Star Wars: The Bad Batch – Aftermath review S1 E1

When the Bad Batch debuted in the season premiere of Clone Wars’ final season, they emerged as fan favorites so quickly a spin-off seemed inevitable. A little longer than a year later, The Bad Batch series arrives. Aftermath is an extra sized premiere clocking in at an impressive 72 minutes though it’s long enough to reveal enough cracks that this batch might not be all good.

Much like Clone Wars’ final four episodes, Aftermath is set in the fallout of the Clone Wars with the Separatists defeated and the “traitorous” Jedi vanquished. Seeing this play out from the perspective of the Bad Batch is interesting since they’re kind of an outcast faction within the Clone Army. There’s an interesting dynamic at play following Order 66 that I’ll break down in spoiler fashion later.

Hunter, Crosshair, Tech, Wrecker and Echo capture the attention of a high ranking Imperial officer and dispatched to handle some business for the new Empire. But it turns out the Bad Batch isn’t great at following Imperial orders and find themselves on the other side of their fellow Clones.

There’s two significant issues with Aftermath. The biggest offender is a spoiler I’ll address in greater detail in an upcoming review. For now, I’ll just say I kind of hated this decision to kick off the series. If that choice was needed, it probably would have played out better as the season progressed instead of the first episode.

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The other is problematic in the sense that it represents a seismic change from the approach showrunner Dave Filoni used with Clone Wars and its successor, Rebels.

In the trailer, a new character, Omega (Michelle Ang), is revealed. The Bad Batch is basically the Star Wars Clone Wars-era equivalent of The Expendables. Throwing a child into that mix felt like a questionable choice just from the trailer and nothing in Aftermath justifies Omega’s inclusion. There’s some logistical questions raised just based on everything that’s been explained during the Clone Wars and watching Omega mimic Hunter’s gestures feels like an ill-advised attempt at making Omega a cute, fun character.

Fan favorite Ahsoka Tano had a clunky introduction in Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie where she was played up more for laughs in an attempt to bring some levity to a dark and deadly war. The problem was Ahsoka — movie version — came off more like Jar Jar Binks than an actual funny character. Movie Ahsoka was a try hard character that quickly became annoying. Omega seems destined for that same path and doesn’t seem to offer a lot to the already enjoyable Bad Batch dynamic if Aftermath is any indication.

Omega and the other big spoiler are problems, but the idea of The Bad Batch being on the run and warring against the Empire and Stormtroopers is an intriguing one. Rebels was set a few years before Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker turned the tide of the Rebellion. Bad Batch tackles the wide open period of the immediate fallout from the Clone Wars. With Filoni running the series it’s a safe assumption that Bad Batch will continue playing out plot threads he established with classic and original characters.

Bad Batch retains the darker visual animation style from Clone Wars compared to the brighter and cheerier tone for Rebels. This makes sense since this is a galaxy fully under the shroud of the Dark Side/Empire with no traces of hope…yet.  The action sequences are laid out cleanly without any distracting hyper edits as well.

Aftermath isn’t the smoothest start for The Bad Batch although Filoni’s track record suggests there’s plenty of reason to be optimistic this will be another highly regarded Star Wars series by the time it’s over.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Photo Credit: Disney+

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