If there’s one thing you can count a Dave Filoni-produced “Star Wars” show to get right, it’s the ending. With “Star Wars: The Bad Batch” wrapping up with Season 3: Episode 15 “The Cavalry Has Arrived,” the show expectedly brings some of the best storytelling in the series and franchise.
Having arrived on Mount Tantiss to free Omega (Michelle Ang) and their brothers, Clone Force 99 slowly approaches the base from the jungle, while Omega works to create a diversion from within. Remember the detained Zillo beast that was introduced earlier? It becomes key to their escape, as Omega frees it and allows it to rampage.
Dr. Royce Hemlock (Jimmi Simpson) is a step ahead of the clones for most of the episode, though he drastically overestimates the competence of his brainwashed clone operatives against the Bad Batch and the clone prisoners Omega eventually frees.
Nala Se (Gwendoline Yeo), realizing that her science is too dangerous in the hands of the Empire, decides to do all she can to erase it, though she is almost stopped by Rampart (Noshir Dalal), who hopes to use it as leverage to get his old position back. I can’t say I’m surprised by Rampart’s betrayal, seeing as his arc would be too similar to Agent Kallus’ from “Star Wars: Rebels” if he defected, and the fact that he showed nothing but contempt for the Bad Batch despite the fact that they broke him out of prison.
Needless to say, this episode ties up almost all of its loose ends. Anyone who would have played a major role in the original trilogy perishes or retires. Everyone else lives on as a minor background character in the next great era of the galaxy.
Rampart and Hemlock are two great examples of this. Both don’t appear in any other “Star Wars” show after this one, or any “Star Wars” media for that matter — they were both created just for this show. And both are promptly disposed of, but not before Filoni and company manage to make them thoroughly reprehensible to the point where their demises are duly earned.
Omega, Wrecker, Hunter and Crosshair (the latter three voiced by Dee Bradley Baker) have a fitting and satisfying ending, with the elder Bad Batch members retiring on Pabu, while Omega eventually becomes a Rebel pilot as an adult. The clones they freed end up being able to choose how they want to live their lives.
This resolves perhaps the biggest unfinished business of “The Clone Wars” — what happened to them after Order 66? “The Bad Batch” documents their transition to planned obsolesce and how, despite their years of service, many had to fight for their retirement. It also explores how they were also victims of Order 66, an event that made so little sense in “Revenge of the Sith” that Filoni and company had to invent organic inhibitor chips that effectively took away their free will to explain it.
In this context, many clones started to wake up and realize that Emperor Palpatine forced them to kill their friends. And once the show opened Pandora’s Box, it realized that the Empire would go further, with its operative brainwashing program being the natural next evolution of the inhibitor chip.
With that being said, most of Season 3 can’t justify its existence. It mostly consists of middling filler that proves that, outside of Episode 14 and 15’s prison break story, it really had nothing left in the tank. If anything, most of Season 3 creates plot holes or unnecessary clutter, such as the operative’s devastating and needless attack on Rex’s base in Episode 6 and how Pabu got compromised by Asajj Ventress and the Empire — yet it’s somehow safe for Omega and company to live there years after the attack on Mount Tantiss.
Perhaps its biggest sin is the fact that it never explained what Project Necromancer is — we can only speculate. It seems obvious that it’s how Palpatine was able to make himself a clone body to pour his consciousness in at the end of “Return of the Jedi,” but without official confirmation, we can only speculate. Perhaps it’s what the Empire used Grogu for before his appearance in “The Mandalorian.”
As such, Episode 15 is great, but Season 3 overall is average and derivative.
“Star Wars: The Bad Batch” Season 3: Episode 15 gets a 9/10
“Star Wars: The Bad Batch” Season 3 gets a 7/10
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