Lucasfilm and Star Wars officially admitted they cave to numerous activists that accused them of racism over their character designs in the animated series Star Wars: The Bad Batch.
Back in May 2021, an activist going by the name of Nessa from Project Stardust claimed that the members of the Bad Batch were “distinctly whiter than other clones.”
Nessa wasn’t alone in this claim. The activist cited fellow activist and Tumblr user clonehub, who created the website unwhitewashthebadbatch.carrd.co.
RELATED: Star Wars Activists Want To “UnWhiteWash The Bad Batch,” Claims The Characters Are Racist
On the website, clonehub argues, “The Bad Batch has been whitewashed in two ways: through their visual and physical design, and through their voice actor.”
The user continued, ““Dee Bradley Baker is a white man from Colorado who was chosen to play a group of men of color with an ethnically-tied dialectical accent.”
He then added, “If it still isn’t clear, Baker being white and doing this accent is equivalent to him being hired to play a Black character and then poorly attempting an African American Vernacular English accent (aka “blaccent”, ebonics, etc.). It’s racist.”
The user then went on to point out all of the issues he has with each of the individual members of The Bad Batch. However, as noted in previous coverage, his arguments did not hold water based on actual viewings of episodes with the Bad Batch in it before the original series debut.
As an example, for Hunter he claims, “While his skin is leaning toward the darker side out of everyone on The Bad Batch, it still isn’t where it should be.”
He adds, “When his white squad members antagonize and pick petty fights with the regular clones, he rarely steps in to stop them.”
However, this claim is patently false as in the first episode where The Bad Batch are introduced Hunter breaks up a fight between the regular clone troopers and the Bad Batch and tells Wrecker to drop one of the regular stormtroopers.
Hunter literally says, “Wrecker, drop him. Now.”
This campaign would be picked up by a number of Twitter users who also claimed the character designs were racist and claimed that Dee Bradley Baker’s voice acting was racist as well.
One user wrote, “anyway its bad enough that they got a white american to do a frankly quite racist immitation of a māori actors voice to play the clones in animation without them straight up bleaching them, no way im possibly watching that shit #UnwhitewashTBB“
Another user tweeted, “Does this explain how their designs and writing are racist or….?”
Another accused Star Wars fans of being racist and then proceeded to describe Lucasfilm as racists.
The user wrote, “#unwhitewashtbb bc racist fans shouldn’t be who you cater to. Get the f*** off of my profile racists.”
Less than a week after this campaign targeting The Bad Batch was launched, it was rumored that Lucasfilm had indeed caved to the activists and changed the character designs for the characters in Star Wars: The Bad Batch.
Gizmodo reported, “A source familiar with production of The Bad Batch told io9 that in in the run-up to its premiere this week, changes to the lighting tools utilized by the animation team were made to moderate their effects in the premiere episode’s starkly-lit primary settings.”
They added, “Such tweaks will also be made in future episodes of the series.”
Now, speaking with Collider Star Wars: The Bad Batch director Maggie Lovitt confirmed Lucasfilm caved to the fans calling them racists and made changes to the character designs.
She told Collider, “We listened to all the concerns of the fans. Interestingly, in Season 1, before season one came out, we’re always doing this, we went back to look at the skin tones, and we made some corrections to make sure that we’re being true to the legacy of the clones in Clone Wars. Absolutely, 100%.”
What do you make of Lovitt’s confirmation that they changed the character designs based on a minority of activists expressing their disappointment on Twitter?
NEXT: New Star Wars: The Bad Batch Episode Retcons How Kanan Jarrus Survived Order 66