Ending Explained: ‘Star Wars: The Bad Batch’ – “Retrieval”

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Hunter and Data (Dee Bradley Baker) with Omega (Michelle Ang). Credit: Lucasfilm

Credit: Lucasfilm

This week’s episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch (2021), “Retrieval“, showed how our heroes made their escape after being marooned on an arid mining planet. But it also demonstrated the Empire itself in microcosm, through a story that used a criminal gang and resource exploitation to show how manipulation can turn even the most iron-willed into unwitting pawns.

(L-R): Hunter, Omega, Benni Baro, Wrecker, and Tech in a scene from "STAR WARS: THE BAD BATCH", season 2 exclusively on Disney+. © 2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
Credit: Lucasfilm

Crime lord Mokko (Jonathan Lipow) has turned the extraction and sale of volatile mineral Ipsium into a successful selfish enterprise. Using a small army of youthful thieves and miners, and droid enforcers, he mines the ore in large quantities but tells his workforce it is sub-par, depleted goods, meaning he has to pay them less and more is needed to make up the profits.

As a side business, he has members of his gang — chiefly young thief Benni (Yuri Lowenthal) — also steal from anyone foolish enough to venture planet-side.

As payment, he provides the essential resources of food and water, and assigns someone a winner, goading them into competition over cooperation.

Omega in a scene from "STAR WARS: THE BAD BATCH", season 2 exclusively on Disney+. © 2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
Credit: Lucasfilm

Related: Recap: ‘Star Wars: The Bad Batch’ – “Retrieval”

It’s only when Omega (Michelle Ang) uncovers and provides Benni with concrete evidence of Mokki’s lies that his entire system crumbles.

We see Benni reveal the truth, and then the other workers begin to rise up in anger. Mokki tries to use his droid enforcers to quell their rage, but they’re quickly dispensed with by Wrecker (Dee Bradley Baker, who voices all the Bad Batch).

In a final attempt to salvage his criminal empire, Mokki swings out at his attackers. But his violence actually causes him to end up slipping over the bridge he is standing on, left holding on by one hand.

He refuses the offer of help from Benni, instead attempting to pull the young hero to his own doom. But this final act of evil spells his end, and he falls down into the depths of the mine.

(L-R): Hunter and Omega in a scene from "STAR WARS: THE BAD BATCH", season 2 exclusively on Disney+. © 2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
Credit: Lucasfilm

It’s Data who recognises the similarities between Mokki’s mining enterprise and the way the Empire, led by the malevolent Sith Lord Emperor Sheev Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) operates.

Both are run on the premise of control, with care provided by their regimented overseers. Both use deception, blanketing oppression in the illusion of care, driving co-operation through the premise of safety and security. And both could be overthrown if only the oppressed could see through their leader’s lies.

In the actions of Benni and his friends, we see the Rebel Alliance; honest citizens uniting for their freedom. And in Mokki, we see the selfish priorities of the Sith, using power for their own gain and eventually, falling victim to their own arrogance.

What might have been seen as a neat little conclusion to a two-part Bad Batch story was actually the Galactic Civil War in microcosm, and another moment of perspective for our band of heroic Clones.

(L-R): Omega, Tech, Hunter, and Wrecker in a scene from "STAR WARS: THE BAD BATCH", season 2 exclusively on Disney+. © 2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
Credit: Lucasfilm

Do you think “Retrieval” did a good job representing the Empire’s oppression? Tell us in the comments below.

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