The last few episodes of The Bad Batch have been superb with the arc involving Ryloth and featuring Hera, familiar to anyone who has watched the magnificent Star Wars: Rebels.
So, given there are only four episodes remaining before the Episode 16 climax, I was REALLY looking forward to this.
Filler. That is not all I have to say, but frankly it says it all. It’s actually not entirely true. But it is….mostly.
The episode opens with Cid having been ousted from her bar/club with Roland Durand having taken over. Omega convinces the Batch that they need to help Cid reclaim her club. They discover that Roland is making a spice delivery to the Pikes and that, if he fails to do so, he’ll be toast. So the Batch steal the spice and get Roland into trouble. In every good kids TV show worth its salt, noone should benefit from theft and so it is here. The Pikes will kill Roland for non-delivery, that’s a moral boundary too far so the Batch have to recover the spice again to save his neck. The only thing in the way is a barely dormant swarm of insect-ish creatures that seem mightily grumpy if they’re woken up and, well, you know where the spice is.
It doesn’t take a dozen brain cells to figure out how this one ends up and that’s the episodes worst trait. Recent episodes have been genuinely surprising, maybe even shocking, in places. This was just a very predictable plod through 25 minutes that left the viewer no better off than when they started. There was no character development to speak of, no big reveals and no progress on the wider arc that has been building over the last 4-5, extremely enjoyable episodes.
Every show has its moments. I remember reviews through the last season of Rebels bemoaning how many were filler. Like that show, I’m convinced this show will end extremely well. That is something Dave Filoni seems to be extremely adept at making happen. It’s just a shame that there are lulls like this along the way. Why would Disney not just save the time and money and sign up a show for 12 episodes instead of 16 if the writers can’t figure out a way to fill that space with continuous momentum?
Bottom line, however, is that this show has been something of a revelation to me. For the overwhelming proportion of the series, the writing has been excellent and I’m still extremely excited to see what the last three episodes bring!
