Review: Star Wars: The Bad Batch “The Crossing”

What in the world is going on with The Bad Batch? I was expecting so much more out of the second season. The problem that we get here is that we’re getting more and more of the annoyances that have been driving me insane for the last six weeks.

This week, we get all of the trappings of what could have been a cool wild west type of heist. That would have been cool, considering the beginning of the season has given off all of the trappings of a collection of all of the different types of heist plots. We had a giant sized Ocean’s 11 heist, followed by a sort of National Treasure heist. After a few weeks off of the heist list, we came back to what I initially thought was going to be one.

Nope! What we got was a shitty mining expedition for Cid, where the gang (now 3 plus Omega), had to get this highly volatile ore from am almost stripped mine. There was a lot of baggage from Echo leaving, and none of which was processed. All of the events, from their ship getting jacked, to getting left out in the storm, caused a lot of stress and friction between everyone. The effect of this is Omega becoming the most annoying god damn character in this animated universe. She is more annoying than early Ezra, early Ashoka, and the treatment of Asajj Ventress. I am at the point where I just want to be done with her. If  she can get a blaster rifle shot to the head, I’ll be the happiest Star Wars fan.

That said, the episode is a circle jerk. “The Crossing” is a part one to the second half next week, so the pacing is a snail’s pace for most of the episode. We go from getting this ore, to “hey look, we got all of this bullshit we need to get through, but fuck you all,” to stranded, to hurry up and wait. Between mining and fixing their shit, the pacing just dragged. The ship got stolen, which necessitated the team to walk. The funny part is that the team almost got Mufasa’d by a flock of stampeding beasts. In all of this, the reason they were on this planet in the first place lost on the wrong side of a cave in. Fucking really?

I’m sorry, but “The Crossing” was absolute fucking trash. I’m sitting here trying to pick something to go “hmm, that’s good.” The pacing was absolute ass. Omega sucks as a character. The Bad Batch is losing my interest faster than they’re losing members. I get that this is supposed to create character growth. But this growth is just done wrong. It feels like nothing was done. Tech just said “I hear you. But I don’t get it.”

I’m hoping next week’s episode brings things around to make things better again, because this was not it. The Bad Batch is falling fast, easily becoming the worst animated Star Wars show I’ve seen.