The last several episodes of The Bad Batch have been the best of the show’s second season and really put a lot of balls in the air for the audience to keep track of as it quickly reaches its two-part finale next week. Doctor Royce Hemlock was brought in as the creepy, new big bad, Hunter, Wrecker, Tech and Omega seemed to find themselves a safe haven and Crosshair finally saw the light. Though it was all pretty by the book, Episode 14, Tipping Point, did its best to redirect all the balls in the air in the same direction ahead of the season’s end.
The episode had the unenviable job of ensuring all the key players would make it to the stadium on time for next week’s dual episodes, The Summit and Plan 99. Rex and Echo’s mission to rescue wayward and discarded clones led them to encounter a ship transporting several clone prisoners and a commander who was in a huge hurry to delete any and all information concerning where they were headed and why. Echo recovered what he could which led him to Pabu where he needed Tech’s help to decrypt what he had which led the whole happy family to discover Crosshair was now a prisoner of Doctor Hemlock and had sent them a warning and now all the disparate threads are heading toward denouement. As I said, by the book… but it works.
While Hemlock’s plans for the clones are still a bit mysterious, the show overtly foreshadowed that the audience will find soon enough. During his meeting with Hemlock, Tarkin tells the doctor he expects a “full briefing at the summit.” While it’s unclear what the summit is, who will be there and where it will be held, it is clear that Episode 15 is titled The Summit which means Hemlock will likely get to monologue about his intentions for the decommissioned clones. Whatever his plans may be, Omega seems key to them and Crosshair’s warning to the rest of Clone Force 99 seems as though it will place Omega directly in harm’s way. But is Emerie Karr fully on board with Hemlock’s plans?
Though the ending of Tipping Point does its best to make it unclear if Hunter and company will put together a rescue mission for Crosshair, it wouldn’t be The Bad Batch if Clone Force 99 didn’t band together to rescue one of their own. What is unclear, however, is just what the cost will be for the group who had begun to settle in a coalesce as a family and what they’ll find waiting for them when they go up against the sheisty and crafty Doctor Hemlock.
