existing in a sci-fi world populated by futuristic technology, Cad Bane is very
much evocative of vintage pop culture.
So it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that voice actor Corey Burton looked
to the past for inspiration on how to voice Cad Bane.
Speaking to StarWars.com, Burton revealed that the primary inspiration for the character's
vocals was the distinctive voice of Peter Lorre.
Specifically, Burton took particular cues from Lorre's more subdued work on assorted
Lux Radio Theater programs.
"Observe what follows: in a few seconds, unconsciousness.
In two minutes, or three minutes, death."
However, Burton made sure to emphasize that Bane is not just a redux of Lorre's voice
— he pointed out that both he and the Clone Wars crew would use this iconic classic movie
actor as a starting basis for the performance, before taking it in new directions.
Given how much talent from The Clone Wars was ported over to Star Wars: Rebels, you'd
assume that the former show's recurring antagonist, Cad Bane, should have been right in line for
a guest appearance.
The likelihood of that happening seemed to increase once Clone Wars fan-favorite characters
such as Ahsoka Tano and Captain Rex made appearances on the program, and the series even continued
Darth Maul's storyline from The Clone Wars.
If these familiar faces could show up, who's to say Cad Bane couldn't?
Unfortunately for Cad Bane fans, the bounty hunter was missing from the entire run of
Rebels.
Even when other Clone Wars scoundrels showed up, Bane was simply nowhere to be found.
However, eagle-eyed viewers may have spotted the closest thing to a Bane cameo on the show
in one particular Rebels episode, in the form of Bane graffiti on a wall behind Sabine.
Though just a background detail, this Easter egg reminded viewers that Bane is very much
alive and well in this era of Star Wars.
Even before Disney bought Lucasfilm, Star Wars TV shows were all about bringing in familiar
faces for surprise appearances.
Just look at how Jabba the Hutt factored into the Clone Wars movie or the guest appearance
by Greedo in a Season 3 episode of the series.
This practice has only become more pronounced in recent years as Lucasfilm attempts to reinforce
a sense of unified continuity across all its various Star Wars properties.
One example of this was Cad Bane making a surprise appearance in the 2021 series Star
Wars: The Bad Batch.
Producer Jennifer Corbett explained to Skywalking Through the Neverland that having Bane appear
on The Bad Batch was more than just providing a dose of fan service to viewers.
The show had already featured the leads facing off against bounty hunter Fennec Shand, and,
following that formidable opponent, the writers wanted to introduce an even greater threat
for the protagonists to battle.
This is where Cad Bane came into play, as Corbett and the other Bad Batch personnel
felt he was one of the most ruthless figures these characters could go toe-to-toe with.
And if bringing back this adversary reinforced the grander fictional universe The Bad Batch
occupied, well, that was just gravy, too.
When Cad Bane reappears in The Bad Batch, making his first appearance in a canonical
Star Wars property in almost a decade, he looks a little different than viewers might
remember.
Bane hasn't undergone a radical transformation, but he's got a new ship, and his clothes have
been tweaked a little, too.
These weren't incidental alterations, though — they were intentional enhancements to
the character meant to take him into new directions, while also paying tribute to unrealized storylines
involving Bane from The Clone Wars.
Director Brad Rau explained to Skywalking Through Neverland:
"For the design of Cad Bane, we were looking at some designs that had never gone into production
that were in progress in Clone Wars [...] It was a lot of fun to sort of take them out
of the garage and tinker with it and push it and rework it a little bit so that Cad
Bane and his ride felt familiar and yet a little bit more nuanced and more detailed."
These differences also helped to reinforce the passage of time between Bane's last appearance
and the era of Star Wars history in which The Bad Batch occurs.
By taking this visual route, the show could tip its hat towards past Star Wars television
while also offering up something new for a fan-favorite character.
Bringing Cad Bane back for The Bad Batch didn't just offer an opportunity to make fans of
the bounty hunter as pleased as punch.
It was also a chance to bring to life certain story beats that The Clone Wars never got
to play out before its cancellation.
Of course, given how much time had passed between the first end of the The Clone Wars'
in 2013 and the 2021 debut of The Bad Batch, it was clear that the original concepts for
Bane storylines couldn't just be reused whole cloth.
But they could be reinterpreted to fit newly introduced characters in the Star Wars mythos.
In an interview with ScreenRant, Brad Rau revealed that Cad Bane's appearance in The
Bad Batch was steeped deeply in unused designs and storylines from The Clone Wars.
The big showdown between Bane and new character Hunter was even based on the animation and
direction of the unused battle between Bane and Boba Fett from the earlier series.
Rau explained:
"So it's more of us as fans, behind the scenes, wanting to pay homage to that."
When it comes to this galaxy far, far away, no idea is ever really gone.
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