You know, I have to admit that I had no idea they were splitting The Bad Batch‘s finale in half. I really thought I was going into this season’s finale episode until I saw the listing on Disney+. Still, no point crying over not getting an hour long finale when we have the first half of this season’s finale to dig into. And, boy, what a finale is it shaping up to be.
So, let’s dig into Star Wars: The Bad Batch‘s “Return To Kamino” in Five Thought! Oh, and spoilers, obviously.
1. Walking Into The Trap
If this episode had one thing going for it right away, it’s that it got straight to the point. Last week, the episode on Daro waffled around a lot before ending on the cliffhanger of Hunter being captured by Crosshair and left me feeling pretty empty. Here, though, things got off on the right foot as we immediately see not just Crosshair’s plan to bring the rest of the Bad Batch to Kamino, but also the Bad Batch making some quick repairs before taking off in pursuit. It’s something of a shame, to me, that this season has spent so many episode just spinning its wheels, trying to find ways to fill 20 minutes each week when, at long last, the finale comes along and they show that they can capture that same frenetic, dramatic energy that made the first episode so engaging.
This episode has an engaging forward momentum right from the word go, picking up from last week’s cliffhanger and running headfirst towards the encounter with Crosshair on Kamino. While some other episodes felt like they took forever to figure out what the actual point of the story was, this episode doesn’t have that and especially given that it’s only the first half of the season finale (why they split it in two, I’ll never know), it seems like this season is at least going out with a bang.
2. Leaving Your Own Behind
Crosshair’s a weird character. We didn’t really get to spend much time with him as part of the Bad Batch before his betrayal at the end of the premiere and then he was largely absent from the rest of the season up til now. Apart from a couple of run-ins with the Bad Batch, he’s barely been a part of the show so it’s a little weird to me that this episode is now trying to get me to sympathise with him over his feeling of being left behind by his brothers. It’s certainly a good setup for his redemption and refolding into the group next episode, but one that I wish had had a little more setup throughout the prior episodes of the season so far. Especially given that this episode’s interplay between Crosshair and Hunter is some of the most interesting stuff we’ve seen in the show so far.
I’m all for characters’s perspectives being the source of drama in fiction, the specifics of how one person can view a certain situation and how that might change depending on who’s side of the story you get. We’ve followed Hunter and the gang for so long that we’ve taken up his perspective on things as the audience while Crosshair has had to languish on Kamino, mulling over his being left behind by his brothers. They never once tried to come to back for him, not in the way they immediately rush in to save Hunter, and that’s some interesting drama. I just wish it had been peppered throughout the season a little more as a way of giving Crosshair some depth instead of being just introduced here in the finale. Still, I’m interested to see where the show takes Crosshair from here.
3. Experimental Unit 99
Cloning has been a background idea in most of what Disney has done with Star Wars from Snoke in the Sequel Trilogy to the Child in The Mandalorian and I’m still trying to figure out what the hell they’re actually trying to set up, but maybe this episode has given us some more clues. Not only do we learn that Omega wasn’t a solitary experiment, but see was created as part of the same batch as, well, the Bad Batch. Which also means that their genetic modifications were specific, they were created to be unlike the regs. Why, you may ask? Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? There’s definitely something going on with Nala Se and Omega and this Experimental Unit 99, I just have no idea what or how it will tie together with the rest of the weird cloning stuff that’s been filtered through, let’s face it, a lot of Dave Filoni’s other recent work. Is it all an elaborate retcon to make Snoke being a, what’s it called, strandcast? seem like it was a legitimate idea from the start and not some half-assed explanation for why they suddenly re-introduced Palpatine? Or is it something with actual meaning and depth? I can certainly hope for the latter, but the longer this is the teased, the more likely it is that the eventual answer will be disappointing.
Continued below4. Together Again
There’s something really fun about seeing the entire Bad Batch, Crosshair and Omega included, fighting together against the proto-Dark Trooper looking training droids. It really brings everything full circle, even if it does highlight just how little has actually happened in this season. By the season finale, I would expect characters to have grown and evolved and, again, characters like Tech and Echo and even Wrecker have almost nowhere to go in terms of characterisation. It’s a hollow kind of fun, entirely spectacle, with little in the way of character building or depth and, frankly, that’s what I expect from Star Wars. Hell, I’ve seen Darth Maul become one of the most intricately layered and interesting characters in this galaxy far, far away entirely because of a cartoon for children so after fifteen it feels a shame that these clones feel the exact same as the did when we first saw them.
With Hunter’s decision to keep Crosshair with the group as they escape, I can only hope that next week’s second part of the finale will finally bring some life to these characters beyond the barest possible archetypes and quirks. Because I really do like these characters and seeing them all team up again to take down the same droids that they fought against fifteen episodes ago was a really fun callback, it’s just a shame that it’s a callback that also highlights how hollow this season has felt in terms of character growth and journey. Now that we know this show’s coming back next year, I really hope this is something at the forefront of the second season.
5. The End Of Kamino
Wow, now this is something I didn’t really see coming. Kamino has been a strange bookend to this season, being a home that our heroes could never return to but also one that they don’t necessarily want to return to. As drifters through space, Kamino represented that lost sense of belonging and place, even if it wasn’t really commented on much in the writing. Yet as genetic experiments, it represented a sterile place of imprisonment, at least for Omega. There are some complicated feelings all wrapped up in the Bad Batch’s return to this world and seeing Tapoca City being completely annihilated from orbit is a big, dramatic swing. The kind this show hasn’t really taken so far. This is a point of no return, this changes things for the story and the characters in a way that will define where the show goes from here. How the rest of the finale will handle the destruction on Kamino is something left to be seen, but trapping our heroes on a bombed out, sinking city on an ocean planet is a pretty good cliffhanger for midway through the season finale.
I only hope next week’s episode keeps the same energy and momentum that benefited this episode. This season needs to go out on a bang if it’s to mean anything at all and while blowing a city is definitely a bang, it’s nothing but a hollow explosion without exploring how it affect our main cast.
