Star Wars The Bad Batch – Devil’s Deal review S1 E11

Jeffrey Lyles July 14, 2021 0 Comments Corey Burton, Dee Bradley Baker, Michelle Ang, Phil LaMarr, Star Wars, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Star Wars: The Clone Wars

My love for Star Wars Rebels is pretty boundless, but it’s weird to watch an episode of The Bad Batch serve more as a prequel to Rebels than the title characters.

Of course that’s nothing new for the series as it typically focuses on Omega as opposed to The Bad Batch anyway.

Devil’s Deal largely focuses on the Empire’s “peaceful” occupation of Ryloth with Empire puppet Orn Free Ta (Phil LaMarr) taking on the figurehead role. Cham Syndulla (Robin Atkin Downes) and his wife, Eleni (Ferelith Young), truly have the citizens’ hearts. Hoping to put an end to conflict on his world, Cham calls on them to turn over their weapons in advance of a peaceful new status quo.

Cham’s friend, Gobi (Corey Burton) rightfully doesn’t trust the Empire and immediately sends Cham’s daughter, Hera (Vanessa Marshall) and her droid, Chopper, to investigate the Empire’s base. Marshall gave Hera a thick accent to match the distinguished dialect of Ryloth. This was different than the tone Marshall used for Hera on Rebels so at some point Hera must have decided to drop the accent?

Seeing a young Hera and Chopper getting into more trouble than they can handle definitely conjured a Rebels vibe and made me want to watch that after this episode.

That’s probably not the intent of this episode…It’s amazing how Bad Batch is just a cameo from other popular Star Wars series instead of just being its own property expanding its universe like Clone Wars and Rebels before it.

It was nice to see a Clone Trooper not act crazy evil after Order 66 and treating Cham like a valued war ally. That’s not Crosshair’s story and he is all evil. There was a moment this season where it seemed like Crosshair was going to have some nuance to him, but now he’s just the series’ main action villain.

I’m still not a huge fan of that development and also think it’s highly suspect that Crosshair wouldn’t just snipe out his former allies from a distance and then grab Omega for the Empire.

Crosshair tracks Hera and her uncle traveling off planet to meet up with Cid’s contacts, The Bad Batch. This is the extent of the Bad Batch’s involvement this issue.

The most prominent moment from their cameo is Hera and Omega bonding over their shared experiences and love of flying. Hera actually got to educate Omega instead of the expected other way around so this was a nice moment.

Back on Ryloth, Gen. Rampart quickly sets up a trap to capture Cham and Eleni. But Orn Free Ta has to take the fall with a well placed sniper shot from Crosshair. Apparently, Orn Free Ta survived and will go on to be an Imperial puppet for years to come. And he’s already being put to use as the nearly assassinated victim of a plot by Cham and Eleni. Rampart played it cool throughout the episode and this was the best showing of his strategic mind at work.

Hera and Chopper are still free though so maybe Hera can make a call to a certain crew that might be able to help her save her family…

Devil’s Deal was a solid episode even if The Bad Batch were just relegated to a cameo role.