It’s time for a reckoning in an explosive Star Wars: The Bad Batch
“Finale, Part I: Return To Kamino” marks the end of an era for Star Wars
TV Reviews Star Wars: The Bad Batch
The tempestuous sea-planet Kamino, first introduced in Episode II—Attack of the Clones, has long been one of the more distinctive and beautifully realized environments in all of Star Wars. Outside: a dark, raging storm forever bearing down upon a domed city perched over a bottomless ocean, an unsubtle deluge of visual foreboding. Inside: stark, fastidious hallways and sterile laboratories where war is made inside test tubes, a visual representation of what the Empire would ultimately impose upon the galaxy: strict order, a lack of identity, efficient, calm, quiet. Not this week.
This week the sleek confines of Kamino, and all the various intrigues, ambitions, and hopes of Prime Minister Lama Su and chief scientist Nala Se, have come to a fiery end. Vice Admiral Rampart accomplished what he set out to do from the very beginning of Star Wars: The Bad Batch: to transition the Empire’s forces from clone dependency to a new TK faction of natural-born recruits. And in a perverse act of cruelty, he ordered a clone to open fire on the only place any clone could ever call home. Rampart’s face didn’t betray any emotions about giving the order or its subsequent bombardment, not even a hint of satisfaction for a job well done. For Rampart, forever wiping Tipoca City off the galactic map was just him being thorough in his duties. So, into the raging sea the cloning facility of Kamino went, with Omega and the Bad Batch trapped inside.
“Finale, Part I: Return to Kamino”, directed by Nathaniel Villanueva and written by Matt Michnovetz, marks the end of an era for Star Wars. For almost 20 years, clone trooper helmets (and the endless parade of Jango Fett faces beneath them) have been an enduring piece of iconography for Star Wars, representative of the calamitous Clone Wars and all the lives lost in that destructive conflict between the Republic and the Separatists. Star Wars: The Clone Wars bridged a narrative gap between Episodes II and III; more, it told a unique tale about the soldiers who were literally made to fight and die for an idea. Then that idea changed. The galaxy changed. Which brings us to Star Wars: The Bad Batch.
The Bad Batch serves a similar function to the saga as The Clone Wars, answering questions about the lore and putting an end to speculation as to the final fates of certain characters and locations. It’s a more intimate story than The Clone Wars in a lot of ways, thinning the cast of characters down to one found-family unit (until it suddenly doesn’t) and following them through the galaxy’s hectic transition from a Republic to an Empire. Hunter, Omega, Tech, Echo, Wrecker, and Crosshair, another family torn apart by war—or, rather, the end of one.
That rift between Crosshair and the rest of Clone Force 99 (who were originally designated, we discover this week, “Experimental Unit 99”) is finally brought to the fore, with Hunter and Crosshair both attempting to reason with each other even though their ideologies are seemingly irreconcilable. “I had my chip removed a long time ago,” Crosshair reveals to the Batch, after he fires a well-placed blaster shot and all but wipes out his Imperial death squad. “This is who I am.”
Is it, though? Later, after a frantic sequence where the Batch briefly reunites with their wayward brother against a horde of battle droids, Hunter searches Crosshair’s head for the scar that would confirm the sniper’s claims. The burns he sustained during “Reunion” could possibly conceal this chip scar, but if it doesn’t, then what’s the real nature of Crosshair’s gambit? Why would he kill his own unit in this desperate appeal to Hunter to essentially join the dark side? What purpose does that serve, if he remains loyal to the Empire? It’s clear that Rampart isn’t in on this ruse (“let the clones die together,” he says), so clearly Crosshair has plans of his own in this post-clone paradigm. But, since Hunter stuns Crosshair (in a strangely edited sequence) and not-drowning appears to be the next item on the Batch’s itinerary, the Crosshair conundrum will have to keep until next week. (At least one line from the toothpick-chomping heavy, however, indicates there’s more to unearth here: “You still can’t see the bigger picture. But you will.”)
“Finale, Part I: Return to Kamino” is a big-deal episode that leads the viewer down a path of revelation and reckoning. It’s an especially big episode for Omega, who returns to the site of her birth in Nala Se’s private lab despite Hunter’s promise that she would never again have to go back to the water planet. (He apologizes for this before things begin to explode.) Omega, who has long been an essential part of this team, takes the lead and ushers the Batch to Hunter’s rescue via a tube network, a shimmering retro-futuristic shuttle sytem hidden under the depths of Kamino’s sea. There, Omega is reunited with her former droid companion AZI, who helps her launch an armada of training droids to rescue her Batch brothers even after they shunted the little clone to the sidelines for the umpteenth time. (When, oh when, will the Batch appreciate Omega’s great worth? And while we’re on the subject, when is Omega getting her own Batch helmet?) Once she springs her surprise robot attack, Omega flies to the rescue, hurtling purple laser arrows with expert proficiency. Her rescue’s timing may have been a little off, but it served to reunite the Batch, Crosshair and all. For a time.
It’s the last sequence of the episode, however, that truly underscores Omega’s growth. Hustling to safety through the pristine halls of Tipoca City with Hunter, Wrecker, and the rest (with a downed Crosshair in tow), Omega powers ahead of the group. It’s here where the episode stops everything for one final look at the Kamino cloning facility, once the home to every clone trooper there ever was, reg and deviant alike. The mess hall. The cloning chambers. The Batch’s old quarters. All these spaces, each a part of Omega’s home until the galaxy changed and things no longer made sense, now emptied of life. There’s truly no going back. The Empire rains fire on the past to fortify its future, and Omega is forever changed.
Stray observations
- Since The Bad Batch hasn’t really followed Crosshair or delved into how he went about acclimating to the Empire’s way of managing the galaxy, we’ve had to infer a few things about his station as one of the few remaining high-ranking clones in the Empire. “I question the clone’s motives with his old squad,” a member of Crosshair’s unit tells Rampart early in the episode. “I don’t trust any of them.” I wonder what me might have seen had we spent a little more time with Crosshair this season, witnessing his frayed relationship with his own Imperial unit.
- Looks like Gregor gets dumped off with Cid this week. Wrecker: “She wasn’t happy about it.” I can’t imagine.
- AZI-345211896246498721347 hovered back onto the show this week, after spending what I presume was half a season hiding from the Empire in Nala Se’s private lab. Is there room on the Marauder for another droid? I guess there’ll have to be. (Provided, of course, that AZI survives the Kaminoan fallout.)
- Good exchange: Crosshair: “They don’t leave their own behind, most of the time.” Hunter: “You tried to kill us. We didn’t have a choice.” Crosshair: “And I did?”
- I appreciated the visual bookending in this season: the last time we saw the Batch on Kamino, they were united as a team in the training room, proving their value to Tarkin. They teamed up in that training room again this week, Crosshair and all, only under different circumstances. (Plus, there’s Omega and her Zygerrian crossbow chipping in.)
- It’s like poetry, it rhymes: Tarkin gives the order “you may fire when ready” as somebody’s home is about to be destroyed forever, just as it was when he ordered the Death Star to fire upon Princess Leia’s homeworld in Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope.
- Say! This week, Disney+ announced that a second season of Star Wars: The Bad Batch will drop at some point in 2022. Break out the Mantell Mix!
- How are you feeling, group? Did that last look at Kamino wreck you as it wrecked me? Did the Marauder survive the Imperial bombardment? Will AZI and Gonky become the new power droid duo of Star Wars? Let’s pour one out for Kamino in the comments below.
37 Comments
Something that’s been bothering me all season is that I am so distracted by Hunter’s face tattoo; like, that shit must have hurt like hell. This is more than just a crosshair on the eye, or a Mike Tyson swirl, or “Damaged”; he blacked out like a third of his face including his entire eye lid (but not a line right above the eyebrow, cause ya know, he wouldn’t want to look like a freak with one eyebrow). After his tense exchange with Crosshair this week I can’t help but imagine a flashback to the day Crosshair got his face tattoo and not to be outdone as leader of the squad Hunter went out to one-up him. That must have been a long ,painful day in the tattoo parlor for that hot shot.
They have hyperspace travel. They probably have painless tattoos as well
didnt we see a clone before with a huge face tattoo of the republic insignia, theres a lot of facial tattoos amongst clones
I imagine having the same face as a million other guys drives one to distinguish one’s self however one can.
Probably a stretch, but I wonder if it’s a call back to Temuera Morrison’s Maori roots that there are several clones with face tattoos
I’d say it’s not at all a stretch, and something that is deliberately invoked in the case of a character like Hunter.
Who knows what tatoo technology is like in this universe. They probably are way quicker and less painful.
This whole time I’ve been thinking it’s just a(n admittedly contrived) birthmark, but yeah – a tattoo makes a lot more sense 🙂
It really would have been better instead of focusing on some of the random and pointless filler missions the “Bad Batch” went on, we would have explored Crosshair’s team a bit more so some of the sequences in this episode would have hit better.
It’s kind of a pattern the Star Wars Animation does now. They were good when they were doing the 3-4 episode mini-arcs during Clone Wars, but with Rebels, you can start seeing the change in storytelling becoming a pretty common, but, to me, annoying, way, where the seasonal arcs are relegated to the first 2 or 3 episodes and the last 2 episodes of a season, with the middle of the season spent on individual episodes that might add a nugget or two to the overall story but otherwise be their own. To me it seems like a marketing ploy that some exec thought up years ago, tease a big, important seasonal story, but then only ever touch on it in a meaningful way at the start and end of a season, so people continue to watch hoping to get any movement on it in-between. (It’s not just Star Wars, a lot of serialized shows do this now. The Walking Dead probably the most egregious example in the last decade.) So now finales can feel rushed or overstuffed because the rest of the season didn’t spend any significant amount of time on it. (I don’t like to complain about “filler” episodes, because even if an episode doesn’t move the season plot forward, it can still be about the characters growing, but I agree with most of the sentiments on the Hera episodes. Not the most important thing the show should be doing, especially in it’s first season.)
Season two of Resistance was the worst when it came to this. The middle half of the season was like six or seven episodes where they needed to find supplies. It was pretty bad and a reason why that show was so quickly forgotten.
More than that was Tam becoming a member of the Empire, where she’s just gone for most of the season and then in the last episode(s) she has to learn the lesson that they’re bad and go through that whole arc super quick. Have a strong feeling that the first half of the season was being made on the assumption that they weren’t cancelled, and then for the last handful they had to quickly try and wrap up all of the important arcs they could.
Yeah, you could tell it was canceled halfway through the second season. There were obviously plot lines like the pirates that were meant to continue in season three, but were cut due to its cancellation.
While there are no doubt a lot of filler eps and I agree overall with what you’re saying.I do just wanna say, having recently rewatched Rebels with me Mum (her first viewing)…We found ourselves skipping not all that many episodes, far fewer than I thought we would going in.Though whoops we skipped the space whales cuz I forgot they were important for the finale lol.
For me, the most unforgivable was the Clone Wars season that opened with a thrilling Maul episode and then detoured through four youngling episodes and four more droid-focused episodes before returning to that main plot (albeit for several of the greatest episodes of the series).
That said, I do think that these Star Wars animated series work better on rewatch. My tolerance for what some people call “filler” episodes grows exponentially when I’m not waiting weeks at a time something to happen. I suspect Bad Batch will be much the same.
Forget them, it’d be nice if Tech and Echo actually got to do something but deliver technobabble.
I think AZI will sacrifice himself to allow the 99 gang to escape, much like Hevy (aka CT-782) did way back when at Rishi Station.
Crosshair: “They don’t leave their own behind, most of the time.” Hunter: “You tried to kill us. We didn’t have a choice.” Crosshair: “And I did?”Crosshair… what response did you expect here? It was leave you behind or be captured/murdered. Don’t come at me with your false dichotomies, okay? Just be glad they dragged your apparently unchipped behind back to the ship instead of letting you drown with the city, bro…
The was me curiously wondering what if Bad Batch was really a story about their death and I thought not a bad idea I suppose and then *boom*Had to quickly check this wasn’t the finale I laughed so hard. Great write up, Jarrod.
So Crosshair was always an asshole.
I think, rather, he’s not – he’s hurt.Crosshair’s chip was removed by the blast engines on Bracca. He’s been more contemplative since then. He didn’t have a choice before then, but they abandoned him anyway (unlike Wrecker who they stunned and de-chipped). They made Crosshair their enemy by choosing Omega over him. He’s a lost child.Remember that while we think of them as the Dad Batch, they’re actually Omega’s much younger siblings (who age much faster). We were hi-lighted on this point this episode. Crosshair’s a kid who lost his band of brothers to a sister who ingratiated herself into the group and he never had the chance to learn to appreciate her the way the rest did later.
He also makes a very good point that they’re endangering her by continuing to have her along for their dangerous missions.
He’s still a pretty awful person. Rampart placed the finest of the TKs under his command and stewardship. He’s slain all but one of them, and for nothing more than getting a bit mouthy towards him.
LOL, I thought the same thing. “So, it wasn’t the chip, you just chose to be an asshole.”
In his defence, he was chipped going through the kill the insurgents mission/s so to be unchipped after that you’d find yourself in a precarious position.It’d make sense he’d wanna prove himself useful to the Empire.
There was never a time when I didn’t think he was. It was just how he directed his energy that shifted.
Crosshair has a veritable smorgasbord of neuroses … which are the least of his problems. He’s a homicidal maniac. What in the Sam Hill are they going to do with him?
Have Wrecker annoy him until he goes insane.
And while we’re on the subject, when is Omega getting her own Batch helmet?SERIOUSLY!!! Every week I continue to be bemused by these fully-armored, grown-ass soldiers dragging this tiny, 9-year-old girl through war zone after war zone without so much as a sun bonnet for protection (gotta watch those UVs), much less a helmet.
This episode did one better as she was animated with soaking wet hair in the pouring rain, surrounded by these completely covered doofuses who couldn’t even think to grab the poor kid a poncho. At this point I can’t but think it’s an intentional running gag from the showrunners about what hapless surrogate fathers the Batchers really are (alternate title – Four Clones and a Little Clone Lady). Granted, the clone troopers weren’t raised with too many nurturing parental figures either, but they were taught the importance of body armor.
So here’s hoping Omeeega gets some proper armor soon, preferably before she gets picked off by a stray blaster bolt on their next mercenary job!
Echo gives her his Domino Squad cadet helmet. Best hand-me-down ever!
Great visual in the screenshot above with Omega and the Batch. She’s all blonde, purple, and glowing, while the others are in their black, white, and greys; she’s the hearth they’re gathered around. Good job with Omega’s wet hair too. It was a little blocky in keeping with the animation style, but communicated weight. If you watch Disney & Pixar “making of’s” they like to bitch about CGI wet hair.Is it me or does Rampart look like he stepped out of one of the old Rankin & Bass stop-motion Christmas Specials? Big eyes for a Nazi. A bit of Thunderbirds in there too. Again, they’ve closed the gap between live-action set-puppets, stop-motion, and 3D rendered CGI. They probably could fully CGI Wallace and Gromit and still fool people by rendering the fingerprints back into the sculpted clay.
I honestly did get chills at the last shots of the empty Tipoca city and abandoned cloning chambers before it was destroyed. The review gets it right; this has become a huge part of Star Wars mythology and it was always one of my favorite prequel locations. It makes sense that the Empire would have had it destroyed, but I didn’t really put it together that that’s where things were headed on this show until right before.
This episode was fascinating to me for a very simple reason, with Hunter gone, we got much more from the rest of the squad. It felt like Fives got more to do in this episode than he’s had all season! Omega took the lead but, due to her inexperience, the others having input felt natural, whereas with Hunter giving orders, everyone generally falls in line, no questions asked.I think there’s a strong argument to be made for Hunter dying in a noble self sacrifice that puts Crosshair back on the squad and continuing the show like that. No one wouldn’t be affected, and there would be a new dynamic if Crosshair is still a loyal Imperial but a fugitive through association.
I don’t see this show killing any of the Batch, not even Crosshair. But what you suggest would be intriguing. And not to nitpick, but I think you meant Echo when you said Fives. Fives died trying to get to the bottom of clone trooper Tup fragging a Jedi, when he discovered the inhibitor chip conspiracy.
Bald Crosshair looks a lot like bald Pre Vizla.
I don’t think it can be stated enough just how gorgeous the animation has been on this show. The Star Destroyers coming out of the clouds, the lingering shots of the city, *chef kiss*
I’m a bit annoyed with the “not showing the body” deaths. Honestly what else is Lama Su going to do at this point, show him dying. Unless they plan to have him shout “surprise, motherfucker!” and stab the Admiral guy from behind