So, The Bad Batch is back with its third and final season. It snuck up on me even as it was announced that it was coming. Now, I’ll be honest: I fell off a bit during season two as just life got in the way, but that didn’t stop my excitement on its return. My Star Wars fandom is tied explicitly to these Dave Filoni-created Star Wars CG animated series over the fifteen years or so. For those who don’t know and might be reading this without any knowledge of the series to date – the series follows a group of Clones from The Clone Wars who are imperfect clones as they are all a bit different. They became a ragtag group of special ops group until Order 66 didn’t work on them, and they had to go rogue from the newly made Empire. They now do mercenary missions as they try to survive and stay away from the Empire while they still meet up with other clones fighting against the Empire. There’s a lot more like Clone Wars and Rebels essentially fill in and fix holes created in the later additions to Star Wars lore. As this season is one to finish this chapter of the overall Star Wars tapestry, it starts off very exciting. I’ll be honest: to be ready to review this, I didn’t watch the episodes of season two that I haven’t watched to catch up. I went in cold, and man, the first three episodes shocked me with where these characters are.
With our main heroes split, the season’s first quarter is more about getting those who are left back together. The character of Omega, the girl clone that set off this story of the Bad Batch, has an interesting plotline of being stuck with the Empire having to work for them. The show does well to have that feeling of pressure on her as she strives to escape along with her reconnection with Crosshair, the clone who left the group because he chose to follow order 66 when the others did not. Now, as I’ve only seen half of the final season, I can’t say how it sticks the landing, but I can say I feel that the people who make the show stepped up to a grander look of the show in this last season. It feels like the last four episodes of The Clone Wars felt. There are strong shot compositions that show the scale of what our heroes are up against. Some really impressed me on my TV that I feel it could rival a theatrical animated film. The look of the characters are consistent with how they’ve looked over the years. Now they do look better now than they did when The Clone Wars first started in 2008 but they slowly made the show look better. This season pushes it further.
With what I saw, I look forward to seeing the rest of this season because I have trust in them pulling off the ending. This show, I feel like a lot of Filoni shows are patching story holes filmmakers put in the films. Right now, I feel they are fixing up a giant one from the sequel trilogy. While I’ll be sad when the series is over, I like that they told a whole story that worked with a big overarching story and small mission adventures that continue to make the clones the most underrated parts of the entire Star Wars mythos.
Score: B+
RIOTUS 