Welcome back! After a surprise return from a familiar face in the form of Captain Rex in last week’s episode, the Bad Batch take their first steps into a larger world; one free from the control of the inhibitor chips. Though, with Crosshairs on their trail, leaving Bracca is going to be a tougher first step than they realised.
Join me down below where I’m breaking down Star Wars: The Bad Batch‘s eighth episode, “Reunion,” in Five Thoughts! Oh, and spoilers, obviously.
1. Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch
Been a while since we dropped in on Kamino, huh? I almost forgot about this Rampart guy, I got to be honest with you. After his setup in, what, episode two? three? I expected him to play a similar role to Agent Kallus in Rebels, being a figurehead of the Imperial Might that hounds are heroes at every turn, reminding them of how close behind them the Empire is. Weirdly, he’s barely been in the show since that episode and the stuff set up on Kamino has been largely left at the wayside in favour of going on goofy missions for Cid. Not that I’m complaining too much because I like the goofy missions for Cid, but it does feel strange that the early episodes of this season set up a lot in terms of the Empire’s takeover of Kamino and we’re only just getting back to it; I was certainly expecting it to be a more prominent part of the story given how much time we spent on Kamino in the first episode, at least. Even here, we don’t get to see all that much in terms of story progress. All we see is a quick scene of Crosshairs telling Rampart and Lama Su that he’s found Clone Force 99 and then buggers off to find them and we get a quick tease about another bounty hunter showing up and… that’s it?
I still don’t really know what I’m expecting from this show, even given that I really enjoyed this episode, but when it comes to breaking it down here, I just wish there was more to talk about.
2. Learning Is Fun™ with Wrecker
I loved this, though. The relationship between Omega and Wrecker is easily one of my favourite aspects of the show, second only to Omega and Hunter’s bond, so seeing Wrecker teach her about explosives was a lot of fun. It’s one of those little details that feels like it elevates the whole premise, by showing these five clones, who are all weird and broken and messed up in the own way, come together to raise this kid right with their own style and temperament, we become part of this little family. It’s charming as hell, both in terms of writing and scene construction down to the animation and the always spectacular voice acting. It’s a scene that’s little more than a footnote compared to the rest of the episode, but one that I really had fun with.
3. Desperate Times, Desperate Measures
I wish the show would lean harder into how desperate the Bad Batch are at this point in time. Sure, they’re stripping a Jedi Cruiser for parts in order to sell weapons on the black market to make some cash and that’s pretty damn desperate, but I would like to see them dig deeper into the moral quandaries of these soldiers of the Republic turned soldiers of fortune. Echo brings it up to Hunter and there’s a brief back and forth between them in which Echo basically says “I don’t care for this” and Hunter replies “No one cares” and then it’s dropped for the rest of the episode. Maybe it’s unfair to come into this show with this mindset, but considering that the other show I’m watching for the site, CW’s Superman & Lois, has some of the tightest thematic character writing I’ve ever seen on telly, it makes this show stand out as feeling pretty hollow, all in all. Sure, everything is well written and plot moves at a clip and all of the big action setpieces certainly work and the animation is stunning and the voice acting is all impeccable and I really want to sit here and praise all of that, but none of it is resonating with me and I can’t put my finger on why. There’s just something that hasn’t clicked, some piece of the puzzle that hasn’t fallen into place and I don’t know what it is yet, but I hope I do by the time the season is over.
Continued below4. Imperial Might
As I’ve mentioned, something I’ve felt has been missing from the Bad Batch is a genuine sense of threat. It was certainly something that permeated The Clone Wars with its constant battlegrounds and political machinations showing a galaxy where no measure of peace couldn’t be interrupted by the ever expanding war and drove Rebels as it portrayed its characters as underdogs in a time when the Empire was at the height of its power. Even Resistance had it’s own share of tension as the shadowy machinations of the First Order shook Leviathan Station. Here, though, The Bad Batch has only paid slight dividends to the ascendant Empire and that was mostly in the form of credit chips and hanger bay guards.
Here, though, I finally felt like this show was hitting on something right. Having Crosshairs be an active pursuer, someone constantly trying to outthink his former comrades who knew him just as well as he knew them, raised the stakes on what was essentially just an episode about getting off Bracca in one piece to a level that made that story prospect exciting. The escalation of the cat and mouse game between the two parties always kept Clone Force 99 on the backfoot, always looking for unexpected ways of avoiding capture and death, and to end with the detonation of an ion engine was honestly one of the highlights of the series. This is more like, this is where this show feels like something I want to keep coming back to each week.
5. Crosshairs & Gunslingers
A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one. It’s always nice to see Cad Bane back and given that he didn’t have any part to play in Rebels, it felt safe to say (for a while there, at least) that Star Wars was taking it as wrote that Boba Fett did, in fact, kill Bane in the final days of the war, even if that arc of The Clone Wars was never finished or aired. His presence was sorely missed outside The Clone Wars as the striking, immediately alien yet oddly familiar visage of the Duros in a leather duster and cowboy with his trusty blasters at his hip was one that continually appealed to me throughout that show. Even though this cameo, such as it is, is only a tease of what is to come, I find it interesting that Bane was brought back in the same episode where Hunter and Crosshairs come face to face again.
This show has been sorely lacking a sense of immediate threat or danger from which our heroes must evade at all times, something that surely defines this era of the galaxy, and having not just the might of the Empire but also the bounty hunter of this time interfere with their affairs? That speaks to happenings bigger than anything we’ve seen so far in a way that actually has me excited to see what comes next for the first time, maybe, since seeing the first episode. I really hope this pans out for the better.
