Has The Bad Batch S2 Ep. 6 crossed a threshold?
"Tribe" readies the series for change while putting a Wookiee twist on environmental allegory.
The Short Take:
A more serious turn that may signal a gear shift in the story. Great to see the return of a certain character, even if the trailer foretold it. Maybe a little heavy-handed at the end.
Image Credit: Collider
[SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen the episode yet, it’s not safe for you here. Also, vague spoilers for Rebels and The Clone Wars.]
The Long Take:
It’s happening. It’s happening? It’s happening.
I don’t want to be premature, but I think this episode may be the pivot point we’ve been waiting for. Or at least the precursor for it. The main criticism of this season so far has been that the individual episodes have not advanced an overarching plot. The most extreme version of this opinion is that nothing has happened so far. The more generous formulation is that while there is no obvious plot goalpost at this point, each of the individual adventures/missions still have developed key characters. Even those folks, though, are waiting. Patiently, but waiting nonetheless. What’s going to drive the arc of the season?
To me, this episode is a sign that the season arc may kick into gear very soon. It starts out like most of the ones before it. The squad find themselves on another job. They’re about to close the deal. But then, in a way that has not happened before, a moral dilemma emerges. Omega sees a young Wookiee, Gungi, captive and taking abuse from mobster droids, otherwise known as Vanguard Axis. (What a cool concept! I would love to see more of them, possibly pitted against another syndicate like The Pykes.) She immediately comes to his aid.
And you know what? The rest of The Bad Batch didn’t hesitate for a second. There was no initial refusal to help. There was no ostrich-ing. Not even any handwringing. They just did the right thing and sprang to the help of those in need. It barely took a nudge to do what Echo asked of Hunter at the start of the season. For them to do good and to do more. This gives both the audience and The Batch a taste of what a more heroic and less self-interested lifestyle might look like. Suddenly their largely unsuccessful romps after treasure just to make money don’t suit them as well as this.
Image Credit: Star Wars News Net
With several of the serialized animated series, I have often found myself in this position of telling viewers to have faith in Filoni’s storytelling (or in this case, that of Filoni’s proteges, Brad Rau and Jennifer Corbit). Rebels started out pretty innocuous, with many calling it a fun family adventure while questioning where the story was going. But then, across multiple seasons, we kept getting huge payoffs from carefully built stories, with seeds subtly planted in advance. How many viewers chortled at the goofy space whales, purrgils, in Season 2, only for them to become incredibly important and impactful in the fourth and final season? The finale of Season 1 of The Bad Batch had, to a lesser extent, similar culminating rewards after some skepticism earlier in the season.
With Season 2 of The Bad Batch, we may be in for a little bit more of a slow burn, but I see “Tribe” as enough of a key change from the Speed Racer episode, “Faster,” and the Indiana Jones episode, “Entombed,” that I think this is the beginning of the story avalanche. I could be wrong, but that’s the gut feeling I get from watching this episode.
And did I mention there were Wookiees?!?! Also an adorable Jedi Wookiee, Gungi? For those who have never seen the animated series The Clone Wars, we first meet Gungi in a multi-episode story arc in which a group of younglings go through a ritual to determine if they are ready to be Padawans. Gungi and his friends find their kyber crystals, build their lightsabers, but then get kidnapped by pirates. The whole arc is adorable. I had already seen Gungi in the trailer, but seeing him whip out his lightsaber for the first time was no less thrilling because of it. After not having seen any lightsaber fighting for so long (I’m being dramatic — we had Tales of the Jedi this past fall), seeing Gungi not only use his lightsaber but use it well was special. Between Gungi’s acrobatics and Krrsantan’s imposing appearance in The Book of Boba Fett, I’d say Wookiees are just crushing it right now.
Image Credit: Vulture
Going back to Kashyyyk, for me, is always a good time because the Wookiees are fierce and intimidating, but with a warmth and kindness that makes them endearing. I remember thinking that Kashyyyk was grand, even awe-inspiring when I first saw it in Revenge of the Sith (2005); as a kid I always fantasized about living in a giant treehouse, and this seemed like the epitome of that dream. Whenever I would go on the Star Tours ride at a Disney park, I would secretly hope that we’d get Kashyyyk in the random selection of planets. So it was extra fun for me to spend more time here and learn more about the planet (also WHAT were those crazy monkey lizard lemur tiger mounts because I want one).
Image Credit: Coming Soon . Net
Seeing Trandoshans and The Empire decimate such a beautiful planet brought back all the pain of The Battle of Kashyyyk from Revenge of the Sith while adding new trauma and tragedy through Gungi’s perspective. I also felt like the use of Trandoshans here was very significant because they have a sordid history of enslaving and hunting Wookiees. That’s why, in The Book of Boba Fett, Krrsantan ultimately decides to ignore Garsa Fwip’s generous offer and rip off that Trandoshan’s arm anyway. The inclusion of Trandoshans here made this a little more about colonial violence’s racist underpinnings than merely about the tyranny of the Galactic Empire.
While I found the Wookiees’ attempt to keep the Trandoshans and Empire at bay compelling, I do have to acknowledge that it borrows heavily from other save the forest stories like Fern Gully (1992) or, for a more recent comp, James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) (I still haven’t seen The Way of Water yet, so I can’t speak to how applicable it is here). A military industrial complex exploits and destroys a lush planet and colonizes its indigenous race. Outsiders who have defected from the other side come to their aid. We’ve seen this kind of environmental imperialism in Andor as well. In Episode 11, “Daughter of Ferrix,” we meet Dewi and Freedi Pamular who say “Scob the Empire” because the Empire has polluted Narkina 5’s waters and destroyed the fishing industry there.
I’d say the interesting wrinkle that “Tribe” adds to all of these past iterations is the agency it gives the planet of Kashyyyk itself. As a fan of the Ents in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I was completely on board with the sentient trees who “have a plan.” So it’s not just that Wookiees have some inexplicably deeper connection to nature because they’re “the other”; it’s that the trees are actually in charge.
Gungi’s quickness in defending Kashyyyk alongside the trees may in fact be more impressive than anyone else’s because he hasn’t even grown up there, and as such should have no emotional attachment to it. His “return” to Kashyyyk made me think of him as a “third culture kid,” a term coined by sociologists in the 1950s. While the phrase traditionally refers to children who live with their parents in a place and culture that is different from where their parents originated — unlike Gungi who left his original Wookiee village behind to study with the Jedi Order — I’d say Gungi still has a lot in common with third culture kids.
He has an innate sense that Kashyyyk is his home, and yet has an unfamiliarity and detachment from it and Wookiee traditions. He wears what appears to be traditional Wookiee armor/accessories, and other Jedi would have certainly viewed him as a Wookiee. And when speaking with the other Wookiees, Hunter makes a comment along the lines of, “Jedi or no, he’s still a child. He needs his people.” So everyone’s in agreement that the Wookiees are his people.
But when Gungi arrives on Kashyyyk, he doesn’t know where to go. He doesn’t even know what village he’s originally from. Omega says that Yanna agreed to let Gungi stay with them. That implies that she didn’t just automatically welcome him with open arms; they had to discuss it and Yanna had to decide whether or not he should stay. When Yanna tilts her head down towards Gungi, he doesn’t immediately know what to do. He hesitates before he follows her lead and puts his head down too. In a post-Order 66 world, he belongs neither with the Jedi nor with the Wookiees. This isn’t a return home. It’s a potential new home at a time when he has no where else to go. Yanna says as much to Hunter: “As this child has found his new home, perhaps, one day, we all will find a new path.” Gungi doesn’t really belong anywhere.
Image Credit: Nerds and Beyond
My only criticism of this episode is that Hunter’s commentary in this same conversation with Yanna, after the fighting had stopped, was a little heavy-handed for me. Most notably he says, “They’re both just kids. But they don’t get to be. Not in this Galaxy.” I had already picked up on the idea that Omega is still a kid but doesn’t get to be. We covered that in previous episodes. I didn’t really need it said out loud.
That said, I do like the parallel between Omega and Gungi that this episode draws. Seeing them sit next to each other, I immediately thought of their lost innocence, which then reminded me of another pairing of youngsters forced to grow up quickly, back in Season 1: Omega and Hera. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the episode could have just shown us Omega and Gungi side by side with Yanna and Hunter looking on and it would have had a little more emotional punch.
In revisiting this scene, however, and considering Yanna’s final words a little more carefully, I can see that we needed a way to set up her final line about forging a new path. Gungi’s journey echos (see what I did there) The Bad Batch’s. They’ve had to leave everything they knew behind and “find a new path.” They’re still finding it. And I think that in the next few episodes, we’re going to see them realize that the new path they thought they were on isn’t actually the right one.
Killed it on this one Jen. Some great callbacks. Forgot about Krrsantan ripping that arm off a trandoshan. Loved the review