Review: Star Wars: The Bad Batch “A Different Approach”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Omega and Crosshair make their way across the system to look for the rest of their team, coming across multiple obstacles, including needing to bribe several people, gamble their way to having enough money to do so, only to then run from an imperial officer and steal a cargo ship. Eventually they manage to signal Hunter and Wrecker and the Bad Batch is finally reunited…mostly.

OUR TAKE

This episode is basically a bridge to get the escaped Omega and Crosshair to meet up with Hunter and Wrecker, no more, no less. We needed an episode to do that and it’s good that it happened sooner rather than later. Plus it’s good to let Omega get some proper quality time with the one member of the Bad Batch she hasn’t had that time with before, that being Crosshair. They obviously met in the first episode of the series and briefly in the first season finale where she showed she still thinks of him as one of her brothers, as well as seemingly had regular brief interactions during their months at the facility they just came escaped from, but now we get to see them paired up and playing off each other, as well as the results of their respective character developments. Omega has gone from the bright eyed and sheltered girl who somehow held onto her innocence to someone who has seen a lot of galaxy, for good and for bad, as well as dealing with Echo leaving the team and Tech sacrificing himself, only for her to then be captured and had her freedoms restricted. Crosshair, meanwhile, willingly chose the newly formed Empire over his brothers, twice, and was reminded multiple times that he was only a convenient tool who would be discarded when he got out of line. Glad he finally wised up, better late than never.

That all said, as fun as it is seeing them get to interact with each other like this and work together when before they were on opposing sides…it almost feels like it UNDERutilized this opportunity of getting the two of them alone. Nothing really about Crosshair reflecting on his time with the Empire compared to his time with Force 99, or even teaming up with other clones whilst with the Empire. Nothing really about Omega sharing what the other guys thought of Crosshair after he betrayed them, or even a mention of Tech. I’m sure Omega told Crosshair about Tech by now anyway, but just a little acknowledgement of it would’ve gone a long way to better show how far these two have come and how they’re at this point. Not that they couldn’t still have these scenes together later on in the season, but this seemed like a really good time and very odd not to make use of it. Still, plenty of time to do stuff now that everyone, sans Echo, is together again. Although, as some have pointed out, the fact that they’ve reassembled this early on likely means something big is coming…