Welcome back to a galaxy far, far away as we check in with what’s happening with The Bad Batch in their latest episode. Last time around, the group found themselves on Ord Mantell and introduced to Cid, an information broker, and ended up on a mission to save an adolescent Rancor. It was a fun, if relatively inoffensive entry in a show that has, to be honest, not much going for it now we’re reaching the middle of the season. Can this episode turn things around?
Find out below in our Five Thoughts review of The Bad Batch‘s “Decommissioned.” Oh, and spoilers. Obviously.
1. Finding A Groove
I’m going to level with you: I haven’t exactly been excited to be keeping up with The Bad Batch recently, as you might have imagined if you’ve been following these reviews. I fell in love with the first episode so quickly and it swept me up in such a wonderful fashion that for the follow up episodes to feel like weird bottle episodes with very little sense in story progression left me in the dumps. Truth be told, I’ve actually been putting off watching the newest episode more and more each week just because I’m not ready for another bottle episode where the same four things happen in a different configuration and maybe in a different setting. I’ve wanted so much more from this show than it has delivered so far and I hate ragging on a cartoon this much.
That said, last week did start to turn things around just enough that this episode feels more like what I want from The Bad Batch. Settling the group in Ord Mantell and in the introduction of Cid as their handler was a fantastic idea that I wish had come a little sooner in the series, but it’s better late than never. It allows for the Bad Batch to do what they do best: go on weird missions that only they have the skillsets for in which something unforeseen happens and causes them to improvise a way out. That’s it, that’s the show. And giving them Cid fasttracks them to new missions and locales in a way I was hoping for all along. While this episode was as much a bottle episode as any other, frontloading a single mission focus gave the whole thing a solid sense of stakes and urgency that made it just that bit more engaging than them hiding out on a moon and being chased by a big bug or whatever happened in episode 3.
2. Training Omega
This has been a long time coming, but finally seeing the group take the time to train Omega so that she has some level of self-reliability is something this show has sorely needed. Sure, this episode still pulls the trick of putting her in danger, forcing Hunter to drop everything to rush in to save her, but it’s at least done in such a way that it’s not a result of her hapless naïveté and more the consequence of someone that young and with so little training being in a situation that’s escalating out of control. That’s the difference I see here as opposed to a few episodes ago where Omega felt very much like a child who couldn’t really take care of herself to now a kid who’s been around the rest of the Bad Batch just enough to survive a few scrapes, but still has to rely on them to get her out of any serious jams.
It’s a delicate balancing act and not one I think the show has managed to maintain perfectly. Even now as I’m praising the show for moving away from the Omega who was a little too naïve into one who’s a bit more capable, I look back and think even that arc feels a tad rushed and a little unearned. Still, I would rather be at this end of that arc than at the other, so I can’t complain too much.
3. Familiar Faces
Now, I’ve mentioned my theory before that this show was created as a way of making sure The Clone Wars‘s final season wasn’t just creating a bunch of assets for a dozen episodes only to be dumped in the trash and this is yet more evidence on the pile for me. Trace and Rafa were introduced in the second arc of that final season and, to be honest, felt a little out of place. I’m sure Ahsoka’s arc in those four episodes would have had a more concrete place if those episodes had been situated in the original plan for seasons six, seven and eight before the show’s original cancellation, but when we were all eagerly awaiting the Siege of Mandalore, it did feel a little out of place.
Continued belowSeeing them show up here makes a lot more sense and creates a level of textual connection from The Clone Wars through The Bad Batch and into the stories beyond. They were little more than foils for the Bad Batch here, but that stinger at the end where they contact… Ahsoka? I’m assuming, certainly lends a much needed level of weight to the story to come. I’ve been waiting for the turn when the Bad Batch go from pulling jobs just to survive to working with the nascent rebellion because, well, that’s the natural progression of Star Wars, especially in this era. I’m excited to see not just how this pans out here, but whether this creates a connection to the upcoming Ahsoka show on Disney+. If Ahsoka can appear in live action and if we can get Temuera Morrison back as Boba Fett, I can’t see why we shouldn’t be able to see the Bad Batch survive beyond this show into other stories.
4. Hot Potato
I’ve mentioned that this episode felt as much like a bottle episode as previous episodes, and it was the nature of the mission I was referring to. This episode really sped through the set up and skipped almost immediately to the infiltration of the decommissioning factory on Corellia (a nice connection to Solo in some regards), even going so far as to practically handwave how they snuck onto the planet, but I couldn’t help but wonder how they’d then stretch out finding one droid in this factory into a whole episode. Turns out, they did it by having the Bad Batch play hot potato with the tactical droid’s head with Trace and Rafa. I have to admit that it did make the middle portion of this episode feel a tad slight and repetitive, but I also think it made up for it by turning the tables and not only forcing the Bad Batch to work together with Trace and Rafa, but also activating the droids and having them fight for them was a neat touch.
However, it’s things like this that make me less than enthusiastic about tuning in each week. This episode was fun, sure, but it’s hard to find things to talk about when the most interesting that’s happening is some characters throwing a macguffin around a factory while being shot at. It doesn’t exactly scream substance, y’know?
5. Wrecker’s Head
I’ve been putting off mentioning this because, so far, it’s barely been a tease, but it certainly seems like we’re going to see some sort of conflict related to the activation of Wrecker’s chip. Here, it was pretty much only used to take Wrecker out of the episode for five minutes in order to escalate the stakes before he made a triumphant return which doesn’t exactly make for much in terms of character conflict to delve into, but it’s becoming a more and more prominent tease. With the threat of Crosshair (who we’ve seen almost nothing off since the first episodes) and his elite squad still hanging in the air, I’m sure this will lead to loyalties being tested and, frankly, I’m just looking forward to some episodes with some meat on their bones.
