Welcome back to Multiversity’s coverage of Star Wars: The Bad Batch. Like last season, we’ll be covering the show as part of our Boomb Tube column on Mondays, with the premiere and finale episodes to get full articles. With this being the final season of the show, the stakes seem higher from jump, and “Confined” starts the season off on a bleak and tense note.
1. Recap
When we first met Clone Force 99, there were five adult male clones – Hunter, Wrecker, Echo, Tech, and Crosshair – as well as Omega, their young charge. With Echo joining Rex’s mission, Tech’s (seeming) death at the end of season 2, and Crosshair’s defection, the Batch is scattered. This episode focuses exclusively on Omega and Crosshair, who both are detained on an Imperial research facility. While we don’t get a full picture of what the situation is like for the majority of the characters, this episode does a great job of establishing the futility that appears to be ahead for these characters.
While we may know that the Empire is not long for the galaxy, at the time, especially in a remote sector of space, Omega’s plight seems nearly hopeless. This isn’t helped by Crosshair’s attitude towards the situation, nor the insistence that Omega is given that she is not a prisoner, but also must throw away her only personal possession. By the end of the episode, things seem like they can’t possibly improve. This is obviously just the starting point for the season, but it is an incredibly effective start, even if we know things must get at least marginally better.
2. A Rebels Connection
While it makes total sense that Rebels and The Bad Batch take place a similar times in the Star Wars timeline, this series and Rebels feel entirely different, and while we see Rex in both series, there isn’t a ton of connective tissue between them on an episode by episode basis. However, in this episode, we see Omega creating a loth-cat doll out of some hay and other refuse she finds. The loth-cat is part of a theme that pops up in this episode, but it is also a symbol of hope throughout the Dave Filoni corner of Star Wars. In this bleak setting, the loth-cat acts as a sign of hope and faith, created out of things that others discard and hidden for reasons that seem unduly cruel. When the loth-cat is destroyed, it feels as hopeless as the end of The Empire Strikes Back or Revenge of the Sith.
3. The next hint
We’ve seen a few indications over the course of the series that Omega may be Force sensitive, and this week almost confirms it explicitly. After her “sister” Emerie Karr draws here blood, we see Nala Se destroy her sample. We see this happen twice in the episode, as well as hear Nala Se talk about how the Empire is trying to manufacture ‘artificial m counts.’ They never quite say with “m” is, but it is clearly midi-chlorians. And so, Nala Se, who wants to protect Omega is hiding her Force sensitivity to the Empire.
4. Yet another hint
This episode also sees Omega having ‘adopted’ one of the animals in the kennel as her own, sacrificing some of her own food and doing all she can to both make the creature, who she calls Batcher, comfortable and well-fed. Her ability to quell the beast is another hint at her Force sensitivity and another nod towards Rebels and the most animal-friendly Jedi we’ve ever seen, Ezra Bridger. After losing her loth-cat, being told that Batcher is destined for termination, and hearing Crosshair’s absolute decimation of her hopes, Omega is as low as we’ve ever seen her. For her sake, let’s hope there is nowhere to go but up.
5. “I’m not them.”
Crosshair was always the odd man out in Clone Force 99, but here we see him flat out tell Omega “I’m not them.” He’s not full of hope and ambition, trying to make the universe better. He confesses that if he had a chance to escape, he wouldn’t think twice about leaving Omega behind. Crosshair is likely bluffing a little, but it is clear that his priorities are much more selfish than any of his clone brothers.
But he’s not entirely wrong, either. He tells Omega that not every clone is an ally, and he’s right. He’s right to have her look out for herself, because if she can escape, she should. This is why Crosshair was such a great piece of the five-fingered punch that was the Bad Batch. His pragmatism is a perfect counterbalance to Omega’s unceasing optimism. While a full reunion seems unlikely, I doubt that Crosshair won’t have some sort of recovery/face turn this season, even if his story seems likely to always end in tragedy.
