Star Wars: The Bad Batch: Season 2 Episode 2: Ruins of War
What is it ? : Picking up directly from the previous episode, Wrecker and Hunter exit Dooku's palace and head for the Havok Marauder through the devastated ruins of the city surrounding the palace. Meanwhile, Echo, Tech and Omega crashland their cargo container onto a cliff, where it wobbles for a while before sliding down the mountainside. During the impact some of the cargo crashes onto Tech's leg, breaking it.
They explore outside the container, Omega wanting to show she is of value to the Batch as she thinks they have given up everything for them, she realises they are being watched. And they capture a survivor of Serenno called Romar.
He tells them that he and other survivors have taken refuge in the wilderness to avoid the Empire, and are just waiting for them to finish their looting and leave, and they force him to take them back to his home.
Inside Omega plays with a kaleidoscope, while Echo leaves to patrol the area looking for Imperial pursuit.
Wrecker and Hunter flee through the ruins, and are pursued by Clone Troopers led by an officer, Captain Wilco. He seals off the city, forcing them to find a way of leaving, and they discover a group of damaged Confederacy tanks, but are spotted as they attempt to get them functional. Although the tanks are non-functional, Wrecker loots a heavy weapon from them and they blast their way back to the Havok Marauder.
Tech helps Romar repair a data module which contains the history of Serenno, and realises that he always thought of the Confederacy as just formed for the war and not having their own histories. Echo arrives back at Romars house and notices that Omega is missing, so heads after her realising that she is heading back to the cargo container for the treasure.
Tech follows, slowly due to his broken leg, and by the time he reaches them, Echo and Omega are trapped inside the container being attacked by Imperial Forces. Tech with the help of Romar manages to defeat the few troopers keeping Echo and Omega trapped, but they then come under attack by a Laat/i, only for the Havok Marauder to come to their rescue.
As they leave, Omega is sad because she feels that the treasure could have helped the Batch, and made up for the loss they suffered in her rescue, but Echo tells her that Rescuing her was the right thing to do, and it would have been a much greater loss if they'd ended up serving the Empire, and they head for home as Omega plays with the kaleidoscope and Wrecker plays with his new cannon.
Meanwhile Admiral Rampart meets with Captain Wilco, telling him his report is wrong, the Bad Batch were killed on Kamino, ordering him to change his official report. Wilco refuses, but Rampart guns him down rather than let knowledge of his failure reach his superiors. . .
High Points : Again it's nice that the enemy acts intelligently, Wilco comes up with tactics to secure the cargo containers to capture anyone that returns to loot them, to secure the city to stop Wrecker and Hunter escaping. He doesn't just react to what they are doing, but tries to think a step ahead, although it would have been nice if when they'd reached the Havok Marauder they'd encountered an ambush there, as it seems fairly obvious that they'd need a ship, and locating a starship doesn't seem that hard.
Having some growth of Tech as a character is also very nice, as stated before, he's my favourite of the Batch, and having him come to the realisation that the Republic misled him about his enemies gives him the opportunity of growing in interesting directions.
Low Points : I'm a little annoyed by the disjointed nature of the storytelling across different series. In this episode, Romar tells Tech how Dooku was evil and just trying to get the treasure for himself. Whereas we see Dooku in Tales of the Jedi as someone who joined the Dark Side not for power, but to bring those who would have power held to account. While it's possible that he was corrupted by that power as time went along, or Romar really doesn't understand the motivations behind Dooku and just thought he was just greedy like the other politicians.
Given that there's less than six months between the release of Tales of the Jedi and this, I definitely would have thought the stories would have connected together better, given they are both successor series to Clone Wars, and we're not talking about continuity between stories written decades apart.
When the Bad Batch were first introduced, they each basically had a superpower, Wrecker could throw Laat/i's around due to his great strength, and Hunter apparently could detect anyone anywhere on a planet. But here we get Clone Troopers observing him and Wrecker from across a city square, and Hunter is unaware of them. I'm aware they powered the Bad Batch down between their original appearance and now, but here they seem little more than ordinary Clone Troopers, albeit very experienced ones.
So what do you really think ? : Again, an enjoyable episode, nothing fantastic, but an interesting little story. But one that makes me wonder, did it really need two episodes to tell, or could this have all been better told in just one episode, if we'd cut the Crab segment of the first, and just tightened up the rest of the story a little.
Final Words : I seem to remember quite enjoying Bad Batch last season, feeling that it was up to the same quality as the final seasons of Clone Wars. This season so far doesn't feel as good, but it's early days yet, so we'll need to see how it progresses.
That said, it's still pretty decent and worth a watch.
Score : 8/10
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