Warning: The following article contains spoilers for episodes ten and eleven of Star Wars: The Bad Batch – Season 3.
After suffering an identity crisis for two seasons, Star Wars: The Bad Batch – Season 3 returns with its final double-episode drop of the series with an episode aptly titled Identity Crisis. Fret not, the episode is actually quite good, even if it accomplishes very little with its story progression. The meat of the double-drop is found in its eleventh episode, Point of No Return, but that will be discussed much later in the article.
Identity Crisis strays away from the Bad Batch and instead focuses on Dr. Royce Hemlock’s (Jimmi Simpson) M-Count operation, where it’s revealed that Cad Bane (Corey Burton) is the Bounty Hunter who tracks down children and tests them on whether or not they have a high enough M-Count. If they do, they are sold to the Empire for further examination. After Nala Se (Gwendoline Yeo) has betrayed Hemlock, the doctor promotes Emerie Karr (Keisha Castle-Hughes) to oversee his operation. However, things aren’t as they seem.
It’s too early to tell if Karr has a change of heart, but after she demands to see how they retrieve test subjects (and subsequently meets Cad Bane), she suspects something is wrong. It also doesn’t help that the children are subjected to brutal treatment from the Empire, with one who attempted to escape spending two days under strict supervision, likely tortured. She visits Nala Se, and signs that Karr begins to experience disillusionment with the Empire’s activities begin to show.
It’s then incredibly clear as she attempts to win back the trust of another prisoner, who treats Karr as a liar after the aforementioned child was sent away for attempting to escape when she told him nothing bad would happen. She gives him Omega’s (Michelle Ang) doll as a way to keep him safe and hopefully regain his trust. This posits Karr as a shifting character, and it’ll be interesting to see how she evolves when the Empire directly goes to Pabu to hunt for Omega.
Yes, while Karr is distracted by the happenings of Project Necromancer, Grand Moff Tarkin (Stephen Stanton) not only tells Hemlcok that his funding may be cut but that he has found where Omega has been hiding with the Clones…and now we can talk about the vastly superior eleventh episode.
With Point of No Return, the show returns to Pabu and sees the Clone X Trooper (Dee Bradley Baker) hunting down Clone Force 99, specifically Omega. In doing so, he hacks into Phee Genoa’s (Wanda Sykes) ship and ascertains her whereabouts. It doesn’t take long for him to arrive on Pabu and attack innocent civilians before Omega shows herself.
The trooper neutralizes Wrecker (Dee Bradley Baker) and almost kills Hunter (Dee Bradley Baker) until the latter is saved by Crosshair (Dee Bradley Baker) in the closest shave of the series thus far. These moments are some of the strongest the series has ever been, immediately elevating the sense of dread established in the season’s introductory episodes through tragic results. Perhaps the action isn’t as strong as it should be, but the atmosphere is palpable enough to make everyone care about the innocent civilians on Pabu who are unfairly targeted by the Empire, only for Omega to show herself.
Omega realizes this and wants as many innocent lives to be saved. That’s why she surrenders herself to them and devises a plan to return to Tantiss for the Batch to find Hemlock’s location and end Project Necromancer once and for all. Who knows if it will work, but the moment never feels like a cop-out and, instead, like the beginning of the end for Clone Force 99.
We’re now at an inflection point with Star Wars: The Bad Batch – Season 3. The story will intensify further, and we may lose another Clone Force 99 member after Tech’s (Dee Bradley Baker) sacrifice in season two. Time will only tell in which direction the show will be going, but it’s definitely not going to be as uplifting as the first two seasons were, as only four episodes are left before we say goodbye to The Bad Batch once and for all.
The tenth and eleven episodes of Star Wars: The Bad Batch – Season 3 are now streaming on Disney+.
