Review: ‘Star Wars: The Bad Batch’ Episode Sixteen – ‘Kamino Lost’
It is done! The grand finale of The Bad Batch is now out on Disney Plus, and we are here to discuss it. Today’s episode, titled Kamino Lost, was the second part of last week’s episode, which ended with our heroes trapped under the ruins of the Kamino facility after it was bombarded by the Empire. Episode sixteen promised to bring to a close this season’s arc, which started with Crosshair, one of the members of the gang at the beginning, changing sides — the last we saw of him was a kind of different character, who may be rethinking his loyalty and even his entire self.
Saul Ruiz directed the episode, which was written by Jennifer Corbett, with Matt Michnovetz credited as the story editor. These last two episodes were probably meant to be a single 40-minute episode, as this one starts right where the previous one left off. In general, this episode runs a similar course to the finale of The Clone Wars, from last year. In both episodes, our heroes are trapped in a facility that is about to be completely obliterated, and they must escape. Kamino Lost, however, combines that synopsis with some great character moments, that build off of what happened last week between Crosshair and the Batch.
The plot of the episode is very simple — the crew must escape Kamino before it all turns to dust. Omega is the center character, with the rest of the crew taking a backseat. She leads the charge and gets the most in trouble, but all of that happens for character reasons. While I personally would have liked a less plot-focused last episode (although it does have strong character moments), I will say that they did the best they could with the premise they had.
The animation is absolutely amazing in this episode, where water takes a big role (the facility is falling into the infinite ocean of Kamino). Animating water is not easy, and it is not easy to animate things inside the water, and they did an excellent job with it. Of course, it helps that most of the episode took place in the dark, but still. Let’s move on to spoilers now!
Spoilers ahead!
The heart of this episode resides in the (newly created) relationship between Omega and Crosshair. Omega acts as the classic young character who believes in people and sees the good side in them, so she does her absolute best to save Crosshair at the beginning of the episode when the two are trapped inside a room that is at the same time about to be flooded. That was great writing, presenting our heroes with one challenge after another and see how they manage to get out.
The moment is paid off at the end of the episode when Crosshair saves Omega. But there is a difference in their motivations — Omega saved Crosshair because it was the right thing to do and because she still believed there was some good in him. She saw him as her brother, much like the others. Meanwhile, Crosshair saved Omega because he was in debt with her. It was a very mercenary point of view — he had a debt to pay off, not an attachment to this character. It is interesting how the writers are clearly trying to get Crosshair back, but they are doing it slowly, one step at a time.
Crosshair is turning out to be perhaps the most fascinating character of the series, precisely because he has such strong ideals. He believes in the Empire despite the fact that he knows they will turn on him every time they have the chance to. And he even believes that is the right thing to do. The arc of this season was to get Crosshair to admit this, to make him realize where everyone around him stood. The plot of next season will probably be to turn him back to the Batch. After the events of these last two episodes, the relationship between the Bad Batch and Crosshair is irreversibly changed. As Hunter said, they are no longer enemies, but rather people with different goals. Problems will arise again when their paths cross, but besides that, there is no reason for Crosshair to hunt them down anymore. It will be interesting to see his reaction if Imperial officers ever order him to go after them.
There was one last surprise in store for us before the credits rolled. Nala Se is still around, and an Imperial scientist shows up to introduce her to her new world. This scientist is clearly a precursor of the one we were introduced to in The Mandalorian, so (in case there was still any doubt) there is clearly a connection between the cloning here and the cloning subplot from that series. I’d be very interested to know how all of this was put together behind the scenes, especially considering that animation takes years to put together, even more than live-action. They most likely worked on this even before The Mandalorian season 1 dropped, but did they have it all mapped out by then, or once they saw season 1, they said “ok we can go in this direction”? How much was Filoni (who is the executive producer of The Mandalorian) involved with the series? Did he propose to explore the cloning subplot here? That would make sense.
Overall, this season has had its good moments but its weaknesses too. There were some great episodes, where our characters were challenged and we saw them progress, but there were also other episodes that just felt like filler. Even when our characters moved from one place to another in those episodes, it was always a very small step that could have happened in a single sequence in another episode. But this is not uncommon for Star Wars animation. Even the best seasons of Star Wars: Rebels or The Clone Wars had some episodes that could have been reworked into a single scene inserted in another episode, or episodes that could have just ceased to exist. All in all, I don’t think it rivals any of the Rebels seasons, and it is still inferior to the last three or four seasons of The Clone Wars. But it did the job of warming up the engines and getting us salivating for more Star Wars content.
And that’s what’s coming next. Despite eight quite small months of 2021 on the Star Wars front, we are now getting ready for a rollercoaster of emotions. In the coming months we’ll know much more about all the upcoming series, and get ready for a big lineup of Star Wars live-action series on Disney Plus, that will kick off in December with The Book of Boba Fett. One can only guess what we’ll find out about the rest of the upcoming series before the year comes to an end, but I think it will be exciting. We’ll probably hear the first actors attached to Patty Jenkins’ movie too, and start to get some sense of what Rogue Squadron will be. And we’ll be here to tell you all about it.
That is it for our discussion! Make sure to check out James Baney’s video review of the episode right here:
Star Wars: The Bad Batch will be back for a second season next year.
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.
