The Bad Batch S2 Eps. 7 & 8 follow the money, on the money.
A gripping political thriller acts as a vector for space and time in Star Wars history.
The Short Take:
Episodes 7 and 8 comprise a mid-season event that resembles a Prequel Trilogy era political thriller. The emotional ending took me by surprise.
Image Credit: Slash Film
[SPOILER ALERT: There are some doozies in this one. Make sure you’ve seen both Episode 7, “The Clone Conspiracy,” and Episode 8, “Truth and Consequences” before you continue with your investigation.]
The Long Take:
An idealist politician pleads on behalf of the voiceless in the Galactic Senate. A mysterious assassin lurks in the shadows, trying to silence those who threaten the Empire’s agenda. Palpatine twists the truth to get what he wants, tricking the Galaxy into thinking he’s keeping them safe.
No, I’m not describing The Attack of the Clones or an episode of The Clone Wars animated series. But it does sound like it, doesn’t it?
A lot happened in this two-parter — most notably Echo leaving Clone Force 99 to help Rex. And, rest assured, I will discuss that major plot point at the end of this review. But, to me, the most compelling aspect of these episodes was the political intrigue and suspense over whether or not Senator Chuchi would be able to take down Admiral Rampart. If she would be able to come up with enough evidence in time for the vote. The suspense here was top notch, from the assassination of Cade, to Chuchi seeking out the clones in the clone bar on Coruscant, 79’s, to Slip whistleblowing to her about Rampart, and, most chillingly, to the reveal that the sniper after them all was a fellow clone all along. I, of course, was happy to see Bail Organa again, but I was even happier to hear him tell Chuchi to “follow the money.” My genre nerve endings tingled in that moment.
This suspenseful storyline reminds me so much of past Prequel Trilogy era stories: the two attempts on Padmé Amidala’s life in Attack of the Clones or an arc of The Clone Wars animated series in which Amidala or another Senator tries to root out corruption in the Galaxy. The specific one that comes to mind is Season 6, Episodes 5-7, in which the senator from Naboo and her former suitor, Rush Clovis, gather evidence to expose corruption in The Banking Clan. And, in a manner similar to Chuchi’s investigation, Amidala wins, only to have that victory tainted by shocking, discouraging subterfuge and betrayal.
Chuchi does get the evidence in the eleventh hour, and Rampart does go down, but then the Emperor uses Rampart as a scapegoat and a cautionary tale, highlighting the clones’ supposed ineffectiveness and unreliability. The recruitment bill “decommissioning” the clones will presumably go through anyway, and Chuchi and The Bad Batch’s efforts will have been for naught. I felt the same queasiness and sense of defeat here as I did at the end of Revenge of the Sith when Palpatine executes Order 66 and launches a rhetorically manipulative misinformation campaign about The Jedi being the real enemies of The Republic.
Image Credit: Starwars.com
There’s much that terrifies me about this ending. Through Chuchi, a morally good character I could instantly follow, the episode shows that doing what’s right and finding the truth doesn’t mean you’ll win. Senator Chuchi has appeared before in episodes of The Clone Wars, and I remember really liking her character then as well; this makes her an especially good avatar for a “good people doing the right thing the right way doesn’t always make a difference” tragedy. I also feel like the logical conclusion of this might be clone genocide. Unless someone stops The Empire, it seems like they will tie up loose ends and terminate all the clones in their employ rather than just letting them run amok in the Galaxy. Rex’s ability to get clones “out” may turn into a large-scale rescue effort not unlike The Path for fugitive Jedi that we see in Obi-Wan Kenobi.
We do know that at least some clones are still around after stormtroopers replace them; in the Kenobi series, we see Temuera Morrison playing an “unidentified veteran clone trooper” who appears to be homeless on the streets of Daiyu. But is that the result of the Empire cutting all the clones loose without any aid or even basic rights? Or is that unidentified veteran in Kenobi one of the few who escaped the decomissioning and the Empire just doesn’t care to hunt them down like they do the Jedi? Hopefully we get some answers to those questions before the close of this season.
As much as this episode, especially in its political thriller elements, reminded me of the Prequel Era, it prompted me to think about post-Empire stories like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Andor as well. There’s a 19-year period that all of these shows have been shading in — the time in between the rise of the Galactic Empire in Revenge of the Sith and the the destruction of the first Death Star in A New Hope. This season of The Bad Batch takes place in 18 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin), Obi-Wan Kenobi takes place in 9 BBY, and Andor starts in 5 BBY and plans to take us all the way to the events of Rogue One, which we know directly precedes the start of A New Hope. I’m taking the time here to review the timeline because it was surreal to see staples of one era of Star Wars fusing together with touchstones of the other. And these two episodes mark the first time at which this sense of a much broader pre-Original Trilogy timeline emerged for me.
Image Credit: Wookieepedia
I think it makes a lot of sense to show how a totalitarian regime doesn’t gain a foothold overnight; it’s a series of gradual, incremental changes that only seem extreme when you zoom out and look at the two ends of this slice of the timeline. Perhaps Senator Chuchi, for instance, needed to have her idealism and faith in the system quashed here so that we can start to see how Mon Mothma in Andor is so ineffectual when speaking publicly to the Senate and, behind closed doors, so willing to compromise her ideals and even her personal dignity to fight for her cause.
This comparison makes me think of the Russian literary scholar, Mikhail Bakhtin, who came up with this concept called the chronotope. He thought of it as any formulation of time and space in literature. Common examples include the road or the castle, places that generate events or moments of narrative significance. In an essay titled “Forms of Time and the Chronotope in the Novel,” he says that in a chronotope, “time thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible” while “space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot, and history.” To me this, describes the Galactic Senate. It’s a place that we’ve now seen many times throughout Star Wars history, and in revisiting the same space, we can see and feel how time has passed and the “movements of time” in a space. Or, to put it more simply, change over time. Then I start to wonder what other Star Wars locales may function as chronotopes. Tatooine? More specifically, Jabba’s Palace? The Millennium Falcon?
While “Truth and Consequences” showed me that Omega would make a great senator, able to appeal to the good in people as she does with Kaminoan Senator Halle Burtoni, I have to remind myself that in this two-episode arc, Omega and the rest of The Bad Batch do not appear in the first part, “The Clone Conspiracy,” at all. And if I consider these two episodes in tandem and consider the type of story it’s trying to tell about the clones’ rights and post-Empire politics, the noticeable absence of Clone Force 99 seems very purposeful.
Since this is their series, episodes should, in theory, privilege their point of view — they’re our main characters, our heroes. But completely removing them from the plot of “The Clone Conspiracy” shows us that in this Empire, they can’t have complete ownership over their story because the Galaxy does not recognize them as people. Yes, we do see other clones, but none of them have narrative power. They’re all helpless pawns in Palpatine’s political chess game, relegated to dying off one by one or becoming “decommissioned” once Rampart’s stormtrooper recruitment bill passes (though I should put his name in quotes here because we find out he’s also a pawn in Palpy’s game).
Image Credit: Starwars.com
All of this — the more acute sense of the continuous timeline, the extinguishing of political idealism, and the lack of narrative agency clones have in their own series — effectively sets up Echo’s new path, apart from The Bad Batch. While I fully acknowledge that we could have gotten a little more of Echo’s “we need to do more” platform across multiple episodes, there is still a clear through line from the Season 2 premiere in which he confronts Hunter about their choices and his decision to leave the Batch and put his talents in service of the greater good. In previous reviews, I had predicted that at this pivotal point in the season, the entire squad would decide to go with Rex to fight the good fight; therefore, I was not expecting to say goodbye to Echo like this. But it makes total sense to me now that I’ve seen it.
As usual, Omega’s sincere, emotional response to Echo leaving was the heart and soul of this scene. The hug she gives Echo is perfectly timed, and such a great resolution to their misunderstanding in the premiere when Omega overhears Echo say to Hunter that they’re in “this situation” because of Omega. I have to admit that Echo was probably my least favorite Bad Batch member, but this scene made me appreciate him and feel his loss.
[Spoiler for the animated series Rebels immediately after this. If you have not seen that series and do not want part of it spoiled, stop here.]
Image Credit: Marvel Wars Highlights on Youtube
Many on the Internet are assuming that since we do not see Echo with Rex in the animated series Rebels, that he must bite the dust at some point between this point and that, which is 13 years later. An eternal optimist, I’m hoping that this just means that Echo has an amazing arc on his own that makes it so that he is alive and well by the time we see Rex and the gang deep sand fishing — he’s merely ended up somewhere else. Like so many Star Wars characters before him, he’s on his own hero’s journey now. I’m eager to find out, whether it’s in this series or another, where that journey takes him.