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Jul. 18th, 2024 10:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsReally truly horrible to realize that over the course of its third season I have become a person who genuinely thinks The Bad Batch -- a show that, when it was announced, filled me with nothing but a sense of wistful ennui for all the hours I was going to spend watching it against my own will and better judgment! -- is the best Star Wars television I have experienced barring Andor. Absolutely appalling to discover that I genuinely think the long arc is extremely well executed! that its characters have moral nuance and complexity! that it does a better job of any other Star Wars media properties of digging into systemic clone dehumanization! that it retroactively justifies The Zillobeast!! and that it does all this without leading any of its characters towards their ultimate Jedi destiny or showing a single Skywalker on screen!
Is any of this actually true? Who can say. I don't know anymore and you probably shouldn't trust me. All through Season One I was like "this is a perfectly fine self-indulgent Star Wars show for children" and then throughout Season Two I started gradually tilting my head like "IS the tragic postcanon clone show about the horrors of the military-industrial complex that I've been wanting for years bursting its way out of the Hijinks-Filled Children's Show cocoon in which it's been lurking all this time?" and now Season Three has happened and it's ALL horrors of the military-industrial complex ALL the way down and all the stuff it turns out they have been building for three seasons genuinely landed for me??? how could this happen to me. Just When I Think I'm Out etc etc
Okay one thing I do feel confident in saying is the fact that Bad Batch has bar none my favorite heel face turn arc in all of Star Wars, the Heel Face Turn Galaxy Long Ago And Far Far Away, because it is NOT about the power of love and it IS about radicalization through solidarity. I've been watching withinnerbrat who has Cared Very Much About Crosshair from day one when he decided to throw his lot in with the Empire instead of his brothers and I was like, I'm very happy for you that you have this tragic villainous Brother Who Betrayed Us but I am not particularly invested ... and then we got season two and Crosshair's gradual realization that being a special clone to himself does not protect him from being completely disposable within the Imperial machinery, and then we got season three and his equally gradual realization that people cannot carry themselves as entirely self-sufficient and have to be part of a community and fine! innerbrat was right!! (I also like the Emerie heel face turn but "clone encounters imperiled children and immediately re-centers their personal morality around aforementioned imperiled children" is an old and true friend as far as Star Wars tropes go.)
I also really love that the show counterbalances its long redemption arcs with a couple different iterations of allies who are fun and compelling characters to have onscreen and also end up eventually betraying our protagonists -- and not in silly "lol Hondo is up to his tricks again!" ways, nor by dramatically Falling to the Dark Side, but just by making selfish and petty decisions out of fear in the way that people sometimes will do. This is especially good because broadly speaking the show often is the kind of show in which our plucky youthful protagonist who wants to believe in people and make connections with them is proven right; it makes it genuinely surprising and impactful on the occasions that she's wrong. I fully expected Cid to have a big redemption at the end of S2 or somewhere in S3 and I'm so glad she didn't; I love her and she and Omega did have numerous bonding moments and also she's just a shitty person. Sometimes people are like that.
And! Also! I love that the the show lets its characters have different priorities, and act on them, eventually to the point of permanently splitting the party in a way I did not think would be allowed -- the tension between Echo and Hunter about how much effort they should put into trying to help the regular clones versus finding a place of safety for their own group was so lightly done in the first season or so that at firstinnerbrat and I thought we were mostly bringing our own headcanon and expectations into it, and then gradually it became clear that not only was the tension there but it was thematically central, and that the show was not going to tell us that either choice was the correct one but that they were incompatible with each other. I have never been so happy to see my favorite character leave a show than when Echo left to join Rex.
Let's see, what else ... I do really love Omega, she's a Good-Hearted Protagonist Child but I love how visibly you can see her growing into adolescence over the course of the show and that she never forget that although she's a child among adults, she's also paradoxically the oldest among them. I also, God help me, love all the absurd cameos. VENTRESS IS HERE?? VENTRESS IS ALIVE????innerbrat was spoiled for this but I was not and I SHRIEKED. The Bad Batch is a good show!! Maybe. If you trust me. Which you shouldn't. I'm emotionally compromised by clones and that's just going to go on being true.
Is any of this actually true? Who can say. I don't know anymore and you probably shouldn't trust me. All through Season One I was like "this is a perfectly fine self-indulgent Star Wars show for children" and then throughout Season Two I started gradually tilting my head like "IS the tragic postcanon clone show about the horrors of the military-industrial complex that I've been wanting for years bursting its way out of the Hijinks-Filled Children's Show cocoon in which it's been lurking all this time?" and now Season Three has happened and it's ALL horrors of the military-industrial complex ALL the way down and all the stuff it turns out they have been building for three seasons genuinely landed for me??? how could this happen to me. Just When I Think I'm Out etc etc
Okay one thing I do feel confident in saying is the fact that Bad Batch has bar none my favorite heel face turn arc in all of Star Wars, the Heel Face Turn Galaxy Long Ago And Far Far Away, because it is NOT about the power of love and it IS about radicalization through solidarity. I've been watching with
innerbrat who has Cared Very Much About Crosshair from day one when he decided to throw his lot in with the Empire instead of his brothers and I was like, I'm very happy for you that you have this tragic villainous Brother Who Betrayed Us but I am not particularly invested ... and then we got season two and Crosshair's gradual realization that being a special clone to himself does not protect him from being completely disposable within the Imperial machinery, and then we got season three and his equally gradual realization that people cannot carry themselves as entirely self-sufficient and have to be part of a community and fine! innerbrat was right!! (I also like the Emerie heel face turn but "clone encounters imperiled children and immediately re-centers their personal morality around aforementioned imperiled children" is an old and true friend as far as Star Wars tropes go.) I also really love that the show counterbalances its long redemption arcs with a couple different iterations of allies who are fun and compelling characters to have onscreen and also end up eventually betraying our protagonists -- and not in silly "lol Hondo is up to his tricks again!" ways, nor by dramatically Falling to the Dark Side, but just by making selfish and petty decisions out of fear in the way that people sometimes will do. This is especially good because broadly speaking the show often is the kind of show in which our plucky youthful protagonist who wants to believe in people and make connections with them is proven right; it makes it genuinely surprising and impactful on the occasions that she's wrong. I fully expected Cid to have a big redemption at the end of S2 or somewhere in S3 and I'm so glad she didn't; I love her and she and Omega did have numerous bonding moments and also she's just a shitty person. Sometimes people are like that.
And! Also! I love that the the show lets its characters have different priorities, and act on them, eventually to the point of permanently splitting the party in a way I did not think would be allowed -- the tension between Echo and Hunter about how much effort they should put into trying to help the regular clones versus finding a place of safety for their own group was so lightly done in the first season or so that at first
innerbrat and I thought we were mostly bringing our own headcanon and expectations into it, and then gradually it became clear that not only was the tension there but it was thematically central, and that the show was not going to tell us that either choice was the correct one but that they were incompatible with each other. I have never been so happy to see my favorite character leave a show than when Echo left to join Rex. Let's see, what else ... I do really love Omega, she's a Good-Hearted Protagonist Child but I love how visibly you can see her growing into adolescence over the course of the show and that she never forget that although she's a child among adults, she's also paradoxically the oldest among them. I also, God help me, love all the absurd cameos. VENTRESS IS HERE?? VENTRESS IS ALIVE????
innerbrat was spoiled for this but I was not and I SHRIEKED. The Bad Batch is a good show!! Maybe. If you trust me. Which you shouldn't. I'm emotionally compromised by clones and that's just going to go on being true.
