In a disappointing turn, The Bad Batch disregards the core of what made the Clone Wars great in its prime; leaving a keen audience with a very underwhelming continuation of Dave Filoni’s beloved animated series. In spite of great potential, the series fails to deliver on its story and worldbuilding, and above all else neglects to create engaging characters to carry its narrative – subsequently struggling to deliver even a handful of memorable adventures across its sixteen-episode season.

As much as I loved Star Wars: The Clone Wars as a child, revisiting it in recent years proved to me that it was pretty overrated outside of a few exceptional story arcs, but I can’t deny that it remains an extremely popular staple of Star Wars regardless. It’s largely owing to that popularity that it saw a return for a final season last year, and surprisingly, it was pretty good – you can read my review here! Still, I assumed that beyond its final hoorah, Clone Wars was being laid to rest for good, but as fate would have it, the series is more or less returning in the form of The Bad Batch, eponymously named for the team of renegade Clones that made their debut in Clone Wars Season 7.

Spoilers ahead!

Picking up concurrently with Season 7’s finale, The Bad Batch‘s lengthy premiere episode shows how the misfit Clones (all voiced by Clone Wars alum Dee Bradley Baker) respond to Order 66, the mass extermination of the Jedi, and the fall of the Republic, as seen in Revenge of the Sith. As well as meeting the enigmatic female Clone Omega (Michelle Ang), the team turn against their superiors and defect from the newly formed Empire, albeit with the exception of their resident sharpshooter Crosshair. The team’s turn does feel a little rushed, where it might have been nicer to create a slower progression across the first few episodes to further flesh out their view of the changing situation, but it’s a strong start for the show regardless. It sets them on their path for the next few episodes, as the team looks for a place to settle down outside the reach of the Empire, which wraps them up in a few largely self-contained adventures that eventually lead them to Cid, a smuggler who houses the Bad Batch in exchange for their assistance on a variety of mercenary jobs. It’s a little disappointing to see that the season is almost entirely comprised of utterly forgettable, one-shot escapades with a very sparse, drip-feeding approach to the overarching story, but at this point it’s pretty evident that this is showrunner Dave Filoni’s preferred method of storytelling – as much as it seems to harm his projects more than help them.

Whilst our titular heroes go about their adventuring, their former ally Crosshair assimilates to the new order of the Empire in what would’ve been a prime opportunity to explore an as-yet untouched worldbuilding goldmine examining the transition from the Republic to the Empire, which in actuality is a rushed footnote in the plot that could have served as an excellent basis for the entire season if handled correctly. There’s no ambiguity to the changing landscape of the early Empire; it’s as evil overnight as it is in twenty years time, and nor does the series fully explore the thoughts of the Clones as they’re replaced by early versions of Stormtroopers, despite this being one of the season’s key plot points. The best we get in terms of an overarching story are a few tussles between Imperial forces and the Bad Batch leading up to the finale, and a very underwhelming subplot that sees the Kaminoan cloners trying to recover Omega under the nose of the Empire. The two-part finale still ties everything together pretty neatly, as the team returns home to Kamino to rescue their leader, Hunter, as well as a fruitless attempt to reunify with Crosshair, whilst the Empire sets their sights on destroying the facilities there to quash the unruly cloners. It’s by no means the worst story I’ve ever seen put to television, but I’ll be damned if there weren’t endlessly more interesting possibilities for what Dave Filoni could’ve done with this premise.

What really lets The Bad Batch down however is its lacklustre character writing – chief of all the fact that the majority of the team aren’t really characters at all. Tech, Wrecker and Echo, supposedly three of the show’s main characters, lack any real sort of depth or characterisation, let alone anything in the way of a developmental arc. Tech serves as a walking Deus Ex Machina who helps the team out of most of their predicaments through some sort of nebulous computer-related bullshit, while Echo essentially takes up the same role, only without any sort of personality at all. Worst of all however is Wrecker; an obtuse and annoying comic-relief character with a gratingly annoying voice who offers basically nothing tangible to the story beyond being the Bad Batch’s resident strongman. There’s an impotent attempt to show some conflict in the team’s turncoat Crosshair, but truthfully any real effort put into characterisation is saved primarily for the team’s leader, Hunter, who must guide his brothers through changing times whilst nurturing a paternal bond with newcomer Omega, and although it’s a semi-decent emotional core for the season, it seems to be the only sort of relationship that Dave Filoni is capable of writing at this point. Omega herself can feel pretty annoying too, especially given that her curious nature constantly lands the team in trouble, but she nevertheless makes a serviceable guide for the audience to get to know the inner workings of the team a little better.

As much as the writing leaves a lot to be desired, The Bad Batch is at least nice to look at – although it employs the same animation style as The Clone Wars (just in case you didn’t quite get that this is its spiritual successor), it’s definitely a step up from that show’s 2008 debut, and even feels like a pretty big upgrade from last year’s Season Seven thanks to a higher level of detail in its models and environments and heavily enhanced lighting. It gives the show an uncanny feeling of realism in spite of its obviously cartoonish presentation, but it’s a nice touch nevertheless and demonstrates that if nothing else, you can at least rely on Star Wars to push the boundaries of the visual medium. The show takes full advantage of these graphical developments as it takes its characters to a host of diverse locales – from the stormy seas and sterile corridors of Kamino, to the grimy neon streets of Ord Mantell or the desolate scrapyards of Bracca; there’s no shortage of memorable settings across the show’s first season, even if it could seem a little lacking for colour at times. The series is further strengthened by Clone Wars composer Kevin Kiner’s soundtrack, that although not always the most memorable, still suitably captures the team’s unorthodox militarism, and provides an adequate score for the show’s action setpieces, which makes its otherwise underwhelming story decidedly more watchable.

All in all, between severely underutilised characters and an increasingly tired “adventure of the week” format, I doubt that The Bad Batch is quite going to blow anybody away, and even the more discerning Star Wars fan won’t have much to gain from its poorly constructed overarching story. Still, it’s by no means one of the worst seasons of television I’ve ever watched, and the more superficial elements of its production ease the disappointment of the writing a little, so if you really must watch it, you’re not in for anything worse than a crappy animated series just suitable enough for a bit of background noise, but otherwise you don’t really have anything to lose if you decide to skip out on it.

3/10