Review: Star Wars: The Bad Batch “The Return”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Crosshair tries to settle back with the rest of the group, to understandable difficulty. Omega vouches for him, but Hunter and Wrecker are very hesitant to trust again. Echo returns to help follow up on Crosshair’s suggestions of searching an old outpost for a terminal to access Nala-Se’s datapad, but an attack from a giant wyrm forces the Batch to put their grudges aside and work together once again. With bonds mended, they plan to go back to Hemlock’s facility to retrieve their captured brethren.

OUR TAKE

Guess who’s back? Back again? Echo’s back! Tell a friend! And also AZI-3, but MOSTLY Echo! We’re a third of the way through the final season, but we’ve finally got The Bad Batch back together!…except Tech, but hey, five out of six ain’t bad. That’s still a solid B! B for Bad Batch! But seriously, it is actually pretty gratifying to see the boys start to work it out after being on opposing sides for basically the whole show. Well, Wrecker is pretty easy to start warming back up to Crosshair, being the lovable oaf, and even handing Cross back his old armor (not that I could really tell the difference between it and the one he wore with the Empire, but it’s the thought that counts). Echo is also keeping a cool head about this matter, so it’s really just Hunter who has the real beef to hash out with the prodigal clone. And hash it out they do, on a more than fitting location: Barton-4, the site of Crosshair’s final mission with the Empire before he finally came to his senses…but also a place he wouldn’t have ended up on if he had not sided with the Empire in the first place.

I’m not as attached to this show and these characters as others may be, but I’ve had weird feelings about Crosshair joining the Empire at the start of the show for awhile now. I do get the story function of it, as having one of the group stay with the Empire after its change was a good way to differentiate the ideologies and mindsets of the group. It also gave us a point of view character to let us see how the newly formed Empire was functioning, including how clones were being phased out with recruits and checking in with existing clones like Cody and Howzer. My issue with it is really just that I think he should’ve been able to tell things were wrong and that he was being treated like a tool, especially after he was left to die on Kamino and then STILL decided to go back to the Empire for most of Season 2. But he’s all up to speed now and he’s basically back in the good graces of everyone else again. And we only have ten episodes left so we got to cross that off the list quick. Anyway, we have a double whammy next week with two new episodes at once, so we’ll see what remaining cameos we can dig out for this show.