How Long Has Palpatine Been Working on Necromancer?
Bad Batch also makes it clear that Project Necromancer wasn’t just something that came up once Palpatine perished aboard the second Death Star, as this is now the earliest mention of its direct existence in the Star Wars timeline. With Bad Batch set in the earliest days of the Imperial regime, it’s now clear that cheating death was pretty much immediately on Palpatine’s mind even as he ascended to power—perhaps even because of it, after his scarring encounter with Mace Windu at the climax of Revenge of the Sith.
And that’s only as far as we know, too—there’s always the chance down the line it will be revealed that Necromancer was in the works even earlier. After all, Mount Tantiss is a pretty elaborate facility to have been wound up the moment the Republic became the Empire. Necromancer could very well have had roots in Republic science projects during the Clone War, just with a slightly less “Hey This Is Probably Pretty Evil” name.
