Last week’s episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch concluded with the team settling down on the island paradise of Pabu to avoid Cid and attempt a peaceful existence. While the decision is made under the guise of helping the people rebuild after a devastating tsunami, Hunter desperately wants to give Omega something resembling an actual childhood.
Oh, and Tech and Phee are apparently an item.
This week, the series finally gets back on track with an episode featuring both Crosshair AND the Bad Batch.
As always, the recap portion of this review will contain plenty of spoilers along with some brief explorations of Star Wars lore. The order of events has also been streamlined a bit for the sake of clarity.
Class Reunion
Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Disney+)
The episode opens with a trio of clone prisoners (including our old friend Captain Howzer) on the factory world of Balmorra. They’re led by a squad of Imperial troopers onto a ship under the command of an Imperial Captain (Pearce). After the ship leaves the planet’s atmosphere, it’s immediately engaged by another ship under the command of Echo and Gregor.
*Side Note: It’s been a while since we saw Gregor. If you need a refresher on who he is, I’ve got you covered in my recap/review of his appearance last season.
Echo and Gregor board the Imperial vessel along with two other clone troopers named Nemec and Fireball. They easily take out the Imperial soldiers (with their weapons on stun, of course) and get to the bridge, where Pearce is having the ship’s data erased. As Echo begins retrieving what he can, Fireball attempts to interrogate the Imperial officer. Instead of answering any questions, he bites down on a suicide shocker, leaving them with only the partial/corrupted data. Echo wants to stay and keep working, but they’re forced to flee when Imperial reinforcements arrive.
Doctor Feelbad
Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Disney+)
Over on the Mount Tantiss Mad Science Facility, Crosshair is marched passed several imprisoned clones to a med room, where Emerie Karr warns him to cooperate with Dr. Hemlock. When Hemlock arrives, he actually praises Crosshair for gunning Lieutenant Nolan down before offering him a deal: The location of Clone Force 99 in exchange for his freedom.
Crosshair immediately recognizes that Hemlock is looking for Omega (who he refers to as “Imperial property”), but still refuses to cooperate, prompting the evil scientist to escalate things with an Interrogation Unit.
As Crosshair begins writhing in pain, Dr. Scalder walks in and informs Hemlock about what happened on Pearce’s ship, causing him to leave Karr to oversee things. During a break in the torture session, Crosshair manages to grab one of the troopers’ blasters. He takes down both soldiers in the room and the Interrogation Unit before demanding that Karr free him. After taking her access card, he makes a big show of changing the gun to a stun setting and incapacitating her…which is weird, right?
Anyway, he makes his way into a communications room and sends a coded message to the Bad Batch warning them that they’re being actively hunted. The room then fills with gas, which drops Crosshair to his knees. Hemlock walks in with a deep breath and a smirk, explaining that he developed an immunity to the gas before Crosshair succumbs to the fumes.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Disney+)
Meanwhile, Echo and Gregor bring their freed brothers back to Coruscant to hide out. They’re met by Senator Chuchi, who learns from Howzer that the Empire has been taking clones somewhere (you can probably guess where) that they don’t come back from. Echo tells the senator that the file he got from Pearce’s ship is incomplete and encrypted.
Luckily, he knows someone who can extract the data from it.
Driving Into Danger
Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Disney+)
Despite being the site of arguably the series’ worst episode, life is good for the Bad Batch on Pabu. Wrecker has found peaceful, constructive, and fun ways to utilize his talents while Omega learns how to fly the Maurader (with poor Tech looking like my dad did after I got my learner’s permit).
Hunter is clearly happy with how things are, but tells Mayor Hazard that he’s not ready to set down roots — especially since that might not be the safest thing for soldiers like them. Hazard counters by asking if being a soldier is all their lives are about.
Later, Omega is overjoyed to see Echo arrive for a visit. That evening, he tells Hunter about the network of freed clones he’s been building with Rex — all with a not-so-subtle guilt trip attached about Hunter and the rest of the Bad Batch chilling in paradise. Hunter says that he understands, but also points out that fighting against the Empire may be a never-ending battle that they can never win.
After Tech finishes decrypting the data Echo gave him, he reveals most of the stuff we knew already (except that Hemlock was originally expelled from the Republic for being an evil scientist). He also tells them that Crosshair apparently turned against the Empire and sent them a warning.
Everyone appears ready to go find him except Hunter, who believes their former teammate could be setting a trap.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Disney+)
Back at Mount Tantiss, Hemlock has a holocall with the infamous Moff Tarkin about Pearce’s ship being hijacked. Tarkin believes it was the work of rogue clones in their ranks — a problem that’s getting a lot worse lately. Hemlock counters that simply decommissioning clones won’t solve the issue. Instead, he should leavethem to him so he can do weird/terrible stuff to their bodies.
Tarkin tells Hemlock to have his mad science plan ready to be presented at an upcoming summit. After Tarkin logs off, he returns to the med room, where Crosshair has been restrained again. When the clone trooper rejects his offer a second time, Hemlock gleefully resumes the torture.
The Verdict
Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Disney+)
Bad Batch is rightfully criticized for how unnuanced most of its villains are, but they’re getting it right with Hemlock. The dude is definitely pure evil, but in a way that sends a chill down your spine. He’s controlled, self-assured, and devoid of empathy that he can still pretend to have when needed.
Speaking of empathy, damn this series for making me feel sorry for Crosshair again. He’s undoubtedly a cold-blooded murderer (except when the plot needs him to stun an important character), but the moment he tried to warn his brothers had me momentarily cheering like crazy for him — especially when you realize that he was also protecting Omega. I don’t think he truly cares about her (yet), but she’s important to his brothers, which means he won’t sell her out, either.
Even beyond the Hemlock/Crosshair scenes, the rest of the cast continued to shine. From the pure joy/hilarity of watching Tech’s flying lesson with Omega to the thrilling opening sequence, “Tipping Point” was a brilliant return to form for the series. Star Wars: The Bad Batch has been ridiculously uneven during its second season, but incredibly good when they get it right.
One of my only real complaints with the episode was that it missed a great opportunity to delve into clones disobeying orders when they still have their inhibitor chips in (and how Rex and Echo will broach the issue of taking them out). Perhaps this will be explored later, but it feels like a pretty big thing to leave up in the air right now — especially when we just had Howzer sitting right there.
That complaint aside, however, this episode was so good compared to the last one that it gave me whiplash. Let’s hope things stay this way for next week’s 2-part season finale.
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