Credit: LucasfilmAfter last week’s dramatic Star Wars: The Bad Batch (2021) two-parter, we catch back up with the Bad Batch back on regular business, a mission for Cid (Rhea Perlman). But the ripples of the events of last week can certainly be felt in the new group dynamic, now down Echo (Dee Bradley Baker, who voices all the Clones) and with a new perspective on the galaxy as a whole.
We see the gang land on a arid planet. They’ve been dispatched by Cid to excavate a mine she’s recently purchased for Ipsium, an explosive mineral. There’s a storm on the horizon, so the group decide to divide and conquer: Omega (Michelle Ang) and Wrecker will stay as lookout against the weather and poachers, while the rest venture inside. We see the group being observed by a mysterious figure from afar.
Inside, the scanners are picking up only a faint reading of Ipsium, in a difficult to reach place. It’s so unstable they can barely carve out the rock to reach it. Outside, Omega is thinking about Echo, who stayed behind with Rex on Coruscant to help their fellow Clones. Wrecker isn’t much comfort, and she is called inside to help reach the awkward spot. She carefully drills into the glowing mineral, extracting the raw ore.
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At their ship The Marauder, the mysterious figure arrives and covertly assesses the vehicle. Wrecker tells the group the storm is shifting course back to them. At that moment, their ship is stolen. They have to make a hike to a nearby spaceport. Omega asks if they could reach out to Echo, but Tech tells her he’s turned off his communication device. The canyon the group are walking in is suddenly filled with stampeding creatures, and the group have to use their grapples to hoist themselves out of the path. It turns out the animals were running from the storm, which barrels down the canyon now too.
They take shelter in another nearby mine, losing the Ipsium in the process, which detonates outside, trapping them within. Omega is desperate for them to get the ship back, their home, relating it back to the ‘loss’ of Echo — even though Hunter and Tech assure her he isn’t gone, merely on a different mission. Tech can’t engage with her emotional response and she chooses to be alone for a moment rather than continue the discussion.
In the darkness, Omega uncovers a wealth of glowing Ipsium. The group are struggling to clear a path and encourage Tech to find Omega and talk to her about her sadness around Echo. He finds her extracting some Ipsium. She hands him it and tells him she had the same idea around using it to escape. He tells her to extract as much as she can as this is a purer vein than the one in Cid’s mine. In attempting to extract the last vial, she falls into the dark. Tech scrambles after her.
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The pair wash down a waterway and end up in a glowing underground pool. Omega finds a small hole revealing a passageway beyond a wall. Tech tells Hunter and Wrecker to retrieve their loot and use some of the Ipsium to open them an escape. Omega and Tech use the time for a heart-to-heart about change. Omega is reckoning with it but Tech says it is a fundamental part of life, stating they need to adapt. Omega makes him see that they are also a family, and so missing them is also valid. Tech reveals that he does miss Echo and Crosshair, but processes their loss differently.
At that moment, Hunter and Wrecker join them in the cavern, and the group use the Ipsium to make their exit. They make it to the exterior and the spaceport is in sight. Arriving there, it seems deserted, but Tech can still use the array to send out a long-range transmission to Cid. But the Trandoshan says she’s too busy to help. After an appeal from Omega, she says for them to give her a few days and she’ll see what she can do.
Omega, having taken Tech’s words earlier to heart, says they’ll figure it out as they always do. In the distance, the storm rumbles.
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