This week we get another twofer of “Star Wars: The Bad Batch,” as the series’ endgame is about to get set up.
Episode 10 “Identity Crisis” focuses on Mount Tantiss scientist Emerie Karr (Keisha Castle-Hughes), who has just replaced Nala Se (Gwendoline Yeo) as chief scientist of the facility and is the biological sister of Omega (Michelle Ang). Karr gets greater clearance on Project Necromancer upon her promotion, and we see her oversee the testing and care of captured children who have high M-counts (midichlorians, which are responsible for making people Force sensitive).
Dr. Royce Hemlock (Jimmi Simpson), who is her direct and only superior on the base, treats these children like property, as do the Clone Commandos who staff it. But Karr is compassionate, much like how she treated Omega, and we can see that she deeply disagrees with how the children are treated, though she doesn’t openly resist the Empire or try to impede its research.
Hemlock also gets a call from Admiral Tarkin (Stephen Stanton), who has been kept out of the loop of Project Necromancer and is probing Tantiss’ steep costs. He openly threatens Hemlock, which will inevitably be carried out when the Bad Batch rescues Omega and presumably guts Project Necromancer in future episodes. We don’t know much about the inner workings of the program, but it’s fairly safe to bet that it has something to do with Emperor Palpatine returning in “The Rise of Skywalker” via an imperfect clone body.
Episode 11 “Point of No Return” follows up on the unnamed clone assassin that has been tracking Omega. He manages to find her through someone the Bad Batch has been in frequent contact with, proving Asajj Ventress’ point from Episode 9 that the group isn’t as safe as they think they are. He even uses a similar (if not the same) cave under the island city that Ventress used to hide his ship!
The assassin threatens to burn the island unless Omega turns herself in. Feeling confident that she can find a way to communicate her location to the Bad Batch and company, she surrenders willingly.
These episodes were pleasant, but they should have been only one. Episode 10 in particular drags; while it’s a decent attempt at developing Emerie, it just takes too long to get to the point and doesn’t use its time effectively. This is less so the case for Episode 11, but it too suffers from too much time on its hands, as it seems to milk scenes of Omega and Crosshair (Dee Bradley Baker) sneaking around, witnessing the assassin’s devastation, before it settles on its predictable conclusion.
Omega has been captured — voluntarily or not — so many times that it’s comical. “Star Wars: The Bad Batch” in a way boils down to its titular crew playing hot potato with her and the series’ villains.
The show as a whole is frustrating, as it’s stifled from having too much time that it doesn’t know how to fill. Each season — including this one — should have been no more than 12 episodes. It has some of the best “Star Wars” moments, including some really cool and needed worldbuilding for what it was like for clones right after Order 66, and how the Empire came to the conclusion that it needed to phase them out. But it’s also filled with vast swathes of nothing episodes that you can skip, which is why I think it hasn’t resonated like “Rebels” and “Clone Wars,” and why this season will ultimately be its last.
“Star Wars: The Bad Batch” Season 3: Episodes 10 and 11 get a 7/10
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