I really enjoyed this week’s Bad Batch.
The Plot
It opens with Crosshair pursuing the Bad Batch as they process the loss of Omega. Hunter doesn’t want to make the jump to hyperspace without her, but the others make him realize they cannot rescue her if they are also dead or captured.
Hunter decides to jump.
Meanwhile, Omega tricks Todo, Bane’s droid, and successfully escapes her jail cell. While she’s doing this, it’s confirmed that the Kaminoan Prime Minister, Lama Su, has contracted Bane to capture her, presumably because she has first generation DNA from Jango Fett. Lama Su instructs Taun We to rendezvous with Bane at one of the Kaminoan abandoned facilities. Lama Su thinks Nala Se’s interest in Omega has jeopardized their objectives. Still, his suspicions don’t stop him from ordering Nala Se to terminate Omega once her genetic material has been retrieved.
Does any of this make sense? Of course not. The Kaminoans are already negatively affected by the lack of Jango Fett’s source DNA, so let’s kill one of the only two clones who have first generation genetic material. And, on top of that, the Prime Minister will put someone he already doesn’t trust in charge of doing the deed.
Perfect sense. Extremely logical. This is definitely not going to back fire in any way whatsoever.
Things look bad for Omega when Bane catches up with her just in time for Taun We to be shot by none other than Fennec Shand. The two bounty hunters clash while Omega runs for it.
It should come as no surprise given the title that Omega successfully escapes and is reunited with the Bad Batch. It’s also revealed Nala Se contracted Shand to keep Omega away from Lama Su.
At the end of the episode, Hunter promises Omega she’ll never go back to Kamino, no matter how many bounty hunters Lama Su sends after them.
The Good
Hunter’s reluctance to jump even though their shields are barely holding, and it’s the only logical choice remaining, harkens back to the mantra that they don’t leave people behind. This motif appeared over and over in The Clone Wars, and the Bad Batch carries it onward with the realization they did the same to Crosshair.
Ironically, when they jump, they also leave Crosshair behind again.
The scenes with Omega and Bane (well, mostly Todo) were as good as I hoped they would be. Todo is such a cute joy, I have to echo Omega’s sentiments about Bane not taking care of him — but of course, this is no surprise as Bane once turned Todo into a bomb. Bane doesn’t care about Todo or anyone really, except his credits.
That Bane’s rendezvous with the Kaminoans is on one of their abandoned facilities lends a metaphorical atmosphere to Omega’s confession to Hunter: she doesn’t want to end up in a test tube back on Kamino. As she flees through a ghostly fog, she stumbles into a room full of cloning tubes lit in sickly green. She takes a moment to touch the surface of one with her bound hands, to look at the clone inside through her own reflection. She sees her past, and later, her possible future.
The revelation that what makes Omega so unique is her first generation DNA also doesn’t make a lot of sense. The revelation posits her with Boba, Alpha and Omega, as the only remaining clones who have first generation DNA. Even though Boba wasn’t exactly under the radar with his bounty hunter antics in The Clone Wars, Bad Batch really expects me to believe Boba has disappeared to the point that the Kaminoans can’t find him. Okay.
That the Kaminoans are so obsessed with their Jango Fett clones also doesn’t make sense to me. In Attack of the Clones, Dexter refers to the Kaminoans as “them cloners.” The Kaminoans don’t have a cloning start-up where they invested all their savings and their investors’ funding into the cloning contract for the Republic. So why are they acting like this one contract, out of the countless contracts they’ve probably had with the galaxy, is life or death for them?
We may never know.
Notice I’ve still put this under “the Good ” because, in all honesty, I don’t really care. Plot has always been secondary in importance to me, and if this is the tale Star Wars wants to spin, I’ll accept, if only for the golden possibilities of juxtaposing these poor kid clones as Alpha and Omega.
Do I want Omega to show up in the Book of Boba Fett? Absolutely. Not only do we have this intriguing thematic entanglement, but this episode delivered the solid performance of Shand trying to convince Omega to go with her. That her opening words to Omega are “the only person you can rely on is yourself” is thematically relevant for both their stories.
The Bad Batch drives home over and over again that Omega can rely on Hunter and Wrecker and all the others. It is because of their inter-reliance they are able to succeed and survive. For as many times that Omega has been told to stay behind, her decision not to is lifesaving and game changing. Shand is wrong: it’s not too late to meet with the Bad Batch, and they did get there in time to save her.
When viewers first meet Shand in The Mandalorian, she is on her own. Hunted by bounty hunters in turn, she tries to play one against the other, only to be shot and left for dead–to be found by none other than Boba Fett. In return for saving her life, she is now in his service, and helps him take control of Jabba’s palace, ruled by Bib Fortuna. For someone who recommended Omega to only rely on herself, Shand is intimately connected to Omega’s brother, even if the circumstances of that connection are morally complicated. Shand’s connection to both Fetts is interesting, and it would make poetic sense for Omega to show up in the Book of Boba Fett.
How disgusting was it when Omega cracked the cloning tube, dumping a dead clone in its clone goo onto Shand? I love when Star Wars dabbles in the horror genre, and this moment is no exception.
The Bad
I’m assuming there’s more to Omega than simply having first generation genetic material. She is not just a clone of Jango’s. Not only did Tech initially describe her as an enhanced clone, but she does not look like Boba.
Disney has always had a problem with including queer characters into their canon, and Star Wars is no exception. Even though I love the thematic symmetry of Alpha and Omega, it frustrates me that Disney did not simply commit to a clone of Jango Fett being a girl.
Not only is Star Wars stuck in its cis centered experiences of gender, but since Omega is (at least in part) a first generation clone of Jango, then that means she is also an officially white washed character as well.
Conclusion
“Bounty Lost” is a strong episode that rests on interesting action showcasing a softer, more vulnerable side to Shand (even if she was just trying to convince Omega to come with her without a fight). The internal conflict between the Kaminoans is enacted in real time by Bane getting his butt kicked by Shand, and there’s just enough cute robot shenanigans to juxtapose the understated themes of horror.