The Bad Batch follow Dr Hemlock to Eriadu…

This will be something of a review of the entire season as much as these two specific episodes. The reason for this is I want to talk about what Season 2 has accomplished.

In episodes 15 and 16 we see the culmination of all the storylines from this season. We see unrequited love, we see hope, we see tragedy and, most of all, we see the near complete victory of the Empire shown with no sops to the hero’s journey, no last minute overcoming.

If The Empire Strikes Back was shocking because of the ending, The Bad Batch Season 2 delivers a similarly emotional gut punch but does so in a way that even with the ground trod before by others it feels shocking and disturbing.

The team has a mission and as you might expect it doesn’t go according to plan. I won’t discuss the reasons why but they are not simply unexpected but the context in which they occur, the coherence of the characters involved and the way the world is shown to us rather than told to us makes this an outing for the clones that I will not forget.

Honestly, it’s as good as the last two episodes of The Clone Wars.

The scope of what’s happening in The Bad Batch has been small all the way through. The narrative has zoomed right into the experiences of the Bad Batch, fleshing them out, helping them feel like actual people. That has meant the momentous changes being wrought on the galaxy in which they live have occurred around them and to them.

The Bad Batch has excelled at showing and not telling, often the story telling being so subtle you’d think it was prime time drama and easily equalling the achievement of Andor in making the rise of the Empire feel weighty.

Of course, the main difference between this and Andor is that in the latter there is hope of a rebellion. In The Bad Batch the very worst years are still to come – we’re in the descent and it is grim and dark.

The themes this season have been brave, substantial and very well explored. Short story – fascism is bad. Longer story is that The Bad Batch tells how fascism crushes everyone from the point of view of people who have agency but no matter how well they do are not equipped to fight this foe.

The Bad Batch makes the point that you can’t beat fascists and nor can I. Only together can people hope to win that fight and one of the main reasons is that fascism is a social movement – where ordinary people buy into its reprehensible stories about who is human and who isn’t.

As people literally created to serve others, the Clones represent the sharp end of that debate – with discussion about who gets to control their bodies, what value they have and if they’re even allowed to have a voice presented here.

What may be missing is a little of why people on the other side believe in it. It’s too easy to say that ordinary people sign up to fascism because they’re stupid but to truly understand it we must acknowledge that whatever our caricatures, there’s something alluring in fascism for many of those around us.

Crosshair’s journey through this season has been to explore that and as a marginalised person his decision making and thought processes, always understated, have been relatable and understandable. As is his fate.

As for the lure of an ‘ordinary’ life in the face of oppression? The Bad Batch makes it clear – if you hide away from the oppression of others whose suffering you ignored to save yourself? It will come for you in the end too and who then will protect you?

Are the clones political agents? I think that for the longest time all of them tried to avoid becoming political. It’s there in their language, the missions they take and the decisions about which fight they will fight.

Yet Omega’s journey was one where she was alive to injustice and she led them into being what most political theorists would call ‘citizens’. Citizens are political because they care about the world and community of which they’re a part.

Fascists and populists alike want the rest of us to accept what we’re told and do nothing for our communities – neither constructive nor boundaried. They want us all to be individuals because then we’re easier to control.

The Bad Batch makes it clear that community is political and only when we’re all engaged in what it means to be members of our community, only when we’re asking what type of community we want and doing what we can do to make that a reality can fascism be defeated.

Verdict: By the end of Season 2 the Bad Batch are politicised and they’re alone. More than that, the show has brilliantly shown us what agency looks like for the oppressed – it looks like surviving because living to fight another day is winning for so many of us.

What comes next is the long almost unbearable wait for season 3.

Rating? 10 cable cars out of 10.

Stewart Hotston