“The Bad Batch” Season 2, Episode 10: “Retrieval”
Death, taxes, another sub-par episode of “The Bad Batch.”
Episode 10 picks up where episode 9 left off, and the Batch is still without a ship. While Tech and Wrecker argue about what to do, Omega proposes that she can just send a signal to Gonky (remember him?), the droid that has taken residence on The Marauder.
The Batch finds out that their ship was stolen by a young boy, Benni, who uses the ship as a consolation prize for his work leader, Mokko, in hopes that Benni will be the “top earner” for the month.
The Batch threaten Benni in helping them find the Marauder, and when they do, realize that the hyperdrive is missing. Hunter, Tech and Wrecker stay behind to work on it, while Omega and Benni go off to lower the ray shields in order to leave.
Omega stays with Benni to watch Mokko announce the top leader, who gets more food and water than the others, and to everyone’s surprise (thanks for being predictable, Star Wars), it wasn’t Benni.
Omega discovers that Mokko is withholding food from his workers on purpose so that he can reap the benefits, just confirming that, yes, Star Wars IS in fact political in its basis and for the right reasons.
Mokko and the Batch end up meeting on a fiery bridge, and he threatens to throw Omega off if the Batch don’t leave. However, the workers turn against Mokko, throw him off the fiery ledge and Hunter saves Omega. Shocker!
The Bad Batch? More like The Mid Batch.
This episode wasn’t great, but the show has had worse, too.
The show did a great job of tying in The Great Star Wars Political Debate™ that no one wants to address, yet gets brought up every time a new show rolls around (it’s not actually trademarked, but you get the emphasis).
The original three movies were made in the era of the Vietnam War. The next three movies were partial allegories for the Clinton era. “Rogue One” and “Andor” lead political uprisings. How about the entire saga starting over a failed trade deal and a government conspiracy?
“The Bad Batch” has been arguably the least political show with the exceptions of the Rampart drama that occurred in earlier episodes, but a person in power purposely withholding necessities from those who do the labor? What a strong statement.
However, even with the strong mission this episode put out, fans are still waiting for the second part to the Crosshair and Cody story that happened… *checks notes* seven weeks ago.
There are five episodes left in the season to put an ending to the story. Let’s hope it ends right.
Rating: 3.5/5
Adrianna Gallucci is a first-year student majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact her, please email amg7989@psu.edu.
