When I reviewed the first eight episodes of The Bad Batch’s final season, I was a little underwhelmed. Those episodes were mostly setup, and I expected the story to really get cooking in Season 3’s second half. And I wasn’t wrong about that. While Episodes 1-8 could be a frustratingly slow burn at times, Episodes 9-14 are all action, all payoff – and that’s all before this week’s series finale. If it’s anything like the past few weeks of The Bad Batch, fans are in for a treat. And by “treat” I mostly mean a really huge monster. This is the Bad Batch, after all.
But let’s start with some obvious highlights, namely Ventress. Ever since she popped up in the trailer for Season 3, fans have wondered how she’s even alive, since she apparently met her demise at the end of the still-very-much-canon-novel Dark Disciple. If you were hoping The Bad Batch would explain how she survived a fistful of point-blank Force lightning from her former master, Count Dooku, well… sorry to say, that doesn’t happen. The only explanation Ventress gives is intentionally vague, which is honestly kind of refreshing.
I have always been the kind of Star Wars fan who loves to keep meticulous track of the canon and how certain characters get from point A to point B. Generally speaking I like to have all of those details spelled out and for the most part, Lucasfilm obliges. But maybe just this once, we can leave some of those details in the shadows. The important part is Ventress is back and that’s the part of this we should be focusing on.
Of course just because they’re not explicitly telling us her survival story here in The Bad Batch doesn’t mean it won’t be told someplace else. Tales of the Jedi, Season 2, perhaps?
Ventress is only around for one episode of The Bad Batch, but where she pops up makes a lot of sense: As part of Season 3’s focus on Omega, her (mild spoilers for the first half of the season) M-count, and the fact that her blood could hold the key to manufacturing Force sensitivity in clones. Also, it’s just cool to see Ventress back again, wielding a single yellow-bladed lightsaber with the signature curved hilt. The idea that we could see more of her in the future is exciting, and her episode winds up being a pretty important one.
But she’s not the only face from the past to appear in these episodes – The Empire hires bounty hunters to retrieve Omega after she escapes their new secret cloning facility. Which of course leads them to Cad Bane, who has already popped up in The Bad Batch. His is another brief appearance that, thankfully, moves the story forward and continues to raise the stakes. Additionally: It’s Cad Bane. I always love it when he pops up. He’s the perfect kind of wild card to throw into any story at multiple points on the timeline to ratchet up the tension. Plus, he’s just cool.
As a series, The Bad Batch continues to fill in important gaps in Star Wars lore, planting the seeds of Moff Gideon’s Mandalorian plot to capture Grogu and Sheev Palpatine’s Rise of Skywalker return with its Project Necromancer thread, and giving viewers a real look at what life would have been like under Imperial rule. One aspect of this is how The Empire treats its prisoners. Andor also did this, to pretty dramatic effect: The prison break on Narkina V was one of the high points of that show’s first season. The Bad Batch also brings us into the bowels of the Imperial cloning facility, where Force-sensitive children are being held in very prison-like conditions. And just like we saw on Andor, escaping Imperial facilities like these isn’t impossible, it just takes a little planning.
I can’t say that Omega’s time in Imperial lockup was quite as dramatic as what we saw in Andor, but that’s only because Andor set the bar so high (“I can’t swim!”). But watching Omega hatching her escape plan serves a different purpose: In a sense, this marks her graduation to full-blown Bad Batch Member status. Yes, she’s been a part of the team since Season 1, but since then, and thanks to this storyline, she’s developed into a Batch-trained operative who the Rebel Alliance might make use of one day. Andor’s prison break happened so Andy Serkis could chew up some scenery. The Bad Batch’s prison break is all about Omega’s ascension to what comes next for her.
She is, of course, is at the center of all of this, because The Bad Batch was really all about her all along. Over the course of three seasons, we’ve seen her learn from her clone brothers, and now as we near the end of the series, we’re about to see her graduate to a skilled agent-of-chaos. Ultimately I think this is a good thing for Star Wars. Keep in mind that Omega is a Dave Filoni character – just like Ahsoka Tano. Star Wars fans have been able to watch Ahsoka grow from a green pre-teen in The Clone Wars to one of the most experienced and skilled Force-wielders in two galaxies. We love Ahsoka, but a huge part of that comes from the fact that we know where she came from. We’ve watched her grow every step of the way. The same in now true of Omega, and she’d be a perfect character to get the Ahsoka treatment and take on a larger role in the Star Wars saga.
Once again, I haven’t seen the series finale, but I have to think (and hope) that Omega’s story continues after the series wraps. I’m much more worried about the fate of her frequent Season 3 companion Crosshair. He’s proven time and again that he’s still a member of The Bad Batch and he regrets betraying his brothers to The Empire, but his redemption arc now feels complete, which doesn’t give him the best odds for surviving the finale.
Which leads to the big question I have, pre-finale: When will we see these characters again? There’s lots for Lucasfilm to do with Omega, especially if she winds up training with someone like Asajj Ventress in the future. She’s Force-sensitive, she’s basically Boba Fett’s sister, and The Empire will be hunting her kind for decades. The rest of Experimental Clone Force 99, unfortunately, are kind of disposable, something they have slowly come to understand as The Republic fell and was replaced by The Empire. And that’s in line with how they’re treated in this back half of Season 3: Hunter and Wrecker are certainly present in the season, but their roles take a backseat to Omega and Crosshair’s character development. Echo seems relegated to the background, and outside of Wanda Sykes’ character Phee Genoa, he’s barely mentioned at all, despite his dramatic, apparent death in the Season 2 finale.
The Bad Batch endeavored to tell the story of what happened to the clone troopers after The Empire rose and replaced them all with conscripted stormtroopers. Ultimately, I think the show has been successful in that. The only step left for Hunter, Wrecker, Crosshair, and Echo is for them to do the most Star Warsy thing imaginable and sacrifice themselves so Omega and the other child prisoners can escape.
