Warning: spoilers for the first four episodes of Season 2 of Star Wars: The Bad Batch below.
With new planets, old friends, and even a revamped version of the podracing from The Phantom Menace, The Bad Batch Season 2 is launching a galaxy of ideas into the galaxy far, far away. We’re four episodes out of 16, and while the bruised Clone Force 99 is likely headed off on an epic mission that surpasses the searing season one finale on Kamino, for now it’s hard to see how we’ll get there.
Following the two-part start to the second season of Bad Batch, Crosshair-focused episode three brought back Commander Cody from Revenge of the Sith, while episode four brought Omega, Tech and Wrecker to the new location of Safa Toma. Series creator Dave Filoni offers fans a journey through the Outer Rim, but Is this disjointed narrative doomed to repeat the mistakes of The Walking Dead?
a confusing story
It may seem hard to equate a world of Wookiees with walkers, but in the seventh season of The Walking Dead, (then) showrunner Scott M. Gimple decided to split the characters into pairs for what became something of an anthology. Following the mystery of who Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) bludgeoned to death in the season six finale, 17.03 million people tuned in to the series to watch subsequent episodes, making the season seven premiere the biggest second most-watched episode in the series’ history.
The Walking Dead Season 7 was heavily criticized for the dispersal of the main group into smaller factions with a more episodic approach. The heavily criticized season seven episode followed Tara (Alanna Masterson) and Heath (Corey Hawkins) marking their final appearance on the series and leaving us with a cliffhanger that has been plaguing fans for the past six years. There is concern that if The Bad Shipment follows suit, its most important characters could get lost in the shuffle. Part of what made the first season special was the dynamic between Omega and the Bad Batch, how he related to each clone differently and his different personalities.
During the Bad Batch episode, we barely had two words from Omega because the action focused on Tech and the newcomer character TAY-0 (Ben Schwartz). We still don’t know much about AZI-3 (Benjamin Diskin), aside from being relegated to the background in Cid’s living room, while Nala Se (Gwendoline Yeo) hasn’t been seen since the season one finale. It is to be hoped that The Bad Shipment avoids losing its increasingly numerous characters in these side missions And, as Cody’s return shows, Filoni is getting it.
The bad batch seems fine for now, but Dividing Clone Force 99 Could Repeat The Mistakes Of The Walking Dead. And, for those who aren’t convinced The Walking Dead season seven didn’t drop the ball with its split-narration, Gimple addressed the issue ahead of season eight. The showrunner told EW: “We knew what it was going to be. season 8 and how that was going to dictate a very different kind of structure… So, yeah, things are going to move, and we may not have the kind of deep dives into the characters in individual episodes, but we’ll be putting the pieces as we go along.”
A galaxy of two halves
However, not all stories in The Bad Shipment move at the pace of a walker. The series is clearly headed somewhere and introduced a prominent adversary with ties to Cid (Rhea Perlman) in episode 4. There’s a chance Grini Millegi (Ernie Hudson) might return later on, but if not, his story works. just as well casting doubt on Cid’s intentions and possibly making her the person who will inevitably sell the team to the Empire. The fact that the series sits between trilogies doesn’t lock it into the standard Skywalker Saga as much as you might think.and if we continue down the path of the anthology, we are crying out for an episode about the origin of Cid.
If this Walking Dead-like formula doesn’t pan out in season two, there’s still time for The Bad Batch to adjust its course, as this bizarre split story is happening much earlier in the series than it did in The Walking. Dead. What Bad Batch season 2 brings in terms of group episodes remains to be seen, but as long as a reunion between Crosshair and the rest of the batch is on the cards, it’ll feel like we’ve gone somewhere. Just as Gimple tried to adjust The Walking Dead after criticism of season seven, Filoni’s love of fandom and source material means he’s always willing to adjust course if it is really necessary.
With Crosshair as a former member of the group, the anthological style of La remesa mala has so far managed to live up to its name. The team is still the core, and ultimately we will never get to a point where everything is missing in action like in the later seasons of The Walking Dead, where Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) is missing. Both Star Wars and The Walking Dead have a habit of testing characters for their spinoffs, but since The Bad Batch doesn’t seem to be preparing any, you should avoid such complaints. The core of The Bad Batch is still the starting team, but if we can fill Cid’s Ord Mantell hall with more wavering droids and outcast clones to prepare for a mythical third season, we’ll be all for it.
