The Batch find themselves trapped in the ruins of Kamino and running out of time to escape. And they’re not alone.

Rounding off what’s been a mostly strong opening season, this episode really does get an awful lot very right. Last week, we saw the Empire pull out and start a bombardment from their ships to destroy Kamino’s cities entirely, leaving Crosshair to his fate on the surface together with his former comrades. This week, we pick up exactly where we left off.

Considering this is a) an animated series and b) it’s set in the Star Wars universe, in which we are not unused to large scale destruction unfolding in front of us, the show manages to pack an incredible amount of pathos and sad majesty into the sight of the cloning facilities exploding, collapsing and slowly disappearing beneath the waves on which they are set. It’s genuinely affecting for the viewer to watch, which helps us feel the emotions of the characters, Omega in particular

Of course, they can’t avoid running into Crosshair, and that’s where the show gets interesting. Lesser shows might have chosen the route of Crosshair seeing the error of his ways, having been abandoned, and coming back to the welcoming embrace of his old team. The Bad Batch doesn’t make it anywhere near that easy though. As we found out last week, Crosshair no longer has his chip and hasn’t for a while. Whereas he feels festering resentment at the fact the team ‘abandoned’ him, that doesn’t mean that he’s suddenly ready to jump back into his old spot. Interestingly, it doesn’t even necessarily mean that he’s angry at the Empire for having left him to die. Crosshair has been a much more complex character than his initial introduction and appearance may have suggested, and that’s very much in evidence here.

As the gang struggle to escape the facility, they are of course confronted with familiar sights including the lab in which they were created and their old quarters, all of which serves to really ram home the destruction of everything they’d known. The last remnants of their former lives are literally crumbling around them, the same way that the Republic and the Clone Army did. It’s not subtle as a metaphor, but it’s damned effective.

There’s also a neat little subplot running through this episode involving the little droid AZI – I thought I knew exactly how that one was going to play out but then the show reminded me that it isn’t interested in cliches and that Omega isn’t the standard cutesy mascot character she might have initially appeared to be – indeed a throwaway comment here reminds us that whereas she may be physically smaller and younger than her comrades, that doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s younger, per se – not in the ways that count.

As the episode rattles along towards its conclusion it serves up more than a few surprises, and by the time the credits roll the only question I really have is when we can have season 2 because there are so many things I need to know.

Verdict: A properly amazing capstone to the opening season and surprisingly emotional and mature given the format and target audience. 9/10

Greg D. Smith