'The Bad Batch' S1, Ep. 6: Sister Act Returns in Another Crossover

It was another ho-hum operation in the most recent The Bad Batch episode. Sure, there was another cool character crossover - this time with The Clone Wars (last week was Mandalorian) - but as has happened multiple times already this season, the final scene really just proved the episode was more of a setup for a bigger reveal later on. The writers continue to dangle the carrot in front of us as we slog through an otherwise straightforward and somewhat uninteresting season. And as I've said before, I will stop caring about the writers' big reveals long before they even give them to us if there aren't more compelling reasons to care.

But, you know, it's fun to speculate, so maybe that's enough for now. And there's plenty to speculate about in that final scene.

As for the beginning of this episode, our Bad Batch starts in an arcade-looking den as Omega begins target practice with her energy-powered crossbow. Sid, whom we met last week, has a job for them: attempt to find a technical droid in a decommissioned factory on Corellia (the planet Han Solo is from), from which they hope to learn valuable intel.

During the infiltration part of their mission, the Bad Batch sneaks through a droid factory eerily similar to the factory Anakin and Padme stumble through on Geonosis near the end of Episode II: Attack of the Clones. We even hear the same sound effects, and later on, the same B1 battle droids are activated and released from clamps that are moving them through the factory. The scene in the movie is infamous for how incomplete it is; production of Episode II was rushed at the end, and they clearly didn't get all the CG refined in that particular scene (it's pretty bad).

The Bad Batch locates the head of the tactical droid; indeed, it was the droid they were looking for. But alas, two scavengers are after the same droid! A less-than-stellar chase/shootout scene ensues. The problem with an action scene in such a location is the bad lighting; it was mostly too dark to get excited about the movement and action.

Later on, it is revealed that these scavengers are Rafa and Trace, who are sisters we first meet in the seventh season of The Clone Wars cartoon show. I remember the two of them were pretty handy mechanics, and I think they did some light thief work. These sisters encounter Ahsoka Tano during that stretch when Tano was still finding her own path well after getting exiled from the Jedi Order. The sisters weren't trusting of Ahsoka at first, but they soon come to help her on her way. I sort of felt hints that these sisters would come back someday, but I honestly never gave them another thought after their short story arc finished. I was quite surprised that someone thought enough of these sisters to bring them back, but I'm not disappointed that they did. They were some of the more interesting side characters of the series, even if they were only around for a brief stint.

Anyway, the Bad Batch and the Martez sisters team up to finish extracting the tactical droid. The sisters pulled off a cool trick by hacking one of the droids they shot down to give the battle droids that have them pinned down new instructions: destroy the rest of the droids. It worked, and everyone safely escapes this week's against-all-odds scenario.

After a conversation about morality, Hunter decides to let Rafa and Trace keep the tactical droid's intel. Rafa and Trace want to use the intel to fight against the Empire, so they're good guys, too, but it's not clear whom they're working for.

In the final scene, they return to their ship, and we see their droid, who looks an awful lot like R7, who happened to be Ahsoka Tano's droid. I don't remember if Tano left the droid with them in that seventh season of The Clone Wars, but it appears they are working alongside her in some capacity. We've been getting hints of Ahsoka making an appearance before, so it's quite possible. Rafa and Trace make a call to a mystery figure and mention that they have the droid, and they also are able to follow the Bad Batch if they need to.

So who might this mystery figure be? Well, it isn't Ahsoka because the character is male. We don't see much of him, but at first, it looked like he was wearing Jedi robes. But I don't think it was a Jedi. The only Jedi of note still around right now is Obi-Wan, but he's presumably on Tatooine guarding young Luke Skywalker. It could be a prominent figure fighting for the Rebellion; in fact, these sisters might be indicating that the Rebellion is just now getting underway. We already watched Saw Guerrera take some of the earliest actions in the name of the Rebellion (post-Order 66) at the beginning of the season. Maybe that's who the sisters called? Another prominent figure might be Bail Organa, who, during this time, just barely escaped the Jedi Temple with his life after he witnessed the clones turn on a young Padawan, which we witness in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (The Bad Batch, of course, literally overlaps with that movie). I might be misremembering, but I think Bail had a connection with Ahsoka at some point during The Clone Wars, too.

All in all, we could do worse than an okay episode with more build-up.

Notes:

-This episode had one of the funnier jokes of the season so far. At one point, Rafa and Trace kept repeating each other, and one of them wondered, "Is there an echo in here?" to which, of course, Echo replies "Yes. I'm Echo." I'm sure the writers had that one ready to go for a while, but were waiting for the right time.

-During the action, Wrecker swings across a chasm over the metal-melting fires of the factory, and he bangs his head when he lands. This seemingly triggers something in Wrecker's head as he recites "Good soldiers follow orders." Clearly something is still not right with him. Whether it has something to do with the deactivated clone chip in him seems more and more likely, but either way, Wrecker is in bad shape.