Star Wars: The Bad Batch “War-Mantle” Review

Season 1 Episode 14 “After receiving a mysterious distress call, the Batch tracks it to a secret facility.”

What I Liked?

1. The episode begins with an “unknown” Clone being chased throughout the jungle on a planet on the Outer rim. It’s shown that he’s being chased by what sounds like some dangerous creature’s on the planet, we then get to see this Clone plant a distress beacon before being shot twice with a stun gun, this entire opening scene reminded me of the Predators movie back in 2010, the setting, the animals hunting, just everything about it reminded me about that movie.

2. The Bad Batch get informed about the Clone in the opening scene by Rex, although he can’t tell them everything before being cut off, The Bad Batch (with persuasion from Omega) travel to this planet and this is where once again, we get to see Hunter use his great abilities to track the Clone down, I have a feeling that Hunter could end up being the one to be sacrificed towards the end of the series. It would mean more character development for Omega.

3. The trio of Hunter, Echo, and Tech head into the secret base where the Clone was taken too, they stumble across a base full of Imperial soldiers, they sneak inside and find the Clone, locked in a cell, they introduce themselves and ask if he’s the Clone Rex sent them for, he introduces himself as “Gregor”, this episode begins from here to fill out the story of how Gregor and Rex met up and lived together until the events of “Star Wars: Rebels”.

4. The trio, along with Gregor make their way into the ventilation shafts to the exit on the side of the mountain, this is where Omega and Wrecker come into play to make the save, Tech and Echo, and Gregor manages to jump aboard, after a quick ship battle with Wrecker destroying many Imperial ships, Hunter goes to make the jump onto the ship, he hits the stairs and fails to grab a hold of something, he falls quite a distance to the ground, he slowly picks himself up.

5. Hunter slow awakens for him to be surrounded by new Imperial soldiers, the rest of the Bad Batch want to go pick him up but it’s just too dangerous for them, Hunter puts away his knife, tells the squad to take off, after a few seconds of debating, and hesitation, Tech hits the throttle for hyperspace, back on the ground, Hunter surrenders himself, he’s being held in a cell when in walks… Crosshair.

What I Disliked?

My only dislike was the fact that Omega, once again, wanted to save something that technically, The Bad Batch couldn’t afford to save, which in turn, lead to Hunter being captured by the Empire and who knows what will happen to Hunter, maybe I’ll do a theory article on this.

Favorite Moment

My favorite moment was the scene where Tech, Hunter, Echo, and Gregor try to sneak out of the base, which was full of 1000 soldiers and 50 Clone Commando’s, they have to fight their way to the elevator, they take it to the top when they run into more soldiers and a Clone Commando which looked ripped from the video game, they head back into the base with Gregor taking 2 shots by the Clone Commando, this was just such an incredible scene.

Standout Character

It was between Hunter, Tech, and Echo, but for me, Hunter just inches it more, for the simple fact that he made the ultimate sacrifice and stayed behind to be captured and potentially killed by the Empire.

The Verdict

This episode was hands down just behind the pilot in terms of how great it was, from the story to the action, to the sacrifice that Hunter made. Seeing the story of how Gregor regrouped with Rex is amazing. The quality, the animation, the color was all great. We’re still seeing the Empire grow into what we see in episodes 4-6 of the movies.

Rating: 10/10

Photo: Star Wars: The Bad Batch.