Review: Star Wars: The Bad Batch “Infiltration; Extraction”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Rex and his rogue cell of clones manage to catch one of the secret clone operatives that are sent to kill senators, not knowing that he contains a tracker for Hemlock’s team to send another, who is tasked to kill the captured clone and capture Omega. Rex calls in the Bad Batch to inform them, but is naturally surprised to find out Crosshair is among them. These clones are conditioned and have their identities erased, even down to their DNA, before being turned into tools to be activated. It turns out he was a candidate to become one of these operatives, but his mutations kept the process from working, but he still knows enough about them to explain it to the group. The second operative strikes, assisted by a platoon of Clone Commandos led by Commander Wolffe, take out many of Rex’s cell along with killing the captured operative, but he gets way after fighting Crosshair, but plans on continuing to pursue Omega. The remaining clones confront Wolffe, but try appealing to his loyalty to his clone brothers, which allows them to get away. Rex tells Hunter to keep Omega safe, as well as to find out what the “M-count” she’s needed for is.

OUR TAKE

This week brings us two new episodes at once, something that’s happened a few times in this show’s run (we even had a three episode premiere this season) and is gonna happen one more time in a couple weeks. And it’s just as well, since these two episodes are basically one long episode anyway, focusing solely on the confrontation of the Clone Commandos and the secret operative vs The Rex Batch and The Bad Batch. These operatives were introduced last season as assassins against whistleblower clones or politicians who weren’t compliant to the new Empire. We even briefly see Senator Chuchi, who advocated for clone pensions and retirements last season (in the episode that were arguably the most interesting part of Season 2 but incidentally did not feature the Bad Batch very much) at the beginning of the first episode with a former Separatist senator, starting to lay the groundwork for the rebellion before an operative strikes. And that’s a cool way of connecting the dots of this prequel/sequel/interquel to its surrounding installments, but it also ends up feeling like they are wringing out one more way to utilize the clones to justify this three season show about even more post-war clone stuff.

That said, these two episodes basically cut to the core of not only The Bad Batch as a series, following soldiers made for war as they find a purpose once that war is over and the side they fought for turned out to be a totalitarian regime, but also is a thrilling gun fight with intriguing threads to pull in the remaining half of this season. Omega is still a target for her M-Count (which may mean she’s force sensitive? Somehow???), so we’ll see where that leads. Crosshair is still proving his redemption to the rest of the rebel clones, reflecting on why he thought he should stay and why he left, but who knows if that means he’ll have to die to prove it. And the way Rex was able to convince Wolffe and the commandos to stand down shows that there is continued unrest amongst the clones that they may be able to exploit. And who is the operative chasing them? Is it a somehow alive Tech? That would be really sad, so maybe! As said, we’re now half way through this final season and things are come down to the wire, so hang onto your genetically identical butts!