The Hunt For An Ancient Treasure Leaves Viewers Searching For A Point, Five Episodes Into ‘The Bad Batch’ Season Two
Image Source: What’s On Disney Plus
WARNING: SPOILER ALERTS FOR THE BAD BATCH SEASON 2, EPISODE 5
Star Wars animated shows are a blessing and a curse. Sit down to watch any of them and you can see why they are some of the best Star Wars has to offer. However, you may also notice they’re some of the most stagnant television there is, unable to get out of their own way. There’s so much potential for animated Star Wars to deliver what could be the best Star Wars has to offer, let alone some of the best television there is. Episode five of The Bad Batch, season two continues this catch-22 that is Star Wars animation, despite previously airing one of the best episodes of the series so far in episode three.
Like last week, this week’s episode was more of the tangential, side quest-esque adventure that is part of the trap mentioned above. The whole crew is back together, and this time a run to the junkyard yields an unexpected find. Wanda Sykes returns as Phee Genoa, the pirate associate of Cid introduced in this season’s first episode, and when Phee notices what Wrecker and Omega brought back, she figures out it’s a compass that leads to a legendary treasure. She persuades a reluctant Bad Batch to join her on a treasure hunt, one that turns into a perilous, fun adventure.
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Phee Genoa figures out what the compass leads to.
Image Source: Slash Film
Despite the diversionary aspect of it, it is a fun episode, with all kinds of nostalgia, even musically speaking, for treasure hunts from a bygone era. Their search for the Heart of the Mountain is full of booby traps, an indestructible monster stalker, and puzzles that are a nice nod to the likes of Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, and Uncharted. The music is familiar too, perfectly matched to respect the other IPs and the situation. It was good to see the group back together again after two episodes, as they really do compliment each other.
However, that doesn’t save the episode from a worn-out formula and underwhelming resolution. As stated earlier, part of the issue facing Star Wars animated shows is their pacing. In an era of TV and film beset by broad, multi-season and multi-movie arcs for franchises, it’s jarring and disruptive when they resort back to the older formula of seemingly unrelated side-quest-styled episodes. Nearly a third of the way through a sixteen-episode season, and already three of those five episodes have been tangential to the overall story. Although the Crosshair and Cody exposé episode was stellar, this week and last week took the group on jaunts that run parallel to the story that episodes one and two set up for the season. If Vice Admiral Rampart was surprised to find Clone Force 99 alive, and enough of a concern to his career that he kills Captain Wilco in cold blood to keep it quiet, the urgency of this discovery and its threat to the Bad Batch’s life is not felt in these last two episodes.
There’s no real resolution to the episode. They go through all the trouble of nearly dying, three times as Hunter points out, only to lose a droid companion and come away with nothing. Tech intentionally, I think, points this out at the group being 0 and 2 for treasure hunts. It leaves one shrugging and going, well, what was that for? It’s disappointing after such a successful and dramatic first season. Ending its first run with the destruction of their home and kidnapping of Nala Se off to Mount Tantiss — and the geographical landmark’s implication in the overall lore for the Star Wars franchise — only to slow season two down to this crawl with the clones off racing and hunting treasure feels like a letdown.
They’re fun and nostalgic to be sure, but — and I dislike the term — of these last two, this week’s episode was just filler, and guessing at the broader scope of the season and its potential, if this episode never happened it wouldn’t impact the story at all. If you can answer the question about the necessity of an episode like that, it better be one hell of a fun episode. That’s ultimately what saves ‘Entombed’ and still makes it enjoyable to watch.
The Bad Batch is on season two and streams on Disney+, with new episodes every Wednesday.
Rating: 6.5/10
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Source(s): Disney+
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