Just three episodes remain in the third and final season of The Bad Batch, and all roads are leading to Tantiss.
That’s what this week’s chapter is leading up to, as the heroes race to find Omega and rescue her – as well as all the other clones imprisoned in the secret Imperial base. But to do so will require a stealth infiltration mission. Let’s dive in to “Into the Breach”, the third-to-last episode of the series, and as always, full spoilers are ahead.
On Mount Tantiss, Omega is being held where the other children are imprisoned. But we get to see just how far she’s come as a character, and we see how she’s no longer just the “damsel in distress” who needs to wait to be rescued. Because while her brothers are working hard to find her, Omega is also hatching her own plan for how to escape. She realizes that the panels used to transport their daily blood samples could lead her out of the vault, and in a particularly stirring moment she tells the other children that she’s escaped before, has a plan for how to escape again, and will take them with her. Omega has grown from a mostly helpless child in need of protection to a hero in her own right ready to help take charge in this crucial mission. Omega realizes that her role is not just to help save her brothers, but these kids too, and rather than sitting around and waiting, she’s actively working on a plan.
She’ll surely need help, though, and that’s why it’s good that her brothers are so insistent on finding her. That’s what the bulk of this episode is devoted to, as Hunter, Crosshair, and Wrecker meet up with Echo to hunt for Mount Tantiss. Rampart, whom they rescued in the previous episode from an Imperial prison, is a reluctant help to them. He had told them that no one knows the location to Tantiss, by design, so that it’s location can be kept secret. Any ship heading to the secret facility first has to stop at a station above Coruscant to be scanned and checked, and only then are the codes to the system transmitted. Meaning that if Clone Force 99 wants to find Mount Tantiss, their best (and maybe only) option is to steal the codes from that station – or, as they learn, actually stow away aboard the ship departing for Tantiss.
What follows is an infiltration mission where Rampart plays the part of an Imperial officer (complete with a gag about how his stolen uniform isn’t the right rank) and the rest of the squad are his guard (which means all the markings on their armor of individuality must go, and the squad dons all-black gear). Echo sneaks aboard the ship heading for Tantiss, while Hunter flies their shuttle close behind the transport waiting for Echo to disable the proximity sensors. It’s a tense moment all around, as we realize that we don’t actually know what happens to any of these characters. There are moments where it seems like Echo might not make it out, but he comes through at the very end. Rampart keeps insisting to Hunter that they’ll never make it, but Hunter refuses to abort the mission and at just the last moment the shuttle can attach.
The squad is on their way to Mount Tantiss, but, well, they’ll surely be detected right upon arrival. This is all setting up for the final two episodes to take place almost entirely on Tantiss, which is great. I’ve been on the edge of my seat to see what happens to these characters, and that will surely be the case all the more in these final two chapters. Omega is devising an escape plan, and her brothers are on the way to rescue her. There wasn’t a ton by way of major developments or discussion points in this episode, as it was mostly a self-explanatory stealth mission to find the secret planet. But it was still really well done, and the final moments as the squad tries to hitch a ride were incredibly tense. They’ve failed in attempts to find Tantiss before, which made it all the more questionable whether they’d succeed this time. Hunter simply refuting Rampart’s please to abort the mission by saying “negative” and charging ahead was terrific, and I’m so glad that the Bad Batch are on their way to Mount Tantiss for the finale.
Star Wars Thoughts 