Clone Wars' Original Bounty Hunter Plan Was Worse - Because Of Cad Bane
Star Wars: The Clone Wars introduced Cad Bane to the Star Wars franchise, but the show originally had a different character in mind as its bounty hunter antagonist and it wouldn’t have worked as well. The Star Wars Legends-era character, Durge, would have been fundamentally changed, altering his appearance, motivation, and abilities if he was included in the series, making him a far cry from his original incarnation. The Clone Wars created an original Star Wars character instead, Cad Bane, though another villain with a similar motivation as Durge was created for the series.
The Clone Wars was released at a time when the Star Wars Expanded Universe was still the franchise’s official canon. Despite this, the 2008 show frequently disregarded Expanded Universe lore, rewriting the Clone Wars era of the Star Wars franchise. When the Expanded Universe was rebranded as Legends in 2014, many fans began to handwave The Clone Wars as being exclusively part of the post-2014 canon due to its numerous discrepancies with Legends. The proposed version of Durge, initially a Legends character, would have been completely different from his Legends-era counterpart.
Although the majority of Star Wars: The Clone Wars season 1 dealt with Republic and Separatist forces only, Dave Filoni eventually found a need for a major bounty hunter antagonist, so he and the rest of the show’s crew worked on introducing Durge to the series. In Legends, Durge was a Gen’Dai, an extremely powerful species with no form and powerful regenerative abilities. Durge also had a violent hatred of Mandalorians, leading him to join the CIS specifically to kill Clone Troopers, who were all Mandalorians in Legends. Due to budget constraints, The Clone Wars crew planned on reimagining Durge as a human, but Filoni decided to create an original character, Cad Bane, instead of changing Durge so significantly, which was the right choice. Though he lacked Durge’s hatred of Mandalorians, Cad Bane had a connection to Jango & Boba Fett instead.
Durge’s species and anti-Mandalorian motivation were intrinsic to his character, and neither one would have worked in The Clone Wars. The early seasons lacked the budget to properly depict Durge’s shapeshifting and regenerative abilities, but even if he was depicted faithfully, the Clone Troopers were not Mandalorians in canon, unlike their Legends counterparts. Jango Fett was a foundling, as revealed in The Mandalorian, but his Clone Troopers (and even his clone son, Boba) were not part of any Mandalorian clan. Rather than having a specific hatred of Mandalorians or Clone Troopers, Cad Bane instead was a rival (and former trainee) of Jango Fett, who later mentored (and clashed against) Boba Fett.
Although Durge ultimately didn’t appear in The Clone Wars, the concept of a villain with a hatred of Clone Troopers wasn’t omitted from the series. Jedi General Pong Krell was the antagonist of the four-part Umbara arc in The Clone Wars season 4, where his murderous hatred of Clones gave the series one of its darkest storylines. Rather than loathing Clones for their Mandalorian culture and heritage, however, Krell instead refused to treat the Clones as sapient beings, cruelly sending them on suicide missions and engineering a friendly fire scenario with significant casualties.
Dave Filoni made the right decision by creating Cad Bane instead of creating a fundamentally different version of Durge. The Gen’Dai bounty hunter did end up appearing in the canon timeline, however, making his debut in Marvel’s Star Wars: Doctor Aphra comics. Cad Bane fit Star Wars: The Clone Wars far better, as he he quickly cemented himself as one of the show’s most memorable original characters.