#bad batch meta

They catalogue the Kaminoans’ research; they review the clone memorials on Coruscant, on Zeffo, monuments as large as a massive wall or as small as a quiet statue, from people throughout the galaxy who were grateful for what they did. They study the great tragedy and betrayal of the chip, finally understanding the scope of Palpatine’s plans and bringing them out into the open, sharing the truth that the clones never chose to betray the Jedi Order and Republic they had served faithfully. They study old war vids and oral histories from people of long-lived species or whose grandparents remembered the clones; they build, memory by memory, a sense of the culture, the camaraderie, the brotherhood, the loyalty. They collect vids of battle songs and in-jokes and an interior language shared among them, springing up over the years.

They find and list their names, self-chosen or given by their brothers: Rex, Fives, Howzer, Echo, Tup, Gregor, Wolffe, Cody, Boil, Waxer, Cut. They study the clones whose differences defined them and knit them into a family whose ties could not be broken, Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, Crosshair, Omega. They study the discarded who nevertheless still had value - 99, Emerie, the clones who were culled in infancy for being wrong. There are specialists who devote their entire branch of study to the only male unaltered clone and his infamous exploits throughout the galaxy, so alike his father’s. They study the years of the clone rebellion, a fight that paved the way for the next wave of fighters and the next after them.

The clones are gone. That is undisputed. Their kind came for a little while, and then vanished, burning brightly; their tale was a tragedy, but one unique in all its seeming sameness. There are conferences and holovids and books. There are debates and research firing up young scholars about a time only their great-grandparents can remember.

I’m probably retreading a lot of old ground that I and numerous others have already covered, but I can’t help but keep coming back to details in both “The Ruins of War” and “The Spoils of War” that seem an awful lot like foreshadowing. I’ve decided to gather them into a single post for convenience and further discussion. Anyways, on to the examples.

1. It’s Raining Tech: An interesting parallel between the beginning and end of the second season is the fact that Tech falls from a great height twice: escaping from the Imperial ship in a cargo container and falling from the tram in Plan 99. Tech’s first fall has a resolution in Season 2 (he survived, but sustained injuries) but his second one is more ambiguous since we don’t see him actually hit the ground and the only “proof” of his “death” is his battered goggles. This parallel seems intentional, and having Tech survive his second fall with injuries like he did his first one would be an effective callback to the beginning of Season 2. As George Lucas once said, “it’s like poetry — it rhymes”.

So. I’ve been pondering this for awhile now. And I have thoughts (Not t h o t s though they do happen).

Yes, the smile is handsome™ and yes this is one of my favorite screencaps of Crosshair, blah blah blah.

But I’m not here to talk about how attractive he looks.

Let’s refresh on the context:

It’s a seemingly dire situation. Gathered in the vicinity of a burning ship, in which Commander Cody is completely trapped underneath, it’s fair to say tension runs pretty high.

Yet Crosshair is smiling.

No, it’s not because he’s a cold-hearted asshole who is thrilled about the stress factor. It’s not that he’s smiling at the way Cody is caught in an extremely hazardous situation, with the state of his health worrisomely unknown by that point.

He’s smiling because it’s Wrecker who’s handling the situation (Literally).

It’s Wrecker who’s getting him out.

He’s smiling because Wrecker’s got this. Because Wrecker, in all his brawny goodness, has done this a hundred times over. Because Wrecker would charge into fire and brimstone for people and has.

Crosshair is not worried for Wrecker. Not worried for Cody, or Tech and Hunter, or the Regs even.

Because Wrecker’s got this.

And so Crosshair allows himself a smile.

Not a sarcastic, or a demeaning, or a malicious smile.

A proud smile.

That’s a proud man right there.

He’s proud of his brother.

Look, I mean really look. His eyes are soft as he watches, his face is relaxed, and he’s seemingly zoned out a bit, lost in his own little moment of reverence and total adoration for his brother.

Omega distinctively remembers them in the lab, enough to bond with them and seek them out later. Shes definitely precocious for her age, so I'd say id be willing to believe she was at the youngest, say, 4 years old when that happened.

The batch were presumably babies when this was happening, since they had 0 idea or recollection if that lab, even tech. Maybe 1 year old.

Omega is a child, not a teenager, so shes probably what, 12 years old?

So the bad batch, according to the timelines they've given, are probably around 9 years old.

SAD!

How many nights could Wrecker not sleep because he was growing and growing and it hurt so bad, and he was so hungry all the time?

When was the first time Tech got a data pad and got on the holonet and realized he should be a child in the loving arms of a buir?

How old was Crosshair, 5? 6? When he got his first gray hair and pulled it out, and another and another until he couldn't keep up, until he resigned himself to being a weapon, a tool, to be used, to be useful?

Hunter, the leader, the older brother. At 8 years old, did he look out the window at Kaminos storms and wonder how he could possibly keep his brothers safe? Keep them alive?

Basically, everyone is trying to distance themselves from the war and pretend that the Rebellion isn't happening, except for Echo, whose primary motivation will always be to fight alongside his vode.

We got an interesting parallel with this episode and the first one

Yes the chip has been amped but still

In Ep 1, Twiggy was pissed and very confrontational when Hunter wouldn’t follow the order, even going so far as to threaten him. But it didn’t come to blows. In the end, Hunter is still Crosshair’s brother even with the chip. Crosshair’s loyalty to his brothers, while strained, seems more or less in tact as far as physical harm goes. He won’t kill them. 

In Ep 3, his new squad, strangers, don’t get that privilege. Don’t follow the order? Immediate termination by Crosshair’s hand. No remorse, no warning. Cold blooded execution. 

Yes, the chip is at max power. But for it to be the same scene, same place, same fighters, same situation?

Too much similarities for it to be just another mission. 

Way I see it, we were shown these two very similar scenes with different outcomes to show that deep down, Cross may be following the Empire but his loyalty to his original squad, his family, is still there. It’s still strong. Not enough to fight against the chip currently, but it’s there. We see that he clearly still feels something towards his original squad based on the way he’s almost hesitant while walking around his old bunk room. The memories are still there, buried, and I’m willing to bet that inside, beneath the chip, Cross is screaming for himself to snap out of it. 

It's canon the clones have no idea what politics are. They have no clue what side believes what or why. It wasn't taught to them, and they have no medium or outlet in which to learn. That's not what they were made for. They weren't bred to think, they were bred to fight. They're even told as much by their superiors.

The natural progression is for the clones to claim loyalty to the Empire being that it now supercedes the Republic.

Crosshair and other clones who have aligned themselves with the Empire still aren't responsible for their actions. That's not how brainwashing works. They are not considered people, they are not considered to have their own minds and opinions, it is squashed and discouraged to prevent the clones from overruling and uprising against their creators and superiors slavers. They know nothing else other than what they've been taught, and they have no reason to distrust it. The Bad Batch claim to be more 'free thinking' than the rest of the clones, but even then, it's not by much, they were only encouraged to think outside the box in a tactical sense. The fact that Rex and Howzer (and Gregor) went against the Empire is a fluke. Even then, they served under superiors who encouraged 'creative thinking', with Gregor being a Commando who were also bred to be more 'free thinking', compounded by his lost or damaged chip -- meaning they were most likely to see past the brainwashing, even a little.

The perception of the Empire to the clones is a good thing. It's a promise to end the violence against their brothers. It will bring structure, and order, and control -- all things the clones have grown up with as sacred, as a way to survive. But the tragedy is, of course, the clones are the ones who are the most deceived. They're still nothing more than pawns and fodder, and they are now even less valued than they were. And the tragedy on top of that one is, the clones will always be willing to die for what they are told is right, regardless of their own humanity or their own personal lives. Despite what the Empire touts as security, the clones -- all of them, whether they aligned willingly in opinion or not -- will find too late that they are being used for the destruction of everything they were told they represented and for what they protected.

Crosshair is the picture of that tragedy.

Echo was one of the first fictional character deaths that genuinely moved me when I was a kid. 

Sure, there were a lot of character deaths in my formative Disney movies that made me sad, but no death had ever gotten such an emotional “How dare they!” reaction as Star Wars: The Clone Wars did on Friday, March 4, 2011, when Echo got blown up at the climax of Season 3’s 19th episode. 

So when Dave Filoni revealed concept sketches of what the production team had been planning for future seasons at the time of the show’s cancellation, finding out Echo was going to come back - that he was still alive after all - was a tremendous joy for me. Getting the story reels depicting his rescue was a gift enough, but actually getting to see his return as a fully animated episode in all it’s glory when Season 7 finally released on Disney+ last year was a dream come true. 

While I wasn’t particularly invested enough in the Bad Batch as a group to be excited when their spinoff was announced, the fact that one of my favorite clones (second only to Rex and Fives) was now a co-star of a spinoff show was enough of a thrill to keep me invested.

And yet, despite being highlighted as one of the main characters, Echo has not gotten as much focus as Hunter, Tech, Omega, Crosshair, or Wrecker since the show began.  

A lot of this can of course be put down to the fact that while audiences have already had years to get attached to Echo, the rest of the Bad Batch are still relatively new from an audience perspective. Only four of the eight episodes they were planned to appear in for Clone Wars were ever finished, and they were all presented there as stock action movie archetypes. So in a show where these relatively one-dimensional characters are supposed to be the main protagonists, the writers need to spend a lot of time early on fleshing these characters out, making them more rounded, and giving us a reason to care about them besides looking cool and being connected to Echo. 

But just because they haven’t done anything outwardly obvious with Echo yet doesn’t mean the writers aren’t planting seeds now to lay the groundwork for his evolution later on. 

And after thinking some more about “Aftermath” - plus a comment somewhere on twitter, tumblr, TVTropes, or Jedi Council Forums that I frustratingly cannot track down again - I think I might have a general idea of what the writers have in store for him. 

In the first episode of The Bad Batch, Tech refers to Echo as “more machine than man.” 

Now, I’ve seen a lot of people up in arms claiming that The Bad Batch treats Echo like a droid and other arguments, especially after the whole “sold as a droid” scam they pulled in Episode 04. But aside from that one elusive comment I mentioned, I have not seen anyone taking into account that line’s potential as a flag to mark a parallel that could be used to start predicting the direction of Echo’s character arc.

Because while I can’t speak for the novels or comics, but the only other time I have ever seen that specific phrase, “more machine than man” has been in a conversation about none other than Echo’s former General, Anakin Skywalker. Or as he now goes by in the time frame of The Bad Batch, Darth Vader.

It may not be obvious at first glance, but when you look closely at Echo’s designs from Season 7 and his story arc in The Clone Wars as a whole, you’ll find multiple visual and narrative similarities with the story of Darth Vader. 

Both are extremely pale after a long period of time without sunlight: Echo was kept in a box for over a year, while after becoming Darth Vader, Anakin spends all his time in his suit and only takes it off to soak in a bacta chamber like the one at his castle on Mustafar in Rogue One.

But suffered severe injuries that resulted in parts of their body - including being replaced with cybernetics: Echo in the explosion of the shuttle at The Citadel, Anakin by the burning lava of Mustafar. Both of them even lost their right arm specifically. Both of these transformations are also visually associated with fire, and their primary color schemes following their transformations are black and red, along with some dark grey thrown into the mix.

Both are manipulated into aiding the enemy of their respective groups - The Separatists experiment on Echo in order to rip Republic military tactics directly from his mind against his will, while despite Palpatine’s grooming him to become a Sith Apprentice, Anakin still consciously chooses to turn to the Dark Side.

In both situations, Echo and Anakin return back to their original allegiance thanks to someone they care about. Rex saves Echo from his imprisonment on Skako Minor, after which he returns to Republic service. Meanwhile Luke’s love for Anakin eventually brings him back from the Dark Side in Return of The Jedi.

And in each case, their return coincides with them bringing about the defeat and death of the person who they had previously been “working” under. Echo is instrumental in securing Trench’s defeat at Anaxes, leading to his death at the hands of Anakin. Decades later, Anakin kills Palpatine in order to save his son, thereby resulting in the deterioration and downfall of the Empire.

As I discussed in my earlier Ventress meta, the major thematic core of Episodes I - VI of the Skywalker Saga is Anakins’ fall to the dark side and his eventual redemption. When a character is that central to the narrative, several other characters typically serve as mirrors that show how differently things could have gone under different circumstances.

Echo was first shown in his new armor in the animatics for the unfinished Kashyyyk arc shown at Celebration Anaheim’s “Untold Clone Wars Stories” panel in 2015. The production codes put this episode as having been near the end of Production Season 6 in between the first half of Dark Disciple and Son of Dathomir. Based on the dates listed for the concept art for those arcs in their respective galleries on Star Wars.com, this means that Echo’s new Bad Batch armor was originally designed between September 2012 and January 2013. 

Meaning that these references and allusions to Vader were not something that was conceived recently just for his role in The Bad Batch, but something that has been in the works for years. 

So I, for one, cannot wait to see what unfolds because of how many different possibilities there are for the directions that Echo’s character can be taken in with these parallels in mind.