Into The Breach (The Bad Batch - S03E13) - Animated Series

Discuss the latest Chapter! (Discussion)

"Do you think I am lying? Yes!" SPOILERS.

Someone actually insisted Omega now wears prisoner clothing

Not much is happening in "Into The Breach", at least from a story perspective, as we are approaching the finale of the series this episode is all about moving your pieces across the board before the final move. That being said, "Into The Breach" was a real fun episode, at least the part with the Bad Batch infiltrating the Imperial orbital station with Rampart was. Omega's b plot was entirely too predictable, not that the a plot isn't predictable either, but it was a lot more fun watching it.

The perfect embodiment of a pompous, arrogant Imperial officer

The reason the infiltration of the orbital station is fun is mostly down to the inclusion of Rampart, the once vice admiral, pressganged by the Bad Batch into helping them with locating Tantiss. Years (or months) of forced labor have not changed his personality. He's a hilarious example of an arrogant, pompous Imperial officer, the scene where Rampart complains he can't wear his disguise is one of the best moments in the episode. And the reason he can't wear it: it has the wrong rank insignias, that of a captain, but he was a vice admiral.

Infiltrating Imperial military installations, what would Star Wars be without it

A quick word about the a and b plot. In the a plot the Bad Batch and Rampart infiltrate an orbital station that, according to Rampart, is sending transports to Tantiss, so it's the place to go if you want to find out the nav coordinates. But not even the navigators on the ships know the coordinates, instead the station's computer will send the coordinates to the navcomputer after the transport has undocked. When the Bad Batch learn that there is no way to pull the coordinates from a docked ship they need to find a way to track the ship to Tantiss itself, and since hyperspace tracking does not really exist other than in the fevered minds of sequel writers, it means the Bad Batch have to be either onboard the transport or attached to the ship's hull Han Solo style. Which means Echo has to board the ship before launch and deactivate its security, so the Bad Batch can track it... which means riding it piggyback to Tantiss. So while Echo is handling the security of the ship, Hunter maneuvers their Imperial shuttle. And at the very last moment Echo manages to deactivate the proximity sensors of the Imperial transport so the shuttle can attach itself unseen.

Success!

Omega's b plot is all about plotting the escape. For yet another time... whatever. Omega steals a tool from Emerie when she takes the usual blood samples. And of course Emerie does not notice it. At best you can say Emerie DID notice, but doesn't say anything because she wants the kids to escape. Either way... Omega has figured out how to escape the place after being there for about 15 minutes. All the holding cells have shafts that transport the blood samples through the station up to the lab. She wants to use those shafts to escape. And with the stolen tool she manages to loosen the panels hiding the shaft. When a suspicious Imperial thinks something may be off Omega manages to put everything back into place in record time. And that's it.

As I said, overall this episode was fun, infiltrations, heists, prison breaks and similar plots are always exciting if done well. The issue I have with The Bad Batch as a whole is though that they overuse Star Wars tropes and tropes in general. I mean, how many times have we now seen rebels etc waltz into Imperial (enemy) installations in disguise? I don't care if it's all supposed to "rhyme", after a while it just gets repetitive. Now it was at least fun this time, but I would not complain if I never see the infiltration of an Imperial installation again... ever. The Mandalorian did it, Andor did it, Obi-Wan Kenobi did it, Rogue One did it, the first movie very famously did it and of course the sequels copy pasted that, The Clone Wars of course did it (granted, those were not "Imperial" outposts), now the Bad Batch and yes, Ahsoka did it too, although you may argue it was more of an open assault, so I give it a pass. Come up with something new please.

Omega's prison break is the collection of tropes you'd expect it to be. Nothing exciting about that. But the real problem is... The Bad Batch season 3 is recycling its own arcs and plots. We already had a prison break episode early in the season, from the same place even! As I said previously, they could have easily reduced the episode count to 5 or 6, at most, with the exact same overall story. There is no good reason to show us twice how Omega escapes Tantiss.

At least the part with the Bad Batch and Rampart was good fun to watch, it even had some excitement and while you always knew they would finally succeed the plot had some good tension and last second saves.

So overall "Into The Breach" was definitely one of the better season 3 episodes and you can have a fun 23 minutes here, well, excluding the Omega b plot maybe which moves in entirely too predictable ways and is not even exciting. One more week to go now... I get the feeling The Bad Batch will leave many things open ended, because the show was cancelled before the showrunner could finish the actual tale of Omega. So it will almost certainly end with Omega escaping (and maybe destroying) Tantiss... flying off into the sunset with the Bad Batch (or whoever survives of them), never to be seen or heard from again. Which will only add to the wasted potential of this series which could have been so much more. I suppose The Bad Batch and Omega will be forgotten about soon. Although in theory Omega could appear in live action, she should be in her late 30s during the Mando timeline. And she has connections to Fennec Shand at least. And she's still Boba Fett's sister. I wonder why Fennec never mentioned that to him. Or maybe she will tell Boba about it that she had dealings with a clone sister of his. We will see.