ARC Troopers Were the Original Bad Batch in Star Wars It’s funny how ideas cycle through franchises over time. Where for many audience members, Star Wars: The Bad Batch is presumably their first time experiencing “defective,” independent-thinking clones, this isn’t the first time the galaxy has met rough and tumble clones who break the rules. You see, an ARC (Advanced Recon Commando) trooper wasn’t always merely a rank, but instead a special breed of clone — a variant that would never have seen combat were it not for the intervention of two Mandalorian legends. In the original Clone Wars multimedia project, the first ARCs were a test run to see if Jango Fett’s genetic material could make for effective soldiers. Six clones stepped onto the testing grounds, proving themselves capable but not very obedient, sharing too much in common with Fett. They were the first clones to be trained by old Mandalorian allies of Fett, and though deemed a failure, they were saved by one of their teachers, Kal Skirata.