The Bad Batch continues this week with Season 1, Episode 3, which is titled, “Replacements”. Head on down below to learn more about its Easter Eggs, Star Wars references, and key canon moments.
Eggs
The Bad Batch continues this week with S1E3, aka, Replacement, and while Nick and I have gotten pretty awful at predicting Bad Batch episode plots, it was still a solid entry in the series and it definitely offered up some worthy Easter eggs, Star Wars references, and more importantly, key canon moments that both flesh out Bad Batch, and the Star Wars lore in general.
Let’s get to the breakdown starting with eggs and references!
Now I don’t want to excite anyone too much, but our first egg comes in the form of a fusion cutter that Tech is using on his new gadget, which I’ll talk about more in the Key moments section. Anyway, this is the same tool we saw Leia using in ESB.
I do believe the moon the Batch crashes on is a Moon of Ordo thanks to tech explaining that the ship is being wrecked by an Order Moon dragon. Ordo, which is a Mandalorian planet, is also the home of KOTOR vet Canderous Ordo.
While Tarkin and Rampart are being bad guys and talking about evil stuff, Tarkin mentions Project War mantle, which was first mentioned in Rogue One by Jyn as she’s working through the Tower on Scariff. War Mantle is the plan to build out the Empire’s forces through conscription versus the continued use of clone forces.
I may be going out on a limb here, but one has to figure that the Elite Squad troops are technically the first ever stormtroopers, and quite frankly, arguments could be made that they will ultimately morph into the Death Trooper units down the road due to being good soldiers who follow orders even when said orders are straight murder.
And to close things out, Nala Se mentions that the Jango Fett material they use for cloning is degrading, so Boba’s dad got a little mention.
Key Moments
And now for the key moments featured in Replacements!
The fact that tech is working on a scanner for their inhibitor chips should not go unmentioned as it will undoubtedly come into play down the road. In fact, a future key moment may be exactly why this device is needed for the Batch.
I’m not sure if anyone else caught it, but Tarkin is now a Govenor instead of an Admiral, so in between the premiere and this episode he was promoted by Palpatine to Govenor, taking him a few steps closer to his Grand Moff title and one of the Emperor’s top agents of chaos.
Obviously, getting a Project War Mantle mention is also a key moment as we now essentially get to see it play out in real time as Rampart is enlisting what he calls conscripted soldiers for the empire. Even though they technically all seem like they signed up to be in the Elite Squad, but I guess we won’t pick on the semantics of the word for now. Either way we are seeing the first instances of Stormtrooper predecessors, so it’s a big Star Wars moment.
Not to mention the fact that we also learned that Crosshair trained the first batch of what will become Storm/Death Troopers down the road, so while Clones do eventually get phased out, they seemingly were used to prepare the more elite Imperial Units we see down the timeline.
Don’t sleep on Wrecker complaining about his head hurting right where his chip is implanted. This is most definitely some foreshadowing in regards to the Batch’s chips and the potential for them to cause them to go loopy, which is also probably why Tech is trying to build a scanner to figure out exactly what state their chips are in. There’s a good chance Wrecker could go sideways before Tech figures out a fix.
While subtle and simple, I do believe Omega telling Hunter that Crosshair’s betrayal is not his fault is meant to prepare him for a redemption moment, albeit after he causes some intense pain for the Batch. She’s planting the seeds that he can be redeemed, and it will help Hunter and the others with wanting to try and save their former friend, even at the expense of one of their own lives.
Yo, Crosshairs latest delivery of Good Soliders follow orders is about as dark as I’ve seen Star Wars and we’re talking about an animated series. I mean, the whole execution scene was more intense than Anakin walking up on a group of younglings and slicing them to bits, mostly because we got to see Crosshair and Elite Squads atrocities play out. Not to mention the fact that Crosshair executes an Elite Squad member for not following orders, so a tone is being set for the Empire’s new forces that will shape them into loyal stormtroopers in due time.
Tarkin wasn’t the only bad guy to get a promotion recently, because as he leaves Rampart after the successful Elite Squad mission, he refers to Rampart as Admiral versus vice admiral, so it seems he is taking over Tarkin’s old post now that he has become a Govenor.
We definitely got more insights into what the Kaminoans are up to when Lama Su and Nala Se are talking about creating a new super enhanced clone to keep the favor of the empire and their lucrative business of clone farming intact. The fact that they need a member of the Batch to execute this plan throws a whole new wrench into the Bad Batch’s survival, so now they’re also going to be hunted by their creators. I’m wondering if they will be the ones who hire Fennec Shand to bring in the batch for their new experiment.
I will say that this scene also creates a bit of a plot hole considering that Nala Se literally has a member of the Bad Batch on Kamino, so why not use Crosshair? I’m guessing the workaround here is to avoid alerting the Empire to their plans, but it seems silly that they need to find the Batch when he’s literally in their facility. If they just wanted Omega that would make more sense, but it’s heavily implied via the shot of the empty lunch table where the Batch would sit that she’s referring to them as a unit, and not just omega.
The scene in which Crosshair and the Elites head back to the old Bad Batch barracks may very well be this episode’s most poignant one. And that is simply for the fact that Crosshair clearly has a reflection moment over his former brothers and his current path in life, so there is still some good in him as Luke Skywalker would say.
And finally, just because I’m a sucker for Omega and her new Dad and Uncles, I loved learning that Wrecker built her a room to make her feel more at home with them, which was a direct payoff to an early scene in this episode in which Hunter yells at Wrecker for wanting her food even when he knows she doesn’t even have her own place to sleep on their ship.
Make sure to tune into the next episode of the Star Wars Time Show in which myself and my co-host Nick will fully breakdown this episode and give our thoughts on it as a whole.
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