Season Review: Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2

I’ve been on the fence for a lot of this season of The Bad Batch. Dare I say, I’ve been conflicted. If you’ve been following the reviews for The Bad Batch this season, the one thing that can be said is that it’s been a roller coaster. When the episode hit all cylinders, the episode was phenomenal. However, the when the wheels spin, the episode gets stuck in the mud. Okay, I think I’ll be done with the car metaphors for a little while.

The two part premiere, “Spoils of War” and “Ruins of War” was an absolute banger. This picked up after the finale of season one, with the team picking up the pieces of Kamino getting destroyed. They’re trying to raise funds and keep themselves out of the scope of the Empire…by stealing from the Empire. That doesn’t work out so well, because they’re still getting into the Empire’s shit. At points, it felt like the story was better when the team wasn’t the focal point.

For example, I thought “The Clone Conspiracy” and “Truth and Consequences” were a phenomenal pair of episodes. Much like The Clone Wars and Rebels, the episodes get better when there is more time to breathe. There is no possible way that you could have smashed all of this into one episode and make it work. If there is one thing that this season should teach the writers for The Bad Batch, it’s don’t be afraid of two-part episodes. They’re more advantageous.

One thing to mention, though is seeing Crosshair coming back, and seeing his arc. He came back as a stooge for the Empire, following orders like a good soldier. However, as his episodes kept going, you see how the orders pushed him to question the motives, and soon to act on them. Crosshair shot his commanding officer and killed him. However, that landed him into the hands of the evil of the season, doctor Hemlock. This was the linchpin to get us to the very surprising finale, “The Summit” and “Plan 99.” I had my money on the team fighting a giant kaiju zillo monster, so the heart wrenching two parter with a surprising cameo with Saw Guerra caught me very off guard.

Unfortunately, after the next few episodes, that’s when the season begins to feel like the wheels are falling off. There are plenty of episodes, like “Faster” that just spins out of control fast. These non-canon episodes really just didn’t hit the spot. Sure, some of them tickle the nostalgia spots, like “Faster” did by doing the pod-racing from Episode 1 right, but it did fuck all to advance the world. The world around this race was frozen while Cid was getting herself kidnapped by a bigger mob boss. The only thing that really connected this episode to anything was Millegi telling the team that Cid may turn on them. That seems to be a common string with the non-canon episodes. They’ll seem disconnected, then they’ll have this one string that connects later that only connects later. It feels like shitty storytelling.

Besides complaining about storytelling, sound design and visual effects are beautiful. Headphones almost feel necessary, especially if you have surround sound. In battle scenes like in “Metamorphosis,” this is the perfect marriage of storytelling, sound design, and visual effects. The sound design of the zillo monster, ships, and blasters, as well as the colorful explosions and lightning shoots going everywhere made everything look beautiful. I’ll give the good it’s due.

It felt like after “The Solitary Clone,” ended, we just sat on our hands until we got to “The Clone Conspiracy,” which could have been a three part episode. Then we hit a bunch of nothing until we Get “Metamorphosis,” Then the season just goes into overdrive. We could have been given more time to develop Hemlock, because I felt like he was just dumped on us at the final hour, because the season didn’t really have a final boss.

However, season two didn’t really didn’t feel like a full season. This felt like a season that set up a second season. This was the John Cena / Rock 1 to set up their second match the next year. I’ll accept this, because this season set up some really huge things I kind of expected for this season. And if I get those expectactions fulfilled during this next season, I’m all for it.

That said, while my expectations were not met, the more low-key season finale did more for character movement than destroying an entire planet for a second time. Having your team get betrayed by one of their “friends,” one member of the team die, and another get captured will do more for the development of your main characters than more large scale destruction. This is more relatable, and I can get behind it.

All in all, there’s more good than bad. If you can binge the season, go for it. It makes the filler episodes easier to digest than getting them drip fed week to week. Shit, if you skip them, you may miss something that could be useful next season. There isn’t anything missing outside of that one seemingly throwaway line from “Faster” from this season, but you never know. Just watch them. Binge watching them was much more enjoyable. I promise.