The Bad Batch - Season One Review
Updated: 6 days ago
I thought season one was pretty good, but a little too fast for my taste. The introduction quickly takes us back to Order 66, and I think it could've been drawn out more in depth. More specifically, I would've liked to see more of the missions and see Crosshair get a little more disenchanted with Hunter's leadership, rather than having his brain tweaked. I wish his aggression had come out more naturally, not artificially.
At the end of the first season, Crosshair decides to stay loyal to the Empire because he feels you can't do anything but be a soldier. Given all the horrible things he has done in service of the Empire, He felt comfortable being a soldier. He wanted to be helpful to somebody, even if that somebody was an authoritarian government that asked its soldiers to do unpleasant things. It is hard to know how much of Crosshair's actions came from how he was raised versus his own choices, since it is tough to break from the conditioning you were raised with. I think that training was why he made the decisions he made.
I’d recommend the show to any Star Wars fan because I think it is a solid continuation of storylines from the Clone Wars TV show. It has a profound message about how much of one’s life choices come from nurture and how much is strictly free will, because it comes down to the side Crosshair himself didn’t have a choice in. If you have seen season one, what are your thoughts on the show?
I do generally agree that the series dove into Order 66 relatively quickly. Just a single episode demonstrating the skills and exhibiting the personalities of Clone Force 99 would have gone a long way toward rendering the significance of Crosshair's decisions.
I do not recall Xhair committing suicide - I'll have to re-watch now - but I do think it' a significant observation you make in that his choices were not driven deterministically by the Inhibitor Chip. It's a dark, but important stance taken, making the interplay between himself and the remainder of the Batch more poignant, when they collaborate as the Imperial navy destroys Kamino.