You know the expression “Stuck between a hammer and an anvil?” Well that was the last episode of Star Wars: The Bad Lot. Except this time there were several rocks, several hard spots, and in the middle? Clone Force 99, aka The Bad Batch.
The eighth episode of Star Wars: The Bad Lot was called “Reunion”, a reference to the fifth member of the original Bad Batch, Crosshair, who recently gave in his Inhibitory Chip and became an Agent of the Empire, unlike his fellow upgraded clones Hunter, Echo, Wrecker, Tech, and Omega. This group had managed to stay off their radar for a few episodes, but after being spotted by the Scrapper Guild in the previous episode, “Battle Scars”, news of the place eventually returned to Kamino, where Crosshair and his Imperial forces resisted. The Kaminoans would like Omega or the Bad Batch to resume for experimentation, but the Empire doesn’t care. They want them to be deleted. Later we will see that the Kaminoans take no risk of this happening and will hire a bounty hunter to bring them in. Which ? We had to wait and see.
All of this would have been a moot point if the Bad Batch had left Bracca in the first place, but they are in debt and need the money, so they have lingered a bit too long trying to retrieve data and weapons from a Jedi Starcruiser. It also gives Wrecker, the more childish of the bunch, some time to go on and bond with Omega. He’s Wrecker, he does this by training him to deactivate certain explosives and then making him believe they’re going to die. Classic wrecker.
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After a brief encounter with the Scrappers and some fun on a flying dinghy, the Batch realized their time was running out. They must collect the loot from the ship as soon as possible. Wrecker and Omega head to the weapons room where he falls in love with a proton torpedo. Tech starts downloading all the files still on board. Things are going well until the arrival of Crosshair and three soldier shuttles. Normally that wouldn’t be anything for Clone Force 99, but now they’re going up against one of their own. Whenever they make a move, Crosshair is one step ahead of them, which means that despite their best efforts, he’s able to locate them fairly quickly.
Once Crosshair is able to put them in his, uh, crosshair, Hunter and Omega plead with him. They try to explain that he is forced to act like this. It’s the chip. Crosshair doesn’t care and delivers the creepy “Aim for the Child” line. Fortunately, while this was happening, Echo and Tech design a plan to activate the huge cannons above them, the force from which begins to completely destroy the part. Everyone falls and is crushed, giving the Bad Batch a chance to escape.
This escape takes the group inside an ion engine and that was, in my mind, the coolest part of the episode. Apparently every Star wars the show or movie has scenes on these insanely massive spaceships, but all we really see are a few hallways, the bridge, and maybe a holding cell. If we are lucky? The garbage chute. But this whole episode of The bad lot is them to explore every little nook and cranny of one of those ships that drives them in the engine. And it was so cool for these characters to be inside the engine because you see the scale of it, you realize how small the humans are inside the engine, and then you imagine how the engine must be big to power a vessel of this Size. I do not know. Just something strangely satisfying about it in a nerdy Star wars path.
Coming back to the episode, escaping by the engine would have fooled anyone except Crosshair. Not only does he block their escape from the engine, but he orders the engine to be turned on. Rocky? Meet a difficult place. The choices seem to be either die by blaster fire or die by literal engine fire, so the batch hatches another plan. Blast the engine in half and fall into the wreckage, escaping two kinds of death and playing the game, they can’t find a third. Just as the engine is about to ignite, the plan is executed, explosions go off, and the Bad Batch begins to tumble, just as the Ion Engine grabs Crossfire, seriously injuring him.
After surviving the crash of the engine, which looked like a violent amusement park merry-go-round, it was time for the Bad Batch to head to their ship and leave Bracca. However, we, the audience, knew that Crosshair had stationed a group of soldiers on their ship, which is why it was so disturbing when the scene recedes to reveal that these soldiers were all dead. Who could have … oh, okay, that bounty hunter.
This is Cad Bane, one of the nastiest, deadly bounty hunters across the galaxy. A fan favorite of The clone wars make his triumphant return. And, even if you didn’t know how capable Cad Bane was, when he and Hunter show up in a classic Western-style shootout, Cad Bane defeats Hunter. Easily. He captures Omega and leaves Hunter for dead.
The episode ends after a very impressive shot from Hunter’s perspective as he regains consciousness to see his friends revive him and fight to leave the planet. They are confused, scared, and once they’re gone, Hunter explains that Omega has been taken away by a bounty hunter and they need to find her.
“Reunion” was another good episode of The bad lot. It didn’t move the story forward in a big way, but it did eventually bring Crosshair back into the mix, which was set up several episodes ago, and the way it picked up from the last episode made it into the mix. feel like the second half of a larger story. I wasn’t a big fan of just throwing Cad Bane in there seemingly out of the blue, especially when we know that Fennic Shand is always on the hunt for the Bad Batch, but he’s certainly going to be a formidable foe for them to. go forward.
What did you think of “Reunion? Let us know below.
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