This story contains spoilers for The Bad Batch.
With new planets, old friends, and even a souped-up version of The Phantom Menace’s podracing, The Bad Batch Season 2 is throwing a galaxy of ideas at the galaxy far, far away. We’re four episodes into the 16-episode run, and while the bruised Clone Force 99 is likely heading toward an epic mission to one-up Season 1’s fiery finale on Kamino, it’s currently hard to see how we’ll get there.
Following a two-part opening for The Bad Batch Season 2, there’s since been the Crosshair-centric third episode that brought back Revenge of the Sith’s Commander Cody, while Episode 4 took Omega, Tech, and Wrecker to the new locale of Safa Toma. Series creator Dave Filoni is giving fans a trip across the Outer Rim, but is this disjointed narrative doomed to repeat the mistakes of The Walking Dead?
A Shuffling Storyline
It might seem hard to connect a world of Wookiees to Walkers, but back in The Walking Dead Season 7, (then) showrunner Scott M. Gimple decided to split the characters into pairs for what became something of an anthology. Coming off the back of the mystery of who Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) bludgeoned to death in the Season 6 finale, a massive 17.03 million tuned in to see the aftermath - making the S7 premiere the second-most watched episode in the show’s history.
The Walking Dead Season 7 faced harsh critiques when it scattered the main group into smaller factions for a more episodic approach. Season 7’s critically panned “Swear” followed Tara (Alanna Masterson) and Heath (Corey Hawkins), which marked his final appearance on the show and left us with a cliffhanger that’s been bugging fans for the past six years. There’s a worry that if The Bad Batch follows suit, its most important characters could get lost in the shuffle. Part of what made Season 1 special was the dynamic between Omega and the Bad Batch, how she bonded with each Clones in a different way, and their varying personalities.
During The Bad Batch episode “Faster,” we barely got two words from Omega because the action focused on Tech and the newcomer character of TAY-0 (Ben Schwartz). We’re yet to hear much from AZI-3 (Benjamin Diskin) apart from being relegated to the background of Cid’s parlor, while Nala Se (Gwendoline Yeo) hasn’t been seen since the Season 1 finale. The Bad Batch can hopefully avoid losing its ever-expanding crop of characters in these side missions, and as the return of Cody thankfully shows, Filoni is so far succeeding in that regard.
The Bad Batch seems fine for now, but dividing Clone Force 99 could repeat the mistakes of The Walking Dead. And, for those unconvinced that The Walking Dead’s seventh season didn’t drop the ball with its split storytelling, Gimple addressed the issue ahead of Season 8. The showrunner told EW: “We knew what 8 was going to be and how that would dictate a very different kind of structure… So, yeah, things are going to move, and possibly not have the kind of deep dives into characters in single episodes, but rather laying out the pieces as we go on."
A Galaxy of Two Halves
Not all of The Bad Batch stories are moving at the pace of a Walker though. The series is clearly heading somewhere and introduced a standout adversary with ties to Cid (Rhea Perlman) in Episode 4. There’s a chance Grini Millegi (Ernie Hudson) could return further down the line, but if not, his story works just as well by casting doubt on Cid’s intentions and possibly setting her up as the person who will inevitably sell the team out to the Empire. The show’s place between trilogies doesn’t lock it into the standard Skywalker Saga as much as you think, and if we’re continuing down the anthology route, we’re crying out for a Cid origin episode.
If this The Walking Dead-esque formula doesn’t work in Season 2, there’s still time for The Bad Batch to adjust course, as this odd split story is happening much earlier in the series than it did in The Walking DeadIt remains to be seen what The Bad Batch Season 2 brings in terms of group episodes, but as long as a reunion between Crosshair and the rest of the Batch is on the cards, it’ll feel like we’ve gone somewhere. Much like how Gimple tried to tweak The Walking Dead following Season 7’s critiques, Filoni’s love of the fandom and source material mean he’s always ready to adjust course if it really becomes necessary.
With Crosshair being an ex-member of the group, The Bad Batch’s anthology style has so far managed to live up to its name. The team is still at the core, and ultimately, we’ll never get to a point where the whole Batch is MIA like later seasons of The Walking Dead missing Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln). Both Star Wars and The Walking Dead have a habit of testing characters for spin-off shows, but as The Bad Batch doesn’t seem to be setting one up, it should avoid these complaints. The Bad Batch is still about the titular team at its core, but if we can fill Cid’s Ord Mantell parlor with more dithering droids and outcast clones to set up a mythical Season 3, we’re all for it.
