Star Wars The Bad Batch Reunion review – S1 E8
The ongoing theme of the last few episodes of The Bad Batch has been “This is more like it.” Some of the growing pains of the show were self-inflicted, but it seems to have found its identity now. Reunion continued that trend with the best episode of the series to date.
That bar keeps moving, which is a good sign of course and suggests the back half of his season is going to be a lot stronger than the opening act.
With the Batch discovered, the Empire dispatches several squadrons led by Crosshair to retrieve them. Fearful that their asset, Omega, is going to get killed, the Kaminoans decide to throw in their own ace on the deck.
Hunter is focused on salvaging whatever parts or weapons they can get to pay off their debt to Cid. I get that Cid was a plot device to get the team a way to make money, but I hope they’re not anchored to her out of a debt obligation. The idea of them choosing assignments they take from Cid sounds more fun than grabbing whatever crappy gig she finds.
Wrecker has been a lot of fun the last few episodes and pairing him with Omega instead of Hunter has made for a better dynamic. Hunter was being forced into the father figure/The Mandalorian protector role while Wrecker treats Omega more like a little sister, which is far more entertaining.
As usual, Crosshair is on stone cold killer mode with little patience for anyone. It’s still kinda silly that the Batch (and Omega) try and reason with Crosshair and explain the inhibitor chip is what made him turn on them.
They just finished watching that strategy fail terribly with Wrecker. Talking doesn’t work, but a quick stun gun blast and a trip to the Jedi cruiser’s special chip disabling MRI chamber would get the job done.
Considering they were at the same spot used to “fix” the others, it seemed like a missed opportunity to not at least have the Batch try and capture Crosshair in hopes of restoring him.
At least we did get some fun action sequences with Crosshair anticipating the Batch’s every move.
This did have me wondering why it took Crosshair so long and with assistance from the Scrappers actually spotting them to track down the team. It’s not like he wouldn’t think of the same places to go as Hunter. Maybe the order would be off, but it would have provided a greater element of a chase and the need for the team to stay nomadic…like the A-Team.
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Crosshair didn’t expect the team to trigger explosions after he cornered them in the engine hull, which knocked him for a serious loop. I wondered if it was severe enough to knock out the Empire programming enough to make him
Hunter and Omega make it back to the ship first, only to find someone has taken out the squad Crosshair had guarding it. I just assumed it would be teenage Boba Fett, but it’s the No. 1 bounty hunter in the game at this point — Cad Bane (with Todo 360).
I complained last week about how the show keeps throwing in random guest stars, but I’m OK with Cad Bane. He wasn’t overexposed on Clone Wars and his whereabouts were a mystery. Plus he’s one of the coolest characters from Clone Wars and Todo 360 is such a great droid sidekick.
He sizes Hunter up and gets what sure seemed like a kill shot. Todo stops Omega from using her bow and Cad stuns her. Nice to see an actual effective bounty hunter who always gets the job done.
So now I finally get my wish, The Bad Batch without Omega as they try and rescue her from the most competent bounty hunter around. The guys might want to just wait until he hands her over to the Kaminoans.
Reunion was very entertaining and while Crosshair didn’t get fixed so he could rejoin the Bad Batch he made for a great foil this episode even if he got upstaged at the end.
Rating: 9.5 out of 10
Photo Credit: Star Wars