Vampires are creatures of the night, but are they strong with the Dark Side of the Force? Back in 2018, Star Wars canon slyly implied that vampiric aliens exist in that galaxy far, far away. But what The Bad Batch Season 2 may have quietly done is reestablish a connection between Star Wars vampires and Count Dooku. Spoilers ahead.
Most of Bad Batch’s two-episode Season 2 debut focuses on the gang attempting a heist on the planet Serenno. Although Serenno has long been established as the home planet of Count Dooku, this is the first time we’ve seen it. That said, there aren’t a lot of Dooku Easter eggs in the story. Or are there?
One of the strangest things about the second episode, “Ruins of War,” is the introduction of the mysterious character Romar. After crashlanding, Omega, Tech, and Echo discover an old man wandering in the woods, who tells them he’s just a regular citizen of Serenno. It turns out Count Dooku stole from his own people to fund the Separatist war effort during the Clone Wars, and Romar is just a lonely guy trying to pick up the pieces.
This is all well and good, but has anyone considered that Romar is a vampire? The Bad Batch Season 2 doesn’t say that, yet it’s not out of the question. He was lurking around at sundown, living alone in the woods, and being more than a little spooky.
In Star Wars comics, Count Dooku was briefly a vampire too. Yes, in canon, Count Dooku, a citizen of Serenno, had vampire powers. This happened in issue #2 of the 2018 series Tales from Vader’s Castle when, sometime before the events of Revenge of the Sith, Count Dooku joined forces with Ravna, Lord of Darkness. Ravna, a vampire in all but name, could control bat-like mynocks the same way Dracula controlled rats and bats. Revna briefly gave Dooku Dracula-esque powers too.
This was mostly written as a nod to the fact that Dooku actor Christopher Lee played Dracula in numerous horror films. But in the context of Star Wars, it makes you wonder if Dooku perhaps retained some of his vampiric abilities. Or, better yet, maybe he was predisposed to vampirism because there was a history of vampires on Serenno.
As the Batch leaves Serenno at the end of “Ruins of War,” Tech asks what will become of Romar. He responds, “I’m a survivor, remember?” But how did he survive? Was it by drinking blood? If we’re meant to wonder about Romar and his strange readymade biography, then it’s possible The Bad Batch could revisit this concept. And, in doing so, the vampires of Star Wars might finally be brought into the light. To make the subject even more intriguing, we may learn that not all Star Wars vampires are evil. Romar helps Omega and the Batch escape the Empire, clearly had issues with Dooku, and generally seems like a good person.
As Tales of the Jedi revealed, Dooku wasn’t always a power-hungry villain. Vampire or no vampire, Dooku’s slide to the Dark Side was fuelled by idealism. Vampire fiction is replete with similar characters, like Barnabas Collins from Dark Shadows. Perhaps Star Wars canon will reveal that Serenno was home to two kinds of vampires: those destined for good, and those destined for the Dark Side.
The Bad Batch Season 2 streams new episodes on Wednesdays.
