The new Star Wars animated series, The Bad Batch takes place after the supposed end of the Clone Wars. They include Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, Echo, Crosshair, and a Gonk Droid. Caleb Dume hires them as reinforcements to help him and his Jedi master Depa Billaba’s soldiers fight against the Empire.
They go into action and within a few minutes take out a majority of the enemy. Afterward, Dume and Depa thank the Batch and get ready to have the rest of their soldiers launch a counterattack. However, Order 66 gets broadcast.
This causes their soldiers to attack Billaba and Caled. She manages to take their attention away from him allowing the teenager to run. However, unlike the rest of the Bad Batch who want to protect the young man, Crosshair aims his blaster at the teen and shoots at him.
This surprises the rest of the batch who must now protect Caleb from one of their own. As they near a cliff Hunter tries to convince Caleb he and his remaining men want to protect him. Caleb refuses to believe it, jumps off the cliff to land on the other side where he makes his escape into a forest.
Later back at their base at Kamino, they find it overrun by stormtroopers and hear the Clone war is over; the Empire has won. Yet the Bad Batch soon have their loyalty tested by Admiral Tarkin. They survive a live ammunition test only to be sent another mission to test their loyalty a second time.
This happens because Crosshair accuses the rest of the team of allowing Caleb to escape. The mission to take out insurgents, however, the team finds none instead families who are trying to escape the Empire.
Now the Bad Batch is more confused and heads back to Kamino for answers. Instead, they get arrested except for Crosshair who gets taken away to have his loyalty chip programming increased.
The first episode ends with the remaining Batch members escaping their prison cell with a little girl named Omega.
In the second episode Omega and the team hook up with Cut, a former soldier who is now married with kids. The reunion allows the team to catch up with Cut and find out more about what is going on.
Amid this Omega goes outside with Crew’s kids to play. She learns to catch a ball and toss it to the other kids. The fun ends when the ball goes beyond a wire fence. However, instead of leaving the ball Omega decides to get it only to have nexu.
Crew’s wife and the Batch go into action to scare the nexu away and save Omega. The rest of the episode has the Batch helping Crew and his family get off the planet and they want Omega to go with them.
The little girl does not want to yet she reluctantly agrees until the moment comes to board transport. Without speaking, she conveys to Crew and his wife that she will return to Hunter and the other Batch. Omega does so and escapes with them aboard their spacecraft.
I like these two episodes. The three-dimensional animation and the look of the characters is very good. I like the action and the connections made between the Bad Batch and Omega. The only thing that felt off is Caled who looks like a teenager but sounds like a grown man. I now know why Freddie Prince, Jr did little to change his voice to match his character.
