– Spoiler Review –
The Bad Batch’s season one finale “Kamino Lost” is a tense, emotional ride as the Batch must band together, even with Crosshair, in hopes of surviving Tipoca City’s destruction, a fitting character focused ending to a smaller-focused season.
After the packed and surprisingly full first half of the finale in “Return to Kamino,” as much as I was thinking things would only get larger from there, I’m glad “Kamino Lost” went the other direction, narrowing in on the conflict between the Batch and their Imperial-loyal ex-teammate Crosshair and focusing on their struggles to escape the sinking Kamino facility. Most of The Bad Batch’s first season has stayed laser-focused on the characters, breaking away for some memorable moments and some familiar characters, but it’s always come back to them and their struggles finding a way in the galaxy after choosing to not be part of the Imperial machine. It would’ve been a disservice to the all the character focus and the characters themselves if the finale had been anything other than what “Kamino Lost” gives us and the path it takes pays off in several ways.
In my review of “Return to Kamino,” I both wished the show had broken off and spent time with Crosshair to help us viewers better understand his decisions and I looked forward to all the emotional, character potential of having the entire Batch, including Omega, dealing with Crosshair in their lives again. “Kamino Lost” finally offers a better window into Crosshair’s decisions thanks to all the interactions between him and each Batch member throughout their fraught escape, though I hope season two won’t abandon him as much as season one did, which would help us track his choices and reactions after everything the Batch says to him here and how he views the Empire’s next moves. I didn’t quite connect with Crosshair’s point-of-view last episode, but he has more convincing and hefty arguments this episode that helped me see where he was coming from, especially when he’s able to justify the Empire blasting away at Kamino despite him still around: they’re doing what they have to. To him, good soldiers follow orders, as he’s always been more adherent to the overall order, so if the Empire tells him this is the direction they want to go, he follows, respecting their might and willingness to do what the Republic wouldn’t. He wants to be on the winning, powerful side and as far as his highly trained sights can tell, the answer is the Empire. There are a lot of great scenes with him and the rest of the Batch, mainly with Hunter and Omega, but even Wrecker and Tech have their moments, from Wrecker telling him how they would’ve taken him back to Tech pointing out he understands Crosshair but doesn’t agree with him, both moments fitting for the characters and righting a wrong from the previous episode by not having them interact much. With Hunter, they debate much like they did last episode, but like I said Crosshair gets to explain why, after his inhibitor chip came out, he continued with the Empire. And his moments with Omega, beyond the big gestures of her saving him initially and later his rescue of her and AZ, reveal she assumed in the premiere his actions were solely due to the chip and she admits how wrong she was/how she didn’t understand him then; I initially theorized her words meant she had some special, maybe Force-related abilities, but this squashes it now. However, I loved her final words to him, after he earlier sneeringly tells her the Batch isn’t where she belongs, telling him how he’s their and her brother in the end.
His actions to save Omega and AZ show he understands they are all family still, deep down, regardless of their ideological differences, but the episode ends with him sticking with his choice of the Empire over the Batch. This was honestly my favorite part of “Kamino Lost” and the season finale as a whole that Crosshair wasn’t persuaded to change sides after one fateful meeting with his old team. Too often it feels like these moments are brushed aside and someone like Crosshair makes the change or sees the light more so the show can focus on delivering more plot next season rather than commit to a deeper, more complex character arc. In a way, The Bad Batch season finale felt a lot like The Clone Wars’ series finale, at least the final episode, but instead of ending without time for the characters to process what went down, The Bad Batch gave us an additional episode to help them walk through the pivotal events in the previous episode. I’m excited to see Crosshair’s decision play out in the second season, as long as the show gives him more screentime, like I mentioned earlier, so we can see if he’ll ever come around or commit till his dying breath instead of finding out about it until the very end. On top of that, giving the Batch more room to grow as well, as they haven’t changed much beyond accepting and trusting Omega, would be a great place for the next season to go as well.
Talk about an intense, roller coaster ride of an episode overall, though! Sure, there was a focus on the fallout between the Batch and Crosshair, but the episode was unrelenting like the first half of the finale, as the next worst thing kept appearing and putting the Batch through countless new obstacles. AZ manages to help with a lot of them and while I was never attached to the droid, he won me over with his heroic efforts here, especially in the final sequence as they are jettisoned out of Nala Se’s private lab in little tubes, as they place their lives in his hands as he must help them avoid debris in the ocean. Every scenario is nail biting, exciting, and excellently animated in the lush, detailed style the show continues to pump out episode after episode, and it makes events riveting even if there’s not much doubt about the team’s survival into season two.
As for the stinger at the end of the episode, which shows Nala Se arrive on what looks like Daro, greeted by a human scientist surrounded by clone commandos, it definitely doesn’t give us much but I of course have a theory! It’s a thin one, just as a heads up, but considering the human woman who greets Nala Se says the Empire has big things planned for her, I couldn’t help but think of Dr. Pershing in The Mandalorian. Wearing Kamino-like symbology on his uniform and interested in harvesting stuff from the Force-filled Grogu, somehow connected to some weird experiments in an old base, could this be the start of that, what the Empire wants from Se? Like I said, it’s thin, but if the Empire is interested in getting rid of clones and gaining loyalty via recruits and volunteers with the War-Mantle initiative as we’ve already seen in the show, what’s the next step? And what else could Se help with? Moff Gideon’s dark troopers are the third-generation, so could they be using her to try to reach that step and we’ll see first and second-generation dark troopers developed here? As much as this is my theory, part of me hopes it actually isn’t true and instead the show veers in a different direction with something surprising or different, as then the Batch and their eventual friends could have a victory over whatever early project the Empire has Se in charge of now. Beyond watching what the show does with Crosshair in the second season, finding out what’s up the Empire’s sleeves next could be equally exciting. UPDATE: Rewatching Dr. Pershing’s scene in the first season and holy gundarks does the science officer’s uniform here look similar to Pershing’s. I’m not the only one make the connection, though Jordan Maison over at Cinelinx takes it several steps further, finding ways to connect this to the upcoming “Mando-verse” shows like Ahsoka, Rangers of the New Republic, and their big culminating event, aka the likely return of Grand Admiral Thrawn. Talk about galaxy brain!
Here are a few other things:
- No date for season two, but I imagine it’ll happen in the summer again, likely avoiding any other Star Wars TV shows coming out in 2022, be it Andor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Mandalorian S3, or otherwise. If news seems spares on those things going into 2022, don’t forget Star Wars Celebration returns so I’d expect they’re saving some good stuff for the big event!
- “Kamino Lost” sounds like a George Lucas, sci-fi serial-like title, while it even gives me opening crawl of The Rise of Skywalker vibes, “The dead speak!”
The Bad Batch’s season one finale “Kamino Lost” hews close to what the show has been all season, though it happening so late is a cautionary tale for next season.
+ Tense, riveting escape
+ Crosshair finally has his moment to explain in full…
+ Potential with Nala She’s future
– …Providing these moments so late in the game
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor.
THE BAD BATCH REVIEWS
Season One: 1.1 Aftermath | 1.2 Cut and Run | 1.3 Replacements | 1.4 Cornered | 1.5 Rampage | 1.6 Decommissioned | 1.7 Battle Scars | 1.8 Reunion | 1.9 Bounty Lost | 1.10 Common Ground | 1.11 Devil’s Deal | 1.12 Rescue on Ryloth | 1.13 Infested | 1.14 War-Mantle | 1.15 Return to Kamino