A/V Star Wars: The Bad Batch Series Discussion Thread

It’s supposed to make her look more like Morrison. They did say in 2022 that they took that to heart. That unwhitewash the bad batch thing that Tumblr and people on Twitter were going crazy about for like 5 days. (Although they didn’t really apply it to the bad batch themselves)

Also yes she is taller. I was watching Aftermath yesterday and she is small as hell.

 

Makes sense for her to have grown taller if she's older tbf

I always thought it was dumb that she was supposed to be a clone of Jango but was somehow a white girl . . . even taking into account the whole "defective clone" thing.

I mean how do you justify being a "clone" but turning out a completely different biological sex . . . pretty huge difference. Half your sex chromosomes would be completely changed. Surely you're not a clone after that

 

She’d probably be closer to a biological child by that point.

 

I didn't see Omega as a white girl. Heck, in every scene, I never saw any of the clones or Omega as white in any way.

 

Technically, you don't need to change the chromosomes. What effects your bodyplan and shape is the hormones you get, and while usually the xy chromosomes trigger the hormones to turn the fetus into a male, it doesn't always happen and you end up with xy girls, or the hormones get triggered without it and you have xx boys. And sometimes you get other options in the replication process like yy, xxx, xxy, yxy so on and so forth.
....At least if I remember the anthropology course I took well over a decade ago correctly that is. I think it is something like that though.

I imagine Nala Se could have controlled that pretty easily since the whole process was done pretty easily.

And that is without into, you know, just being trans, which would be the simpler explanation though I get the feeling the Kaminoans probably wouldn't respect their clones autonomy like that...

Course, the blonde hair still implies at least minor variation - probably doubling up on a recessive blond gene that Jango had - but I imagine she would be a lot closer than a regular child. And the clones in general have been mentioned to have been genetically modified except for Boba, so I confess I am curious where the line is drawn between a clone and a strand-cast.

 

I got caught up, the two parter was good. The new ep SOUNDED good, but I couldn't see much.

 

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I'm still on team "Omega isn't force sensitive." I think she's important due to the malleability of her blood, not any particularly high M-Count. The Empire has plenty of high M-Count Jedi in stasis they can pull from, Omega being a force sensitive clone wouldn't really change anything for them, I don't think. I like the little "I've got a few lives left" nod. It would be nice to get a concrete explanation of Asajj's return but within the context of this episode there would be no real reason for her to tell that story. It's enough to acknowledge it so people can't claim it decanonized Dark Disciple and I'm sure we'll get something more later. I still have my fingers crossed for an Asajj and Vos: The Path animated series to follow this one up.

 

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Shows up
Takes Omega fishing
Refuses to elaborate
fr I wish we got some more info, but overall it was a pretty good episode nice seeing Ms.Ventress again.

 

Really sloppy.

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This only worked for people who have no idea of Dark Disciple. They wrote her the same as she was in The Wrong Jedi, the last we saw her on screen. I hated how she used Force Choke on Wrecker, which is explicitly a Dark Side ability. That goes against her entire character arc and her ending in Dark Disciple, where she was fully redeemed. Of course, it was a backdoor pilot for something else and they didn't explain anything. But that line "I've got a few lives left" wasn't nearly as funny or smart as they think it was — resurrecting dead characters has become a huge problem at this point. Actually, they just literally pulled a Palpatine: "I have died before." Yuck. It could have been any other Jedi. Could have been Quinlan himself. Also, the entire episode could have been over before it started, if she had one of those devices that Qui-Gon used to measure Anakin's midi-chlorian count. They didn't ask her whether she can become a Jedi, they asked her if she has a high midi-chlorian count. And making Omega a Jedi is also banal at this point, after Filoni gave us Jedi-Sabine. Not everyone needs to be a Jedi to be cool or interesting. I guess not.

 

Disclaimer: Haven't watched the Bad Batch beyond two or three episodes and clips.

Everything I've heard about it, it seems like the show has really leaned into this mystery about Omega to the point of mystery mongering if it took three seasons for it to turn out that the big deal is that she's force sensitive.

I gotta say, I don't really see why Omega having a high m-count counts as some significant thing after the Ahsoka show: Hyuang's line about Sabine ("I have known many Padawans. Your aptitude for the Force would fall short of them all.") suggests she's got basically zilch in comparison to the standard force-sensitive child, but she was still able to chuck people across distances with the force.

It's the same with Gideon's plan: unless he specifically wanted force sensitive clones of himself, he didn't really need to go the cloning route to get his army. He could just have gotten a m-count checker and used regular people or cloned somebody suitably force sensitive.

Unless Omega's extremely powerful, and nothing I've seen or heard suggests that, I don't see why it would have been worth cultivating ms in her or chasing her down instead of just collecting children off the street or elsewhere. Wait, didn't the Kenobi series establish that the Empire has a lair of dead Jedi that's been preserved by the Inquisitors pretty much immediately after their deaths?

Also, Omega should have been trans. Disney would never have done that in a million y ears, but it would have made sense and would have been really cool not just in rep, but also in showing another way the clones are individuals. She cannot be biologically female and still be a genetically identical clone to Jango Fett like Boba is. For twins to be genetically identical, they need to be the same sex. A biologically male and female twin pair are not genetically identical and are always fraternal twins.

 

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Omega is force sensitive. Assajj Ventress is great, love her with her hair.

 

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Hello, Asajj Ventress. Love the look and I love your ship. Verpine inspired?

Omega's "is she or isn't she?" continues. That's okay. To be honest, I'm fine with that. We just need Nala Se to spill the beans and that'll probably come at the end of the series when Tantiss gets shut down.

The whole M-count thing is strange. If it was about high numbers, the Jedi-turned-Inquisitors would've been used for experiments along with any Jedi they choose to capture and not execute. This is something else. What it is? We have to wait until the end of the series.

I noticed that there was some issue with Ventress using the Force choke on Wrecker (or did she? She seemed more to be holding him and lightly squeezing on his neck as the center of her control) by saying it defies Dark Disciple (which is hard to read because of Dooku wiping out a civilisation for the LOLs more than anything) and her redemption. You can't always let go of what you were taught, notice her struggle with summoning life, it clearly took effort to maintain that control. I like that. She's no Jedi but no Sith either. She's balancing in between because she's still finding her own path.

"I have a few lives left," is part of Ventress' story really since the beginning. Heck, Legends leaned on it after her first appearance in Clone Wars (2003-2005) in the Republic comics line right up until the Obsession arc when she appeared to die but survived to steal the med-runner and disappear. What reason for her survival and why Quinlan Vos (and Obi-Wan Kenobi perhaps) kept it quiet? We'll find out no doubt. This won't be the last we'll see of her. Wouldn't surprise me if a new series maybe in the works involving Vos and Ventress plus Fennec Shand perhaps even Boba Fett and Cad Bane. Unused Clone Wars episode concepts led to the Bad Batch, so I'm not going to be surprised if this happens.

Anyway, good episode. These "character episodes" always are amusing. I'm just glad my stream didn't pause during the action scenes like every other week. Probably because I left it on Pause at the beginning for about 15 minutes while I watched some videos about Prince Harry's latest silliness and Meghan Markle's new venture already going bust on Youtube on my phone for fun. I'll do this more often

 

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Just as I predicted way back when, they said nothing to address Dark Disciple. Is that a good thing? Bad thing?

I don't care either way because the episode was simply weak. This season apparently has one trick that the producers really, really like: the Bad Batch work with someone who they don't fully trust, they get attacked by a giant monster, and they team up with the untrustworthy person to beat the giant monster. We saw it in the second episode, in the fifth episode, flashes of it in the last episode with Fennec (although those crocs weren't giant and the main quarry was the Yam'rii), and now we see it here.

It would be great if Ventress had one of those blood testers Qui-Gon had, but I get that they were probably all confiscated by the Empire and hard to find on the black market. But then again, wasn't Ventress contacted by Fennec last episode because she's an A-List bounty hunter who goes after M-count targets? Seems like the kind of tool a bounty hunter like that would carry, since it could help verify the target once they're caught.

It's funny that the distrust ramps up every time they remake this episode. With the young clones, the Batch didn't even distrust them, they were just getting double crossed without realizing it. With the fifth episode, Hunter didn't trust Crosshair even though he was being earnest. With Fennec, they naturally didn't trust her and were probably right to not. With this episode, not only are they actively hostile to Ventress but she threatens to kill them (and then what? I guess she would take on the bounty?) At the rate we're going, the next episode will feature the Bad Batch trying to get information about M-counts from Darth Vader. Can't wait to see what type of enormous tentacled creature helps unite him with the Batch after he dismembers Wrecker!

 

As usual, good stuff.

Spoiler

Good to see Ventress, not surprised in the slightest that they didn't discuss her death and resurrection here other than that oblique reference, and I doubt very much this is the last we'll see of her. The mystery of Omega's M-count deepens a bit further; is this the first time midi-chlorians have been referenced directly in relation to the term "M-count"? We've all assumed that since the term first came up in Mandalorian, but I wonder if this is the first direct linking of the two.

Officially in the second half of the season now, things are going to get interesting from here...

 

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Lots of natural 1s on Ventress diplomacy checks. Fortunately she is good with Handle Animal.

Even a place as peaceful as Pabu has giant monsters? Must be dangerous to go camping in the star wars galaxy.

Cool design though, especially loved the way the colors shifted. Really flexing how good the animation has become.

"You're a war criminal, you aren't like us." Crosshair: *tugs collar nervously*

And people thought the point of M-Count was to avoid the word "midicholorian."

Honestly, I am not a big fan of Omega being force sensitive. Especially not making it a big reveal in season three when everyone guessed that in episode 1. Honestly, it would be more of a shock to have a child protagonist in a star wars show who isn't force sensitive.* Though the flip side is that I have long made my peace with the idea, so isn't really a deal breaker or anything.

*On that note, who wants to take bets on how many of the kids from skeleton crew turn out to be force sensitive.

Interesting ship Ventress has at the end there, though part of me wishes we had seen the Banshee from the canceled clone wars series. Was it destroyed in Dark Disciple?

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So three of the nine episodes involve this trope and the other six don't - or well half a case for the Fennec episode - but that is the only thing the series is about?

 

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I don’t believe I said that. Someone in another thread added examples from prior seasons too, but it’s still far from majority. Personally, I think it’s a crutch that this season is leaning on.

3x01 also has the implied giant monster at the start—seems like that’s a Chekhov’s gun for an episode close to the finale, so we may get another example of this.

 

A couple of vague hints at forward progress on the overall plot, but the characters don't learn anything the audience hadn't figured out years ago. And then there's a giant monster.

 

Its good to live in the momment

 

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Omega: I have been around Crosshair enough to know when a cynical grump really likes me.

Thinking more, the Bad Batch's combat results seem to vary a great deal depending on the type of opponent. Droids? Like a lightsaber through space!butter. Not even necessarily separatist droids that they are used to fighting, but the police droids and Axis vanguard and whatnot as well. They struggle a bit more against imperial forces but still usually tear through large numbers of them with only a bit more effort. Criminals - suddenly the Bad Batch are cautious and have trouble with smaller numbers of them. Animals take quite a bit of work and usually some kind of plan for the Batch to defeat. Named characters through almost always but the Batch on the back foot even with the entire team against one foe, and win as often as not.

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Fair enough. Definitely someone is having fun designing alien creatures to throw at the Batch, as well as the Mandalorian, that is for sure.

I think that creature was the lizard-bear-thing that Omega and Crosshair ran into before escaping, which got attacked by the Lurka hounds....though overall I think you are right, they put too much emphasis on Wayland's dangerous wildlife for it just to be that one encounter, and it seems odd they make a creature model just for it as well, so probably the Batch will have to land outside the Tantis perimeter and deal with the wildlife before attacking the facility directly.

 

Regarding Omega and the M-count.

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I'm guessing the whole thing is important because they want Palpatine's clones to be powerful Force users or to be able to sustain his powerful essence/spirit whatever you want to call it.

 

Also in regards to Omega

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I think the people who are so sure on both sides that she is or isn’t force sensitive are missing the point. It doesn’t matter if she is. Being force sensitive doesn’t matter for squat if you don’t use it.

Also if this was as cut and dry as some people are making it seem I have a feeling Jennifer or one of the other creators would have said so already. Being like hey guys I see there is some confusion Omega is/is not force sensitive

however the fact that crosshair deduced that she was lying is what throws me for a curve. It’s that last line of if she was force sensitive it would mean leaving you and that isn’t going to happen. I don’t know why some people are so 100% convinced one way or another on this.

 

Fun episode. Has anyone heard from @anakinfansince1983?

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Finally! Now that's settled the entire Skywalker blood bollocks can be buried for all eternity.

 

nm

 

I have a feeling you’ll like it.