Tag: The Bad Batch

Season 2 of The Bad Batch has spent a great deal of time establishing the titular team as a burgeoning family. Following the harrowing events of the Season 1 finale, the team slowly retreated from their mercenary missions and turned their focus towards building a new life for themselves in a galaxy that continues to rapidly evolve around them. In Summit and Plan 99, the two-part finale to the sophomore season, Clone Force 99 is reminded just how much they have evolved and that you can only lose what you already have.

While the preceding episode, Tipping Point, seemed to put al the ducks in a row for the finale, writers Jennifer Corbett (Plan 99) and Matt Michnovetz (Summit) did wonderful work in subverting expectations of a predictable sequence of events–thanks almost entirely to Saw Gerrera’s interloping–in the finale even if the end result was probably on everyone’s bingo card. The dual episodes made good on quite a few of the season’s ongoing developments and left enough hanging to allow Season 3 (Lucasfilm hasn’t officially announced a third season yet but it seems extremely likely even as Disney cuts back) to get off to a strong start.

The sacrifice and subsequent loss of Tech is probably most emblematic of the progress the series–and Clone Force 99–made this season. Undoubtedly the most annoying member of the team over the first season, Tech’s growth into an almost identifiable human, complete with emotions and everything, is a constant reminder that these clones are all more than their special purposes. While he didn’t wear them comfortably, Tech’s father-daughter relationship with Omega along with his new, romantic relationship with Phee were evidence that there was more out there for the Batchers than running merc missions. And just as they began to realize what they had, it was taken from them by the sheisty Doctor Hemlock and a vengeful Cid.

Speaking of Hemlock, the full scope of his and Sleepy Sheev Palpatine’s sinister plan isn’t revealed in Tipping Point, which includes a great cameo by Ben Mendelsohn’s Orson Krennic updating Tarkin on Project Stardust, or Plan 99 but Omega’s role in it is. While the easy money was on Omega’s DNA being so special that it would crack the whole cloning process wide open, the finale revealed that Hemlock simply wanted Omega as a means to further manipulate Kaminonan clone queen Nala Se to work for the Empire. For the time being, Omega’s unaltered genetic code seems of little to no interest to Hemlock. Can the same be said, however, for Emerie Karr, whose identity as a sister clone of Omega’s was revealed in Plan 99? Karr does seem to have her own agenda and revealing herself to Omega only furthers that suspicion.

Summit and Plan 99 worked together to provide an emotional gut punch that wouldn’t have been possible without some of the groundwork laid throughout the season. With Tech seemingly dead, Omega and Crosshair in the clutches of Hemlock and Ord Mantell no longer a safe haven for the remaining members of the Bad Batch, the not-yet-announced-but-all-but-a-sure-thing two-part Season 3 premiere is set up for an emotional return to Pabu before a high stakes rescue of the imprisoned clones. Season 2, taken in its totality, feels like the second act of a three-part story which would mean Season 3 would be the end of the line for the stories of Clone Force 99. Now that they have so much to lose, Season 3 is set up to be a helluva ride.

The last few weeks have been some of The Bad Batch‘s best; a remarkable turnaround from a fairly lame first half of the season. Where episodes once felt flat and pointless, they are now full of life and purpose, aimed towards a clear end goal with actual substance. The latest entry, titled Pabu, continues this trend with a wonderful excursion focused on community, something the leading group of rebels has found themselves severely lacking. A perfect mix of calm and storm, the episode manages to be both a singular adventure and a catalyst for the development of its heroes in one gorgeous outing.

Pabu sees the Bad Batch accompany their occasional business partner and not-a-pirate Phee Genoa, played by Wanda Sykes, to the episode’s titular planet for a bit of rest and relaxation. After a betrayal by their previous employer, the group needs a safe place to hide and a refresher on what it means to be alive, something Genoa believes she can supply in the form of a peaceful refugee city. Of course, things don’t go exactly as planned, and the group ends up having to protect the citizens from a massive tidal wave that wipes out half the community’s infrastructure. The resulting escapade is a lovely look into what the clones could have, and uphold, if they were willing to lay down their guns and give up the fight.

It’s an excellent follow-up to last week’s installment, The Outpost, which saw Crosshair finally submit to a devastating revelation about the Empire. Similar in fashion, the Bad Batch have come to see their own allegiances in a new light, ditching Rhea Perlman‘s Cid and complimenting their former comrade’s journey in a subtly clever way. The parallel between the two storylines is likely far from accidental, with the show’s nearing finale kicking the series’ overarching plotlines into their final gears. One of the best aspects of Pabu, an episode that appears to be potentially one-off at first glance, is how effectively it pushes the narrative forward for its protagonists. Even if the Bad Batch don’t grow to call the planet home, their experience there opens up new ideas and helps both Dee Bradley Baker‘s Hunter and Michelle Ang‘s Omega consider other methods of living.

Also of note is the ingenious bait-and-switch of Genoa’s role in the series. After several episodes of the character claiming not to be a pirate, something played as a joke every time, it turns out that she is not, in fact, a pirate. She truly is a “liberator of stolen artifacts”, as she puts it, and an advocator of the downtrodden. This reveal works in a few ways. It’s surprising and endearing, yes, but it’s also another notch in The Bad Batch‘s allegorical belt. From the start, the series has made no false pretenses about its intentions to portray the “soldiers post-war” dilemma, and refugees are a large part of that conversation. It’s truly very intriguing to see The Bad Batch manage to tie another character, one who seemed to be outside of the thematic elements of the show, into the grander image.

Overall, Pabu is a solid half-hour of television. It’s whimsical in its ideals and thrilling in its execution. The Bad Batch has really hit its stride in the back half of this season, and it really feels as though the show is leading to something special. Hopefully, it can stick the landing.

Good soldiers follow orders. The motto of the Empire’s Clone Army and the basis of the rift between CT-9904 and his Bad Batch brothers, those words are as etched in the minds of fans of Star Wars animated series nearly as deeply as in the minds of the clones. Throughout the course of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and The Bad Batch, “good soldiers follow orders” has been the rote and retaliatory response given any time evil deeds were done by Clones in the name of the Empire. Of course, following orders in the service of evil is still doing evil (indeed the phrase seems to be a reference to the “superior orders” defense that Nazi war criminals attempted to use during the Nuremberg trials, continuing a long-running allegory within the Star Wars universe) and the phrase was never going to hide the evil acts.

Crosshair has always been severe and unyielding. It is his nature. You cannot change that. He cannot change that.

Tech, The Bad Batch: Kamino Lost

After a bit of a slow start, Season 2 of The Bad Batch has quickly gotten very interesting following Emperor Palpatine’s Defense Recruitment Bill. The bill not only ushered in the era of the Imperial Stormtrooper but also emphatically ended the era of the Clones, who for all their order following, were decommissioned. The latest episode, The Outpost, is a beginning-to-end indictment of the Empire’s dismissal of the Clones and a parabolic reminder that you reap what you sow. At the center of it all is Clone Force 99’s “do what needed to be done” loyalist Crosshair who by the end of the episode finds himself in a very bad place under the special care of the series’ new bad lad, Dr. Hemlock.

I am a soldier of the Empire.

Crosshair, The Bad Batch: The Solitary Clone

Though it’s laid on pretty thick, the episode’s depiction of the dismal treatment of the Clones seems necessary as a teaching tool not for the audience but for Crosshair. From the moment the ennuyé Imperial Officer drones on to the Clones about their service to Crosshair’s mission to Barton-4 under the uber-douchey Lt. Nolan to the anticlimactic discovery of the purpose of that mission, the humdrum pacing of The Outpost lures fans into a bit of a trap: Crosshair gonna Crosshair. And then…he doesn’t.

This is who I am.

Crosshair, The Bad Batch: Return to Kamino

Having a character go against his very nature, especially one whose nature has been the sole focus of nearly every interaction with the character since the show’s debut is no small thing. What’s more, having Crosshair betray that nature in order to kill Lt. Nolan over the death of a few “regs” symbolizes a near-total metamorphosis for the Bad Batch’s resident cynic. By pulling the trigger and killing Nolan, Crosshair followed his own orders and, by his own beliefs, is no longer a good soldier despite doing what he believed needed to be done. It would seem the fate of his brothers in Clone Force 99 is destined to intertwine with his once more as the new clone king, Dr. Hemlock, now has Omega in his sights. But will the reborn Crosshair soon have Hemlock in his?