OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)After the events of last season, Omega tries to adapt to her new life at the Imperial Cloning Facility but still does her best to keep hope alive that she’ll escape. Unknown to her, Nala Se and fellow clone Emerie Karr are keeping her blood samples from testing to protect her, but a surprise visit from the Emperor forces their hand. Along with a remorseful Crosshair, Omega commandeers an abandoned ship and escapes, though only once Dr. Hemlock learns that she needs to be taken alive, as her blood is exactly what the Emperor is seeking.Meanwhile, Clone Force 99 continues their search for Omega as best they can, but are only down to Hunter and Wrecker. In their search, they come across some abandoned younger clones who escaped from Hemlock’s facility and drop them off on Pabu.OUR TAKEThe Bad Batch returns for its third and final season to wrap up not just the story of Clone Force 99, but to truly bring the Clone Wars to an end. Bad Batch as a show has always had this weird feeling to me, ever since it started, for a few reasons. It’s a sequel to The Clone Wars, which had only just managed to have a conclusive ending the year before. It’s also, strangely, a prequel to Rebels, which supposedly was only made in the first place because of Clone Wars’ premature cancellation, so it also takes into account the backstories of characters who appear in that. So, it makes for this odd trilogy of Dave Filoni-involved shows with overlapping characters that just happens to end in the middle of the other two. As such, it didn’t quite click for me why this had to be a multiple season series, as opposed to a miniseries or movie, at least as I watched the first season. Even after watching the second and now here reviewing the third, the key aspects of showing the creeping transition from the end of the Republic to the iron grip of the Empire feel like they could be trimmed down to just a handful of episodes.But here we are, in the closing chapters of a ragtag band of rogue clones trying to carve out a corner of the galaxy now that their war is over, and their little (but technically older) sister who gave them a reason to go on. Despite getting a three episodes right off the bat, the plot of all three are pretty simple, with the first and last focusing on Omega escaping her capture at the end of the last season, while some of her brothers, leader Hunter and heavy Wrecker, try to find her. Crosshair, the one of the group who willingly joined the Empire at the start of the series, now fully understands how much he messed up and is now on his path to redemption, which they’ll need since losing the logical Tech in the previous finale.The absence of Echo is noticeable, but it can be assumed that he’s still working with Rex, as he chose to do partway through last season, and will no doubt appear again at some point. It would frankly be weird if he DIDN’T show up, considering his first appearance goes all the way to the first season of The Clone Wars. And it’s also worth pointing out that the stuff that Omega is being experimented on is to help create a clone body for Palpatine, which sounds pretty neat until you remember this leads to The Rise of Skywalker. Still, great start to the final season.
