This week’s Star Wars: The Bad Batch reminds me how much I prefer to watch episodes all at once. This is a set up episode without any actual pay off, leaving the viewer looking for that “next episode” button.
The Plot
The episode opens with Gregor pursued by beasts, later revealed to be under the control of other stormtroopers. Rex contacts the Bad Batch while they are doing a job for Cid, asking they retrieve Gregor. After a short debate, the Bad Batch agrees to help.
To their shock, they find a fully functional military base, hidden deep inside a mountain which cloaks the base’s existence from scans. The Bad Batch hesitates to pursue as they have no intel, no plan, and the risk of failure is great. Echo convinces them they did it before when they rescued him, and they need to do it again for Rex and Gregor. They agree, but leave Omega and Wrecker behind in the ship as backup.
They succeed in rescuing Gregor, but inadvertently trigger various alarms. The entire station pursues them as they realize they are fighting people who aren’t familiar clones, but rather, as Gregor describes it, their replacements.
As troopers press against them from all sides, all but Hunter barely escape. Hunter orders the others to leave him behind as he is surrounded by stormtroopers.
The episode closes with Crosshair confronting Hunter in his jail cell.
Meanwhile on Kamino, Nala Se and Lama Su realize their end is near. The Empire looms over them, threatening to destroy everything they’ve worked for. Lama Su advises Nala Se to evacuate, but she’s caught. It’s strongly suggested that Lama Su dies at the hands of the Empire, but Nala Se’s scientific knowledge and skills spare her from a similar death.
The Good
I was really happy to see Gregor. His arc in The Clone Wars didn’t sit right with me, and though I adored seeing him in Star Wars Rebels, that was always going to be a tragedy. It’s great to see him alive and making his own choice to leave as he realizes this new assignment isn’t for him.
Clearly, the best part of this episode will happen in next week’s: the inevitable confrontation of Crosshair and Hunter where they will be forced to talk to each other due to their respective circumstances.
The Bad
Gregor mentions the Empire doesn’t take kindly to deserters, to which Hunter replies with an emphatic, “Yeah, no kidding.” It’s an innocuous line on its own, perhaps, if viewers decide to just forget everything they know about the Republic and the clone troopers.
Or even just Rex meeting Cut, whom he instantly defines as a deserter in the episode eponymously titled “The Deserter.” The culmination of that episode is all about Rex deciding not to turn Cut into the authorities for desertion.
Hearing these two clone troopers discuss how the Empire doesn’t take kindly to desertion when the Republic didn’t either is extremely jarring.
Star Wars put forward this narrative that the Republic, a supposedly good, fair system of government, could easily become the Empire with a culmination of bad decisions.
And yet, The Bad Batch consistently seems to forget the Empire did not spring out of nowhere. It grew from the Republic. The Republic engaged in slavery to fight a war. The Republic fought its war with the lives and deaths of people who were told over and over again, since their youth, that their only purpose is to be a soldier. It doesn’t matter if some want families. It doesn’t matter if some just want to get the hell out. Those clones are deserters and traitors.
I just want some acknowledgement that the Republic didn’t take kindly to deserters, that the Republic traumatized the clones over and over. There needs to be some feelings about that.
I would stop complaining about it if The Bad Batch would stop asking me to forget about it.
In Conclusion
“War-Mantle” definitely performed some heavy lifting to pave the way for the final two episodes of the season, assuming viewers are buckling in for a three part arc culminating in the finale. I’m anxious for next week!