Star Wars: The Bad Batch – Season Two
I know that I’m a bit late with this review, but the second season of The Bad Batch has finally concluded and I’m here to share my thoughts. I will admit, a big part of my delay is because it took me a bit longer than anticipated to watch it. And, if I’m being completely honest with you, once I did start watching it, I really had to make myself see it to completion. I’ll say up front, that my lack of passion wasn’t necessarily because this season of the show was bad, per se. But I think perhaps, I’m just getting a bit burnt out with the franchise. As a lifelong Star Wars fan, it pains me to say that. But I really feel like Disney is oversaturating the market a bit. This is especially true when it comes to these younger-themed shows.
All that aside, this second season of The Bad Batch is actually quite a bit better than the first. Yes, there’s plenty of “filler episodes” littered about. But the main story arc, is very well done this time around. One of main points of focus in this season is showing how the Empire transitions from Clone Troopers to Storm Troopers. Considering how fresh this new season is, I won’t go into much detail or I’d run the risk of spoiling things. But, I will tell you that it very much ties in to what we’ve seen in the latest season of The Mandalorian and it all seems to be leading up to some of the events in the sequel trilogy as well. This is one of the things that Disney-led Star Wars does very well – tying up loose ends. My only complaint is it sometimes takes them YEARS to do it, and thus, they lose the interest of many fans in the process.
The name of the game this around is character development. Throughout this season of the show, we see a number of fan-favorite characters mature and go off in directions that may seem a bit unexpected. I’m not just talking about members of the Bad Batch, either. Some classic Clone Wars-era characters pop up over the course of these sixteen episodes and the direction the story group went them surprised me a bit. Again, all of this ties-in heavily with the main story arc.
The final episode ends on a bit of a cliff-hanger – so a third season is all but guaranteed at this point. I can’t imagine that they can squeeze much more out of this concept, so my money says the third season will likely be the last. All in all, this second season of The Bad Batch is a decent watch if you’re a hardcore Star Wars fan. Casual fans will likely find the show a bit uninteresting and a bit puzzling.
