The Return (The Bad Batch - S03E05) - Animated Series

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"Why? Why is there always a huge monster?" SPOILERS.

Psychiatric Help: 5 Cents

"The Return" picks things up a few days or so after the events of the last episode. Crosshair is back but things are uneasy. So of course Omega has a heart to heart chat with Crosshair and advises him that he'll have to talk and sort things out with Hunter sooner than later. And then an old friend returns, Echo rejoins his old team, at least for a while. But only a very small part of the episode is about the issue of Crosshair returning and reintegrating and Hunter still feeling that Crosshair is a traitor and can't really be trusted. Most of the episode is about fighting a huge not-sandworm on a frozen planet.

Supper's ready!

It turns out that for some inexplicable reason the Bad Batch still don't know the location of Hemlock's secret research facility. Which raises so many questions, first and foremost: how is that even still possible? Omega and Crosshair stole an Imperial shuttle from the base and flew it for a while at least, before it crashlanded on a nearby planet. So I have to ask: did anyone ever take a look at some navigational readings? Or plot a course maybe? Or just check one of the many displays in the cockpit that gives you the navigational data needed? How is it even possible not to know the location you escaped from when you use a shuttle to fly away from there? I feel this is incredibly silly. Next thing is that Hunter and co (and especially Omega) still want to save the clones from Hemlock's clutches. So the next best thing they can think of is to use Nala Se's data pad to find out the coordinates, but it stopped working and the info on it is encrypted anyway. So what is the big plan? Get access to a working Imperial security console that automatically unlocks the data pad (biometrics do not really seem to exist and no one locks their data pads with fingerprints or so), in the hope it may have the coordinates.

Return to a familiar place

Crosshair just happens to know where the team might find an Imperial console. He does not tell the others how exactly he knows where to find one or what this place they are going to really is or was... but the Bad Batch return to the base on the icy planet where Crosshair killed the Imperial officer after trying to retrieve stolen Imperial supplies. This was one of the very good second season episodes, sadly, the return to this place in season 3 is not as great.

One of the good moments in this episode

They arrive on the base, there is still tension between Hunter and Crosshair, they plug the pad into the console and it works, Echo can retrieve the data so he can analyze it later, but then it turns out a huge ice worm monster thingy is in the vicinity. The team deactived security as they entered the abandoned base, but that means the beacons keeping the worm away also no longer work. And this of course means the worm attacks. Now the Bad Batch scramble to get the beacons working again, while Hunter and Crosshair have to lure the worm away from the perimeter, outside the inner range of the beacons, or else they are useless when the worm is inside the protective zone. But before that we get a short and poignant moment with Crosshair who finds some old clone trooper helmets in a corner, thrown haphazardly on the floor, Crosshair neatly puts them on one of the crates and this quiet scene without any dialogue even is probably one of the best moments in this episode. Sadly, most of the actual runtime, about 50% or so, is dedicated to fighting and luring away the worm.

You can tell Star Wars was massively inspired by Dune

But eventually Hunter and Crosshair manage to get the worm to leave the protective zone, the beacons are reactivated and Hunter and Crosshair even have a chat and Crosshair talks about the bad things he's done and regrets he has, but Hunter understands, they all have regrets. And Crosshair also finally tells Hunter why he was imprisoned by the Empire, Hunter assumes it's because Crosshair betrayed the Empire. Crosshair never really does tell Hunter about the experience on the base though, only that he shot an Imperial officer. Either way, at the end of the episode it seems that Hunter and Crosshair have mostly reconciled and are ok with each other, for now. So the episode had some much needed character progression.

The episode could have been so much better if it had ditched the unneeded action. It seems the showrunner thinks that most episodes need a certain amount of action. But this greatly impacted the whole Hunter/Crosshair storyline and all in all maybe 5 minutes, at best, were dedicated to Crosshair's uneasy reunion and distrust especially on Hunter's part, Echo is also somewhat cautious, Wrecker is his usual goodnatured self of course. A better episode would have explored the psychological angle much more. Not everything always needs to devolve into shooting blasters and running away from alien monsters. This is a much overused plot device now. I wonder if the writers had Wrecker say his "Why is there always a huge monster?" as some kind of self-aware metacomment on the tropes this show is overusing.

Another issue I have with the fundamental premise here is that Omega is designed to look like a young child, but the writers write her like an adult character or at least older teen. So Omega is the wise counsellor in this episode and has a heart to heart chat with Crosshair and tells him what he really should do, face Hunter. I feel this is pretty much too mature for a kid, Omega is maybe 8 - 10 years old, and technically speaking older than her brothers, but without accelerated growth and aging still a child. I really feel it would have resolved so many of the show's issues, like taking a child on dangerous missions, a child in armed conflicts, flying spaceships, giving advice to other people and so on and so on if they had made Omega either an older teen, 15 - 17, or even a young adult, in her early twenties. You either want to have a child character on your show, but then have the character behave like a child... or you want this smart and mature action oriented character that can even give advice to others on emotional matters, but then the character should be older. So we have a child character that is written for the most part like an adult, which is pretty silly.

In this episode once again Hunter at first insists that Omega stays behind before they fly to the base... but as usual Omega says it's her business too and Hunter relents and allows her to go. Which still makes no sense. All of these inane debates (no one in their right mind would take a young girl on these missions) could be avoided if Omega was an older teen with some combat training. I mean, how many actual children compared to adults watch The Bad Batch anyway?

All in all "The Return" was ok, the action was not bad really, it just felt a bit superfluous. The character moments were actually well written and in these few more silent moments the episode is at its best. But sadly, the showrunner and writers seem to think that you always need x amount of pew pew in order to keep people entertained. And more often than not it means some alien monster wants to eat the Bad Batch. It's too late to change it now, but in hindsight they should have used this element much more sparingly. It's getting old fast.

So all in all another inoffensive "ok" episode, it has good parts, it has parts that you can easily fast forward through. So it's another solid 2.5 holocrons, which means it's perfectly average, ok to watch, but neither great nor fantastic, but also not bad. Fans of The Bad Batch can easily watch this and have a good time. No one else is watching the series at this point anyway.