Freedom Reborn

First of all A HOUR AND TEN MINUTES?! Disney Plus has been teasing us every episode they do from the Mandalorian to Wandavision and also Falcon and Winter Soldier. We'll see a run time that says 47 minutes and it ends up being 35 minutes  with a crap ton of credits and title cards taking up like a whole 10 or 15 minutes. But I started watching this at work, thought I'd be able to knock out a 20-30 minute episode before I ended my shift a work yesterday and I looked at the run time and it said 1:14! And better yet, I scrolled down to see the last panel before credits and it topped out at over 1:10 minutes. That was practically a whole freaking movie. It's as long as many animated movies! And it was just ONE episode! Of 16! And while I'm sure the other 15 episodes aren't going to be a hour and ten minutes of actual show, but if it were, this is A.LOT. of content!

Of course after that, the first notable observation that was a positive and somewhat of a negative of several folks was Depa Billaba and Caleb Dume, ie. Kanan Jarrus. The story started off on Kallor and if you read the comics, you'd know that's where Kanan, Depa Billaba had their last stand. First of all, it was a little jarring to some for Freddie Prinze Jr. to reprise the voice of a adolscent Caleb Dume, but But I loved the way he was characterized. He was pretty much what I'd thought a 13 year old Kanan Jarrus would be like. Obviously of course, the comics had Order 66 coming at night as the two Jedi sat gathered with a few clones and they began to fight them off together. In The Bad Batch, the story was different. Caleb ran off with the Bad Batch when Depa Billaba's clones turned on her. Caleb then ran from the from Bad Batch but in the comics, there were no Bad Batch for him to run away from or with at the time he did.  That said, the broad strokes of the story are still there. Caleb Dume and Deba Billaba was on Kallor. Their clones turned of them. Depa Billaba took the heat as Caleb escaped. And he did escape and get away from the Bad Batch and they didn't show him again so he then could have hooked up with rest of his story as it was from the comics.

That said, we see most of the Batch isn't affected by the inhibitor chip, with the exception of Crosshair. Not sure why. Not sure if they were bred with one or if it just has a delayed response or what. Seemed to be speculation all over the map.

I appreciate the inclusion of Saw Gerrera. Though he still had the character model and voice actor from the Clone Wars, I gotta say I'm not sure if it was intentional or my ear, but the voice was sounding a little Forrest Whitaker like. But Still a little jarring. The character looks virtually the same by 5 years later he looks like Forrest Whitakar. Ah well. Maybe we'll see more.

Obviously the biggest takeaway is the fifth "defective" clone, which isn't Echo(who btw I really appreciated seeing his story throughout the entire Clone Wars series from beginning to end, him and Fives). The fifth is Omega, a blonde-haired female clone. Now of course the Clone Wars is following it's pattering of giving audiences a kid character for younger audiences to follow the story through(Ezra, Ahsoka, Kaz) But with the way she's been talking and acting(deadshotting Crosshair, trying to talk him down from doing something he hasn't done yet) it's not a big assumption to think she might be Force sensitive. There's even speculation that she might be an attempt to breed a Palpatine clone(which is giving me some real Superboy vibes).

Oh, Shogun, only you could do an entire paragraph gushing about the fact that it's and hour and 10 minutes. And yet, yeah, I was shocked at that too.  And it was a pretty darn good hour-10 too. They too kinda spoil us rotten.

I also appreciated the return of the news reel segments, the poor Battle Droids being endearingly pitiful again, and seeing scenes from the start of Revenge of the Sith in TCW style. I kinda wanted to see that when Siege came out.

Depa Billaba and Caleb Dume showing up made me flip my lid. I'm a bit surprised to hear there's negative feedback to it, but I supposed I shouldn't be. Fanservice, shoe-horning something in, tie-ing into Rebels. Blatant retcon. Yeah I loved it. And yeah, Freddie Prince Jr voicing him didn't bother me either. I agree, he sounded and acted exactly like I'd imagine. And I did read that comic back in the day, and yeah, it's not the same, but they also retconned the Siege of Mandalore and I actually like this new version of the story. Just as DC has Crisis, and Dr. Manhattan and whatever else, we can just say for SW it was the Veil of the Force.

QuoteI appreciate the inclusion of Saw Gerrera. Though he still had the character model and voice actor from the Clone Wars, I gotta say I'm not sure if it was intentional or my ear, but the voice was sounding a little Forrest Whitaker like. But Still a little jarring. The character looks virtually the same by 5 years later he looks like Forrest Whitakar. Ah well. Maybe we'll see more.

You're not the only one. I also very much heard some Forest Whittaker in his voice in this. As for the aging, that's been a joke in SW fandom for years, and the joke/fan consensus seems to be that if you live on a planet with really dry air and less than ideal weather conditions, you're age a lot more, and you live anywhere else, that future medicine goes a long way.

On a similar note, one thing I really like about these shows is the way one story kinda flows into another. Maul and Ahsoka were the most obvious ones, but going to Clone Wars to Rebels we had Ahsoka learning that Vader was Anakin, Ezra meeting the Emperor and him appearing as Senator Palpatine, and then Maul's Solo cameo ended up flowing into Siege of Mandalore, complete with a Draydon Voss cameo, and Ahsoka said "I'm on with the Force and the Force is with me" and young Kaanan and his master made a cameo, and Ahsoka learned that Anakin killed Dooku, and here we actually see the event that changed Kanaan's life and set him on his path and also the Bad Batch learns that Obi-Wan killed Greivous.

Another thing I like, is, of course the return of Tarkin, but also the return of the Kaminoans. Tarkin of course flows very nicely, being in Revenge of the Sith, TCW, Rebels, Rogue One AND Star Wars, but it dawned on me while watching the scenes with the Kaminoans....well, 1. Just how good a job Bob Bergan and Gwendolyn Yeo do matching the kind of voices they had in Attack of the Clones, but also 2. That these people that were actually really important to the most pivotal event in the galaxy kinda just stopped showing up after that, in tv and movie land at least. Seeing them here reacting to Palpatine and Tarkin taking charge of things and being cautious to bend the knee is actually pretty interesting. I can safely say I've never more interested in the Kaminoans than I am now. Chalk it up to the Clone Wars crew for taking another throwaway thing in the Prequels and actually making it interesting.

Now I might be jumping the gun here, but was it just me, or were the enemies in the training exercise an early version of the Dark Troopers? The wiki failed me but they sure looked like it to me. We of course also see an Imperial Probe Droid, which is a very obvious reference but a nice touch. Casting Ben Diskin as a helpful friendly droid was a nice touch as well. I was legit disappointed he didn't stick around.

When sent to find an early iteration of the Rebels, they're told they're actually going to track down remains of the Seperatists, another idea I like. We saw that in Rebels with the leftover Battle Droids (also in Resistance). I'd love to see the return of Lok Durd and Mar Tuuk. And I always loved the Tactical Droids and the running gag of having them voiced by one of a different main character's voice actor each time we meet one.

And of course Omega. I was iffy about this new character then, and I'm iffy on them now. The face is a bit Uncanny Valley, which is too bad considering pretty much everyone else looks on-point in the TCW style. And it bothers me far more than it should that she's named after a Greek Alphabet letter in a Galaxy Far Far Away, (even though Shaak-Ti and Ahsoka were Indian/Hindu inspired and there's a character named Jocasta) But I do like the voice. They got a New Zealand actress (Michelle Ang) to use a New Zealand accent to match Temora Morrison's accent for Jango and the Clones, and the way she pronounces Wrecker as "Ricker" and Tech as "Tick" amuses me.

You theory about her ability....that's a good one, and I wouldn't be surprised. I did predict on here a few months ago that Filoni and co seem to be taking back the old Jorus C'Boath/Jedi Clone lore and indeed a very recent Star Wars comic seems to imply that Luke's severed hand will ALSO be part of the Imperial's plan to clone some Jedi. With all the different people they're apparently throwing in there it's no wonder Snoke came out a mangled mess.

Last year or so I also played the PSP Battlefront games on Vita and the second one, whose story was supposedly repurposed from the unproduced Battlefront 3, did indeed have a story about Force-Sensitive Clone Troopers.

The hook of Crosshairs doing a forced heel turn and trying to hunt them down is a pretty decent set up for a series, though I am getting Rebels flashbacks and I imagine I'm not the only one. I kinda hope a redo of frolicking with Space Whales isn't in our future (and yet I still make that joke after the Space Whales did indeed end up being important by the end of Rebels)

15 more episodes, even if only a half-hour long, is indeed a lot of Bad Batch, and with some much stuff from the trailers in this pilot, I'm kinda curious what exactly is going to be in the rest of the show. The only thing I specifically recall not making it in here is Fennic Shand, and I would imagine she'll only be in one episode. But this is Filoni and co, the possibilities are endless. The show appears to have a centralized cast, as Rebels did, so time will tell if the fandom regards it as the better show.

30 minutes, not surprising.

The description alone made it clear we were going to get a returning character, and indeed, mere minutes in, we get the return of Cut Luqwane and Su from the memorable storyline "The Deserter".

Sadly this hook, nifty as it is, doesn't really carry the whole thing for me, and it dwells on Omega frollicking a bit too much and devolves into a Rebels-esque narratively uninvolving shootout.

It's the Fennec episode.

So Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen, from Mandalorian) is in this, and she meets and talks to Omega, giving her some broad advice (every episode of this show is about developing Omega's character) and she runs afoul of the Bad Batch, showcasing some action befitting her character.

The good news: Ming-Na Wen is an old pro at voice acting. I have mixed feelings about her voicing her this early in the timeline, but there's nothing that says she can't. The bad: I don't like her face in this art style. The rest of the design looks quite good and she looks good in action, but the face doesn't look that good or look that much like Ming-Na Wen. I don't know if they were trying to go for her likeness or not, I just think the design's face could have looked better.

Another negative for me is that this was the last thing in the trailers we hadn't seen, and the one thing I was specifically looking forward to, and it was pretty decent, but now I have no expectations as of what to expect going forward, and I don't know how to feel about that.

I'll say this, I feel like we get a slightly better sense of who Fennec is as a character than in Mando, but that's more because she didn't have much to do in that beyond action scenes.

-The origin of the Rancor from Return of the Jedi
-The return of the Martez sisters from the final season of The Clone Wars, who had a contact who wasn't identified at the end of the episode, who turned out to be...
-Rex from TCW

And lastly, we have the return of bounty Hunter Cad Bane. Who shows up later in another Crosshairs-centric episode to shoot Hunter, say that the identity of who hired her is likely classified information (likely tieing into the Fennec plot) and kidnapped Omega. Todo is also back, voiced again by Seth Green. We also have a legit cliffhanger to lead into the next episode.

So the conclusion to the Cad Bane 2 parter:

-We learn that Omega is a pure genetic replication of Jango Fett, with the only other known one being "Alpha" aka Boba. So Omega is Boba's sister.
-Fennec shows up again and kills Taun We, one of the Kaminoans from Attack of the Clones.

Episode 11 and 12 featured Cham Syndulla and a younger version of Hera from Rebels (still voiced by Vanessa Marshall) along with Chopper.

Episode 13 featured the Pykes.

Episode 14 featured Gregor, one of the Clones that reappeared along with Rex in Rebels.

Episode 15 and 16 were the two-part finale and ended with the cloning facilities on Kamino being destroyed by the Empire, a plot point I vaguely recall coming up before (I think it was established in Rebels?) and the ending featured Kaminoan Nala Se being recruited by the Empire for what was almost certainly the same experiments that were teased in Mando S2 and resulted in the experiments seen in Star Wars Episode 9. I hope that Filoni and co do indeed have more planned than that not-terribly interesting business we already learned about well over a year ago.

Rosario Dawson confirmed that Ezra will appear, Lars Mikkelson will reprise Thrawn from Rebels, this time, presumably in live action.

Also rumor is Sabine and Bariss Offee will be in the show.