WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the Season 7 premiere of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, "The Bad Batch," streaming now on Disney+, and for the unfinished episodes.
Despite its name, Star Wars: The Clone Wars is quite frequently more about everyone else fighting the galactic conflict than the Clones themselves. While many Clones received attention in seasons past, most were replaceable or barely received any more attention after their initial arc. The biggest exception was always Captain Rex, and with the debut of Season 7, The Clone Wars makes it clear that the leader of the 501st is the breakout star of the show's final season.
Early on in the show, Rex was introduced as a Clone Captain, fulfilling a leadership role in the Republic Army that would serve as the guiding principle behind his character. While he could be a bit more straight-laced and by the books than some of his younger or more irresponsible troopers, Rex was not entirely without a sense of humor. Perhaps more importantly to his character was his relationship with authority overall.
Rex's friendship with Anakin Skywalker and his experiences in the war increasingly taught him the value of trusting his gut and developing his own moral guiding principles as opposed to blindly following a chain of command. When he came across a fellow clone who abandoned the war to start a life of his own, Rex ultimately did not court-martial him for disobedience. Similarly, when Rex's men in the 501st came under the grueling leadership of Jedi General Krell (who was secretly a Separatist sympathizer), he learned a valuable lesson on when to draw the line for obeying authority.
The debut of The Clone Wars Season 7 continues Rex's arc, with its first episode "The Bad Batch," which focuses almost entirely on the Clone Captain as he struggles to gain a tactical edge during a battle with the Separatists. Rex is introduced as one of the finest strategists the Galactic Republic has available, and he is baffled at the droid army's ability to perpetually predict his most recent tactics. Much of what helped define Rex's moral struggle with authority in the past was his relationship with the droids he thought, valuing himself and his cloned brethren as intrinsically more valuable because of their organic and imaginative approach to problem-solving.
The fact the droids are able to out-predict Rex disturbs him, but it also clues him into that they cannot perform such a feat on their own. Rex's hunch allows him to identify the tactical fingerprint of a formerly fallen comrade, Echo, who was previously thought dead. It's a creative leap of genius on Rex's part that is easy to miss, but it's part of what makes it clear the final season is prepared to give the Captain the spotlight he deserves.
The Bad Batch is a perfect foil for Rex's increasingly nuanced view approach to orders, as well. The whole reason the Bad Batch is such an effective commando unit is that they are unpredictable mavericks. The fact they are Clones with mutations that make them more unique than Rex and his fellows also serve as an interesting foil for the Captain. After all, if the reason Rex values clones over droids is that Clones have a greater means for independence and creativity, then the Bad Batch would represent an even more creative and independent edge than the "regs" like Rex himself.
Of course, The Clone Wars is not the only part of Rex's life that fans are familiar with. He goes on to serve as a member of the regular cast in Star Wars: Rebels. Following his appearance, the show's creators even confirmed a fan theory that a Rebel soldier from Return of the Jedi bearing a striking resemblance to Rex was indeed the Clone, meaning he even survives in canon as long as Endor. This means that the centrally interesting hook about the character's role in the final season of The Clone Wars is not about whether or not he survives, but how he escapes his clone programming.
That mystery will likely be answered in The Clone Wars during the events of Order 66, which was embedded programming in all the Clones that caused the soldiers to turn on the Jedi. Some way or another Rex freed himself of the programming, and with its last season currently underway, The Clone Wars will need to focus on the Captain more than ever to explain how.
Streaming on Disney+, the final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars stars Matt Lanter as Anakin Skywalker, Ashley Eckstein as Ahsoka Tano, Dee Bradley Baker as Captain Rex and the clone troopers, James Arnold Taylor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Katee Sackhoff as Bo-Katan, and Sam Witwer as Maul.