Films and Fiction

The ninth episode of The Bad Batch season three sees Clone Force 99 meet an old adversary from The Clone Wars.

Having heard that the Empire are looking for someone with a high M-Count, the Batch set out to find what this means. In the last episode, they contacted Fennec who promised to get the information for them. She delivers on this promise, as a bounty hunter arrives on Pabu, looking for the Batch.

The obvious big talking point this episode is the return of Asajj Ventress. She was a main antagonist in early seasons of The Clone Wars, fighting alongside Dooku as his secret apprentice, before being betrayed by him and turning to bounty hunting. She was seemingly killed near the end of the war, as shown in the Canon novel Dark Disciple by Christie Golden. Now, she’s joined an ever-growing group of Star Wars characters who’ve pulled a “Darth Maul” and seemingly returned to life after having a death scene.

This opens up two big problems. First is the obvious retcon, which means that once again, there’s nothing stopping any character from returning. It’s not a new problem, but every time it happens it means every death can be taken less seriously, and gives more precedent for the return of characters like Mace Windu, Ben Solo, and Tech.

The second problem is how there’s now another Force user alive during the time of the Empire. This has always been a big problem, especially as there are more Inquisitors and Order 66 survivors being introduced all the time. It makes the idea that there was no one but Luke around who could use the Force less believable, and raises the question of what happens to her in the future.

Outside of this though, the episode was interesting enough. There is the question of Omega being Force sensitive, which can pretty much be retroactively applies to anyone after what happened with Sabine Wren in the Ahsoka show. Omega has never shown any abilities with the Force, but neither did Sabine in Star Wars: Rebels, and Ventress’s answer after testing Omega was deliberately vague, leaving open the possibility that she could have some sensitivity.

Despite not doing much to address some outstanding story points, the episode does provide an increase in the tension with Ventress suggesting that Pabu might not be as safe as they once imagined. I’d always thought it was to good to be true that the Batch would find an idyllic place to settle down, especially as war and conflict has followed them everywhere.

We’ll have to see how this plays out in the future, but given how few episodes there are left until the Bad Batch’s story closes, we probably won’t have long to wait.

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