‘The Bad Batch’ Season 3 Episode 12 Review: ‘Juggernaut’ Slowly Builds Towards Climactic Finale
From the very beginning, but especially this last season, the most interesting aspect of The Bad Batch has been its expansion of the Star Wars mythology. For a show that’s built as an homage to veterans and a “Thank you for your service” to the military, this was always going to take a backseat to more action-centric plotlines, and especially us getting into the troubled minds of those who are at the center (Crosshair’s arc and the exploration of his psyche is a not-so-distant second).
Season 3 introduced the intriguing, but perhaps too-late-in-the-game idea of Omega being Force-sensitive, or at least having a higher M-count. It’s by far the biggest exploration of the midichlorians as a concept we’ve ever had, since The Phantom Menace essentially namedropped it to be able to use it as a plot device, and then its shorter version, the M-count, was introduced in The Mandalorian but not really used all that much.
“Juggernaut”, the latest episode of the animated series, picks up where the last one left off. Omega is now back on Tantiss, and the rest of the crew is desperately looking for her. The young clone probably didn’t expect her return to the scientific base to be a walk through the park, but she’s about to face a much harder reality than she anticipated. The bulk of this episode, however, is centered around Wrecker, Crosshair, and Hunter trying to find the mysterious location.
As I alluded to earlier, however, the Omega subplot was way more interesting — after all, it presents something new. There are only so many ways the Bad Batch can shoot their way out of different situations before it all feels the same. It was a bit more compelling in this episode because of the emotional reason behind their quest, but it still felt, after three seasons, like a dèja vu.
Spoilers ahead for The Bad Batch Season 3, Episode 12, “Juggernaut”
Let’s start with the Bad Batch and their business, which was simply an extraction mission. Crosshair doesn’t know where Tantiss is, but he thinks (former?) Vice Admiral Rampart might know how to find it. The mission: finding Rampart and shaking the information out of him. The twist: he actually doesn’t know, but he might be able to find out. At this point, it feels like they’re dragging us through the mud a little bit before Jen Corbett and her team can get us back to Omega. Making us feel anxious.
At the same time, we’ve seen this mission and slight variations of it so many times it just feels repetitive. It was fun, I guess, but not in an “I have to rush to see this”-kind of way like Star Wars TV should feel for us. I get that not everything has to have high stakes and feel like a life-threatening situation, but we’ve seen Wrecker and Hunter have full control over extreme situations so many times that whenever Brad Rau and the rest of the animators do not want us to be in tension, it’s hard to get to that point on our own. Sidenote: did anyone else see a combination of The Mandalorian Chapter 15 and Fast X (??) in that bridge sequence?
Meanwhile, Omega is beginning to accept the consequences of her decision in Mount Tantiss. Hemlock and Dr. Karr are already teasing that she’s very special because of her high M-count, and she finally gets to see the kids inside the Vault. She also learned about Nala Se, which I guess sets up an eventual subplot in which the young clone will liberate the Kaminoan — and obviously the children too.
But with three episodes left (essentially an hour of runtime) of the series, it feels like we haven’t explored the reveal of a sort of Force-sensitive clone nearly enough. I said in my discussion of the first three episodes of the season that this should have been something they introduced at the beginning of the series as the inciting incident. Now, even though we’ve spent some time with this concept this season thanks to the three-episode premiere and the (very underwhelming) Asajj Ventress episode, there are so many questions and so few answers. How did this happen? Is she really Force-sensitive or is this just an anomalous case? Has Boba Fett been a Jedi this whole time? We need to know!
Overall, “Juggernaut” just feels like it’s building slowly towards the finale, trying to put all the pieces in place. Omega will probably spend the next episode understanding what is really going on in that base and probably advocating for the young kids there to get a much better treatment. The Bad Batch will probably find out how they can get to Tantiss and try to assemble their version of the Avengers to end this once and for all. However, last week’s double-header teased that Corbett and her team are not afraid to get really dark with the show. Last season they already killed off one of the characters. Who else is on the chopping block now?
We’ll find out a little more next week when The Bad Batch season 3 episode 13 airs on Disney Plus. Stay tuned for our discussion on SWNN Live! on Thursday night, too!
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
