Star Wars: The Bad Batch twists the knife ahead of its finale
“War-Mantle” is making up for lost time by doubling down on the emotional stakes of The Bad Batch
TV Reviews Star Wars: The Bad Batch
Star Wars animation has its rhythm: a boisterous premiere, scattershot one-off episodes, and three-episode arcs designed to fry our circuits. The rhythms of The Clone Wars are the rhythms of Rebels and now they are the rhythms of Star Wars: The Bad Batch. All that’s left for the latter is to knock out a finale that lays its audience flat on the ground. It might be a familiar tune, but dang if it doesn’t keep a good beat.
As we enter the final stretch in this debut season of The Bad Batch, its various reckonings come due. Kaminoan Prime Minister Lama Su found this out the hard way, as his covert maneuvering around the burgeoning Empire finally caught the notice of Vice Admiral Rampart. Su remained stoically deceitful to the bitter end when his co-conspirator Nala Se was brought before him as the proof Rampart needed to finally tie up his loose ends on Kamino; Su continued to trust his survival instincts (political and otherwise) far past the point of sense, denying any culpability for Se’s plot to remove scientific personnel from his cloning facility behind Rampart’s back. Naturally Rampart didn’t buy any of that, and this week Su’s Kaminoan rule came to a violent end. (Off-screen, of course; this isn’t Game Of Thrones.)
It’s the latest consequential death in The Bad Batch, and a huge one for Star Wars lore as a whole. Su’s untimely demise represents a sea change in the way the Empire flexes its authoritarian strength across the galaxy, cleaving off the few remaining vestiges of the Republic with a renewed murderous zeal and a brand new face for its endless armies. (The episode’s stormtroopers are seen sporting helmets that are a cross between what we’ve seen from the Original Trilogy and Ralph McQuarrie’s original concepts for the soldiers.) Rampart once said Kamino’s clone trooper program had worn out its usefulness and it seems this young Imperial meant every word: “War-Mantle” marks the moment when the Republic clone army is finally, officially, phased out of Palpatine’s ambitions; Hunter and his Bad Batch discover as much on the remote Imperial facility on Daro when they de-helmet a downed trooper to reveal a face that nobody, not even us, recognizes. The “TK” designations have arrived to Star Wars and, dodgy blaster aim notwithstanding, no clone trooper is safe.
Which brings us to this latest rescue mission for Clone Force 99. “War-Mantle”, directed by Steward Lee and written by Damani Johnson, reintroduces trooper CC-5576, otherwise known as Captain Gregor of Foxtrot Group. (He first appeared in The Clone Wars Season Five episode, “Missing in Action”, and is also a small but amusing fixture of Star Wars Rebels, hanging out on the planet Seelos with his war buddies, Captain Rex and Commander Wolfe.) Languishing on Daro as the Empire’s tactical instructor for this first wave of stormtroopers, Gregor kicks off the episode with a breathless escape attempt, Rampart’s forces hot on his heels. His loyalty to Palpatine, without a doubt, is gone.
Perhaps it never existed to begin with? Whether Gregor’s zest for freedom from the Empire is a result of a faulty inhibitor chip or Gregor’s squirrelly attitude superseding the chip’s effectiveness, the episode doesn’t make that clear. That aside, Gregor’s latest escape attempt catches the attention of Captain Rex (courtesy of a well-placed emergency beacon), who reaches out to the Bad Batch to rescue Gregor in his stead. (Rex appears to be busy with something else right now? I dunno. But at least he was wearing that cool poncho.)
“We’ve gone on missions before with not much intel,” Hunter, the series’ resident worrywort, muses to his squad. Adding to his reticence is the Batch’s latest job on behalf of shady tavern proprietor Cid: if they don’t get paid, they run out of food. (An aside: how does the Batch handle their money? They never seem to have any.) It’s Hunter’s latest flimsy excuse to avoid jumping directly in the line of blaster fire, and it’s dismissed by his Batch almost immediately. One hard stare, that’s all Echo has to give, and before you know it the Batch are trucking off to Daro.
Speaking of Echo, the show’s moral center actually got some time to shine this week. “Rex trusts [Gregor] and I trust Rex,” he says to Hunter, before reminding our bandana-sporting pessimist that throwing caution to the wind in the name of doing the right thing was precisely how Hunter, and Rex (and Anakin Skywalker) once rescued Echo on Skako Minor, and if there’s a fellow trooper out there who is being held against his will, then the Batch absolutely must do whatever they can to help. It’s the most impassioned Echo’s been on this series, something that shouldn’t feel revelatory but, considering how Echo all but disappears on this show sometimes, it does.
In fact, “War-Mantle” feels like it’s making up for lost time by doubling down on the series’ emotional stakes. Everybody got a moment to shine this week: Omega silently reveres Hunter’s slick knife moves by clumsily attempting to mimic them; Wrecker plays dominoes (or the Star Wars equivalent to dominoes) with Omega; Tech, in his very Tech-y sort of way, insists that he won’t desert Hunter with the bone-dry line, “Negative! The odds of escape are not in your favor”; and even Gonky, dear, dear Gonky, shows his great worth this week by bringing the Marauder’s defense systems back online during an especially hectic dogfight above the Daro facility. It’s all in service to the episode’s inevitable knife-twist, before The Bad Batch bucks expectations and throws Hunter, instead of Omega, to the Imperial wolves.
As the Marauder narrowly absconds with Gregor and the rest of the Bad Batch, Hunter misses his jump to safety. After taking an almost comical tumble down the Empire’s mountain headquarters, Hunter quickly realizes, as a huge contingent of stormtroopers begin to flank him, that the game is up. It’s the series’ craziest “all is lost” moment yet: the Marauder zooms away from Daro under relentless Imperial fire, the Batch minus their leader, Omega without her protector, her father, her friend. “Hunter, tell them to come back! Order them to come back!” Omega screams into the communicator. Hunter, sheathing the same knife Omega was admiring just hours before, apologizes: “Sorry, kid, I can’t do that.”
The Empire’s forces have grown. The clones are obsolete and on the run. Hunter is alive but taken by the enemy.
Stray Observations
- Looks like Lucasfilm is celebrating the last stretch of The Bad Batch in style; there’s a bonafide Bad Batch hashtag emoji over on Twitter right now.
- Stormtrooper: “Quiet, traitor!” Gregor: “That’s Captain Traitor. Insubordinate pleb.”
- Gregor is yet another opportunity for Dee Bradley Baker to flex his vocal chops on The Bad Batch. The wily captain’s voice is a warbly thing; it cracks and gurgles and is decidedly a more broad performance, which helpfully distinguishes Gregor from Baker’s other clone turns.
- Omega and Wrecker get some downtime to play dominos. Omega: “It’s still your turn.” Wrecker: “I know. (points to head) I’m thinking.”
- Nala Se got a pardon from Rampart this week: “A scientist, I have use for. A politician, I do not.” Feel free to drop all your Palpatine/Snoke clone rumors in the comments below.
- Why do I get the feeling that Rampart’s “Operation War-Mantle” will reveal Daro as the prototype for what will become the First Order’s Starkiller Base?
- It’s like poetry, it rhymes: The Batch’s “all is lost” moment, zooming away from Dora without one of their own as TIE-class fighters barrell down on them, recalls the equally bleak finale to The Empire Strikes Back.
- So what did you think of “War-Mantle”, group? Do you think Rex (and Rex’s poncho) will make a heroic appearance next week? Will Gonky receive a medal for his bravery on Daro? Did you gasp as belligerently as I did when Crosshair visited Hunter in his cell? Let’s find ways to cope in the comments below.
39 Comments
I didn’t get the impression that Lama Su was being killed off quite yet. I feel like we’d have at least heard the shot if that were the case. I’m loving the shift from the Grand Army of the Republic to the Stormtroopers. It seemed to be reflected in the music this episode too, with more original trilogy notes being subtly included. I can’t help but feel like we’re going to lose a member of the Bad Batch at the end of the season; not sure who though.
If they’re going to kill someone, Echo seems like the logical one to lose, as he’s kind of redundant of Tech, but I think it’s more likely that they kill Crosshair and treat it as a loss of the Squad (even if he’s been trying to kill them all season).Agreed that I’m not sure they took out Lama Su, I think it was deliberately left open-ended just in case they had an idea for him down the road.
I wondered about that. It might fall in line with the de-escalation of violent content we’ve seen in the show (stun blasts all over the place, Orn Free Ta’s supposed death being walked back in dialogue, and now Lama Su’s fate being decidedly vague). But then Wrecker turns around and starts blasting the crap out of the stormies in the tunnel, so…I wonder.
Crosshair had his My Lai Massacre back in episode 2 so … maybe the show filled its quota for the season.
That’s a really good point. I wonder if there’s an administrative reason for the Batch pulling in the claws most of the time now? I don’t think they’ve had an in-universe explanation (I could imagine Omega channeling John Connor in T2: “You can’t go around killing everyone!”).
I think it’s just a natural function of them being mercenaries now and not soldiers. During the war their orders were usually to just take out as many bots as possible, but as mercenaries they’re more often asked to do rescues, extractions, or recovery missions behind enemy lines and without a massive army backing them up. They can’t afford to just kill everything in sight anymore because 1) it doesn’t make them any money and 2) on a covert mission it’s often an unnecessary risk that could get them captured or worse.
They avoided giving young audiences severe childhood trauma but Lama Su is most likely dead, and so are those clone kids. 🙁
Probably something worse than death, like being guinea pigs for the Phase Zero Dark Trooper program, or the zombified Purge Trooper program.
Lama Su is dead as a doornail.
Also I felt the need to point out that ‘lama su’ in East Javanese culture means “Took your time didn’t you, asshole.” :))
Lama Su is dead. He got the traditional Star Wars coup de grace of “troopers with guns raised as the door closes” routine.
They really doubled down on the score’s occasional nods to John Williams’ OT scores here. Parts of it seemed to be lifted whole from ANH when Luke and the rest are trying to make their way back to the Falcon to escape the Death Star.
I noticed the same thing. I posted this over on the IO9 forum. I’ve been impressed with the soundtrack. There was defintely a theme from New Hope or a theme very close to it. Was there a stormtrooper theme?There were also a few note of something very close to The Force Theme.The closing music sounds a but like the Restistance theme from the sequels.I wonder why it’s so hard to get the rights to the original music for these shows. On rare occasion they get the actual music and even then it’s ussually pretty short. I wonder if it’s a deal with John WIlliams? I would assume Disney owns all of it and there should be zero problems. What do I know?
It’s probably more of an artistic choice. They don’t want to rely too much on the John Williams score, only when it really matter. They probably want to have their own identity with an original soundtrack as well.
Disney owns the rights to and can use the original music however they want to. The LEGO animated specials, the Star Wars audiobooks, and mobile games like Galaxy of Heroes can attest to that. But composers who play in the Star Wars sandbox like Kevin Kiner should be allowed to add their own voice to it even as they allude to the Williams scores. At this point he’s written more hours of Star Wars music than anyone and while the Williams music is unassailably iconic Kiner has made some excellent contributions himself over the course of the different animated series which themselves have been alluded to in turn by others. Ahsoka’s theme showing up in Mandalorian for example.
Ha, I was right in my prediction that after last week had the most overtly ‘filler’ episode we would launch into the multipart season finale this week.
The Stormtrooper helmets being a cross between the Clone helmet and the classic Storm Trooper helmet was a good visual, but I’m pretty sure the fighters at the end were the Republic fighters (which I don’t recall the name of) with TIE wings as well, they def were not regular TIEs
The V-Wings?https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Alpha-3_Nimbus-class_V-wing_starfighter
V-Wings, or more specifically, the Alpha-3 Nimbus-class starfighter. And I think he meant TIE-class as in a TIE Fighter-esque class of ship, i.e. interceptor, which is what they were. The V-Wing and the Eta-2 Actis (Ep.3 Jedi Starfighter) were both manufactured by Kuat Systems Engineering, and design elements from both were combined into the new TIE Fighter.
Hunter is alive but taken by the enemy.Nice Two Towers reference.It was nice to see Gonky get its own helpful moment. Power droids are useful for more than playing space dominoes on top of, apparently.I’d rather Rex didn’t appear, or at least not significantly, in these last episodes. It’s the Bad Batch’s show, after all. They should be the ones to save the day.
I still say, even after watching all season, that making Omega the secret clone of Obiwan would have been another great way to take the character. The Kaminoans could have secretly gotten some of his DNA when he visited there in Attack of the Clones. That would serve their, and Palpatine’s, desire for force sensitive clones.
Unclear if they’re still clones or already replaced by conscripts but commandos are present in the episode and they are a lot harder to kill.
I thought it was heavily implied that the commandos were still clones. They were clearly more competent than we’ve seen any TKs be.
Starkiller Base is Illium, we already know that.
I haven’t watched this since the one where Omega got kidnapped by Cad Bane. I didn’t really care for it enough at the time. I liked the worldbuilding with the Empire and Kamino, but the characters felt thin to me, and the dialogue wooden. Would anyone say it’s gotten better and that I should keep going, or would you probably only like the later episodes if you also liked the earlier ones? (For context, I loved The Clone Wars, didn’t finish Rebels, and thought The Mandalorian was good but not exceptionally so.)
It’s been…ok. It has the Filoni era problems: some of it is good, lots of it is painfully slapdash and mediocre. This was absolutely one of the best ones so far.
There’s a huge difference between the episodes that obviously form the core story of the show, and the filler episodes where it’s just spinning its wheels (even if it is done entertainingly).
Yeah, they’re kid’s shows and not every episode can be intense, I get that. I just wish they’d figure out how to spin their wheels in a more fun and creative way. It can be done. See: Gravity Falls, Avatar: The Last Airbender, etc.
Didn’t…finish…Rebels…? You really should revisit that.
Are they implying here that Order 66 and the inhibitor chips wear off over time? Or perhaps just the naturalness of livin-life post Order 66 causes the clones to revert back to the path of individual uniqueness and personality growth. Keven Kiner’s music was excellent this episode. It might be that as a perfectly capable composer and an older grown-ass man, he’s not overly bent on sampling John Williams music a half dozen times every episode. In fact, I’d like to see some of his series’ best work bundled into a sort-of greatest hits, just so his best tracks can shine on their own:Two of his best.
There seem to be three general reactions to Order 66:1) The general lot of clone troopers carried out the order, and something in the programming stayed switched to ‘baddie’ after the order.2) Some clones, influenced by unconventional (and unpredictable) friendships with Jedi, carried out Order 66 but were able to fight off the “be a bad guy” urge.
3) Crosshair, being defective, didn’t do Order 66 on time, but by the time it activated, his defectiveness seemed to have doubled-down on the “it’s evil time” gene.
When Gregor mentioned “blowing up once,” that was a reference to his ship getting shot down on Abafar. The crash caused amnesia, and while he eventually remembered who he was, I’m guessing the brain trauma is what short-circuited the inhibitor chip.
I’ve bought into so much over the course of the entire franchise that I’m not really bothered one way or the other how they explain it. If there were a million clones and 20-some had the right kind of head-trauma to break their inhibitor chips, then I’m fine with those numbers. I’d be fine with more even.
If memory serves, Gregor mentions in Rebels that his brain damage was a result of his standoff with battle droids at the end of the Clone Wars episode “Missing in Action”
Shit, he’s been blown up more than once, then. Gregor was in the middle of that earth-shattering KABOOM when he helped D-Squad escape.
TBB has a colossal leadership vacuum now. They’ve lost their sergeant. They’ve lost their 2nd in command. (That’s just how I’ve always viewed Crosshair). I don’t see any of the the remaining four being able to fully step in.Will Omega’s faith in Cid pay off? Will she render any aid in an attempt to rescue Hunter? More likely she’ll tell them to beat it.What was Rex up to? The first of many failed attempts to save Cody?
We need more acknowledgement of how great Kevin Kiner’s scores are.
Is it just me or was Hunter’s dramatic tumble over the mountain and through the trees near the end paying homage to the one John Rambo took in First Blood?Surely Crosshair must have his suspicions or conflicted feelings at this point as even he can’t be blind to the Empire phasing out clone troopers in favor of Stormtroopers. I guess we’ll find out next week.
That opening scene was definitely an E.T. reference. Some of the shots were direct recreations (except, you know, with stormtroopers and alien dogs).