Cad Bane

Cad Bane recurs in the 2008 animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. He first appears in the first season's finale "Hostage Crisis", in which he and Aurra Sing assemble a team of fellow bounty hunters to rescue Ziro the Hutt from the Republic's prison facility. They infiltrate the Senate building on Coruscant, murdering all of the guards and taking a group of senators hostage as leverage to demand Ziro's release. Their plan is successful, and the bounty hunters manage to escape with Ziro, despite Anakin Skywalker's attempt to stop them.

Bane makes his first chronological appearance in the second-season premiere "Holocron Heist", in which he is hired by Darth Sidious to steal a Holocron from the vault of the Jedi Temple. He escapes with the Holocron and manages to evade Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano in "Cargo of Doom". Bane subsequently helps Sidious use the Holocron to kidnap several Force-sensitive children in "Children of the Force" before he is captured by the Jedi. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Mace Windu force him to take them to the Holocron, and Bane leads them into a trap in his headquarters, giving himself time to flee.

The third season explores the events leading up to Bane's takeover of the Senate building in season one. "Evil Plans" features Bane capturing the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO, who involuntarily give him the schematics of the Senate building. The following episode "Hunt for Ziro", which takes place after "Hostage Crisis", reveals that Bane was hired to extract Ziro from Republic custody by Jabba the Hutt as Ziro possessed a datapad with incriminating evidence against the Hutt crime families. Shortly after Bane is congratulated by Jabba for his success, Ziro escapes and the bounty hunter is hired to track down and capture the rogue Hutt. He eventually finds Ziro's corpse on Teth but realizes the datapad is missing. After a short altercation with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Quinlan Vos, who were also searching for the Hutt, Bane escapes once again.

Before the fourth season's episode "Deception", Bane is revealed to have intentionally been captured to infiltrate a Republic prison; he is hired by Count Dooku to break criminal Moralo Eval out of the facility. Unbeknownst to them, Obi-Wan Kenobi poses as bounty hunter Rako Hardeen and seeks to gain the duo's trust to uncover Dooku's plans. Following a successful prison break and pursuit throughout the Outer Rim, the trio finally reach The Box: a competition to decide which of a small group of chosen bounty hunters will participate in the Separatist plot to kidnap Chancellor Palpatine on Naboo. Bane and "Hardeen" survive the events of the Box and go on to kidnap the Chancellor in "Crisis on Naboo", but Kenobi's deception is soon revealed and he manages to foil the plot, leading to Bane's arrest once more.

Following the series' cancellation in 2014, creator Dave Filoni confirmed that Bane was slated to return in an unfinished story arc which saw him and a group of bounty hunters mentoring the young Boba Fett and helping him follow in the footsteps of his late father (his former master), whom Bane had known personally. The end of the arc would see Bane and Fett having a standoff, which presumably resulted in the former's death.

In the 2021 spin-off/sequel series, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Cad Bane is still active as a bounty hunter after the Clone Wars and the rise of the Galactic Empire, now sporting a metallic skull following his duel with Boba Fett. In the episode "Reunion", he is hired to kidnap Omega from the Bad Batch on Bracca before the Empire finds them. He intercepts the Bad Batch's ship and kills the clones who have seized it before hiding inside. When Bad Batch leader Hunter returns with Omega to the ship, Bane confronts them and engages in a standoff with the former. Bane shoots Hunter in the chest, injuring him, and escapes from Bracca with Omega.

In the next episode, "Bounty Lost", Bane arrives at a cloning facility on Bora Vio for the delivery, but Omega escapes. Bane then gets into a fight with Fennec Shand, who has been hired to stop Omega from falling into the hands of the Kaminoan Prime Minister Lama Su. Omega manages to escape and is then rescued by the Bad Batch, who managed to find Omega's location during Bane's duel with Shand. Bane tries to pursue the Bad Batch, but discovers that Shand sabotaged his ship, leaving him stranded and unable to pursue her or the Bad Batch.

Cad Bane makes his live-action debut in the Disney+ limited series The Book of Boba Fett. Corey Burton returned to voice the character while stuntman Dorian Kingi physically portrayed him on-screen. Five years after the fall of the Galactic Empire, Bane is hired by the Pyke Syndicate to help them take over Tatooine. In "Chapter 6: From the Desert Comes a Stranger", Bane confronts Cobb Vanth, the Marshal of Freetown, who stood against the Pykes and was recruited by the Mandalorian to help in an upcoming war between Boba Fett's crime empire and the Pykes. Bane demands that Freetown take a neutral stance in the war, before shooting Vanth and his deputy when they reach for their blasters, wounding the former and killing the latter. He then declares that the town will be left alone so long as the Pykes' spice trade continues unimpeded. In "Chapter 7: In the Name of Honor", Bane leads the Pykes' attack on Mos Espa against Fett, the Mandalorian and their allies. Bane wins a gun duel against Fett but is killed after Fett overpowers and stabs him with a Tusken gaffi stick, leaving a light on Bane's chest blinking red.

Bane also appears in the five-part Marvel Comics comic book miniseries Star Wars: Darth Maul, set before the events of the prequel trilogy, where he aides the titular character in kidnapping a Jedi Padawan.

In April 2014, most of the licensed Star Wars novels and comics produced since the originating 1977 film Star Wars were rebranded as Star Wars Legends and declared non-canon to the rest of the franchise by Lucasfilm.[2][3][4] Cad Bane has appeared in several comics and video games set in the Legends continuity.

The character was created as a recurring antagonist for the 2008 Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series, set during the prequel film trilogy. Season one finale "Hostage Crisis" director Giancarlo Volpe compared Cad Bane to another Star Wars bounty hunter, Boba Fett, stating:

The crew loves Cad Bane, and I really think the fans will, too. He brings a serious bad-ass sensibility to Star Wars. He's a lethal and ruthless bounty hunter, and you see that right away in the episode. Unlike Boba Fett, Cad doesn't take prisoners.[5]

Supervising director Dave Filoni and series writer Henry Gilroy originally planned to create a human character with armor resembling that of Durge, introduced in the 2003 micro-series. But series producer and Star Wars creator George Lucas suggested a Western design. The result was inspired by Western film actors such as Lee Van Cleef's portrayals of Angel Eyes in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly and Colonel Mortimer in For a Few Dollars More,[6][7] while retaining the features of the Duros species in the Star Wars universe. Corey Burton's vocal performance, inspired by the voices of actors Lance Henriksen (who was originally envisioned to voice Bane) and Peter Lorre,[8] was then digitally modified by the series' sound production team. While Filoni researched the character, he happened across unused concept art from the original trilogy of a gun-toting bounty hunter with a wide-brimmed hat that helped determine the character’s final look.[6] Filoni speculated on George Lucas' original idea for the character that became Bane:

Something you notice about George Lucas after a while is that he'll mention a name like 'Mace Windu' in a [1973] version of Star Wars, and then it pops up in 1999. So, this, I guess might have been an idea George had for the character Cad Bane way back when, and now finally he's getting around to bringing him to the screen in The Clone Wars.[6]