Okay. The first two episodes of this were a bit dreary. They were establishment filler to tell us what’s been going on with Omega on one side, and the Batch on the other, since the end of the last season. But the third… well, that one’s a bit of a doozy.
It’s no great mystery that it’s been an obvious narrative goal of Dave Filoni’s regime to fill in the gaps in the story for the time frame between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. The Mandalorian has already been doing some of the lifting of this, by establishing the character of Grogu, that he was clearly intended as a means to provide a midichlorian-rich tissue sample for producing a Force sensitive clone, and that this was almost certainly a key factor to explain the backdrop of the infamous line, “Somehow, Palpatine returned…”
The Bad Batch is clearly being looped into that story in its final season.
The first episode indicates that Hemlock is clearly picking up the cloning programs begun on Kamino, but they’re not intended to simply create more clone soldiers. They’re intended for something else.
When Omega is returned to Nala Se, she cooperates, to a point. However, it stands out quickly that, while she’s been ordered to take and process blood samples from different clone troopers, and mentions are made of an “M count transfer” in experiments, Nala Se conspicuously destroys every sample taken from Omega herself before it is tested.
This goes on while Omega domesticates something called a “lurch hound” she names Batcher, and surreptitiously approaches Crosshair and tells him she means to escape and take him with her. Crosshair coldly tells her she should leave him behind, and adds that he would do the same to her. She doesn’t get very far in this plan other than to find out she’s not the only female clone, that there’s an adult one named Emerie here. Emerie shows sympathy towards Omega, but still dutifully does her orders. The only deviation from protocol she ever shows is that, when a surprise inspection reveals that Omega has made and kept a straw doll for security comfort, she gives it back to Omega when it’s confiscated.
Meanwhile, Hunter and Wrecker are looking for Hemlock’s base. They capture a Pyke and bring it to someone with a grudge against them and intelligence on where Hemlock may be hiding. However, the intelligence is stale; the Empire has moved Hemlock from this site and destroyed it by orbital bombardment. Hunter and Wrecker manage to rescue three adolescent clones who survived the destruction, and gather a bit of general data on what sector Hemlock’s new base is in, but the monsters of the week (in the form of self mutating vines that attack voraciously) prevent them from getting any better info.
Now, to the third episode.
Hemlock and Nala Se inform the others that there’s a VIP coming, and they’ll be busy. Dr. Karr (aka Emerie) will be doing Nala Se’s work, which means Nala Se herself won’t be able to dispose of Omega’s sample like she usually does. Nala Se warns Omega that she must get out of the facility, and offers her data pad she left in the lab as a means to do so, She warns Omega that once the Empire tests her sample, she will be in danger. She clearly knows they’ll find out something from hers that they wouldn’t get from the others.
Omega takes the pad, helps break Crosshair out of his cell, and they make a run for it through the kennel of the lurca hound she domesticated and ultimately freed in the earlier episode. (Chekhov’s gun is an alien dog in this case.)
When the VIP arrives, it’s the Emperor himself. He’s clearly personally interested in this cloning, and says it’s necessary to preserve the future of the Empire. (Or, more likely, himself.) He promises Hemlock any resources he needs to accomplish this. Hemlock tries to parlay that into getting named the Empire’s science minister, but the Emperor holds that ambition in check, “All in due time.” It’s held out as a potential reward.
While all this is going on, Omega’s sample is ratcheted around the test machine, coming closer to getting scanned.
Omega has to stun Emerie to get out. Hemlock correctly suspects Nala Se had a hand in helping her escape and orders her confined. Several shuttles of troopers are sent to hunt them down.
Omega has the idea of using a crashed shuttle (shown going down at the beginning of the first episode) to contact Hunter and Wrecker, but it doesn’t work, and the Imperials get the powered up systems on their sensors as they’re searching. Crosshair decides Omega’s gotten them this far, so when he improvises a Plan B (or Plan 72, to be more precise), he includes her in it. They make their move, draw the troops off the shuttle, and then hijack it themselves behind them.
Fighters are scrambled to pursue. They’re not likely to make it.
But then Emerie runs into the control room with the results of Omega’s now-scanned sample: her blood is the key to producing a preserved M-count transfer in a cloning process. Which means they need her alive.
Hemlock reluctantly calls off the fighters. Crosshair and Omega make it out. However, Hemlock vows that they’ve got all the resources of the Empire to pursue, and vows to have Omega brought back alive.
Roll credits.
Okay. Whoa. They’ve got my attention now.
It’s maybe slightly heavy handed to loop this series in as a key precursor to explaining how the Emperor survived, but it’s kind of working. It clarifies the reason why this show exists. Omega, in effect, is this show’s Grogu, she’s just as key to Sidious’ plan to clone himself at full power, and that plan started almost immediately after the Empire was created — which makes some sense, as Gideon’s later experiments seem to indicate it had been going on, but this obviously is the early stages of that thread.
It also explains, to some degree, the lore behind Rey’s father in between Palpatine and herself, by explaining that there’s a risk that M count, and therefore Force sensitivity, will fail to transfer from original samples to a clone. According to the lore, Rey’s father was a clone of Palpatine that lacked his power, but it skipped a generation to come down to Rey.
So, ultimately, the thread now traces that effort from Omega and the survivors from Kamino, to Grogu and Din Djarin and Gideon, to Snoke, Rey’s father, and then finally to both Palpatine’s clone we see in Rise of Skywalker and Rey herself.
Given the time frame, it’s even likely that Rey’s father was created from Hemlock’s labs as a failed clone. He had to grow to adulthood and then have a child that herself grew to a young adult by the time of the sequels. In fact, I might just call that my first takeaway and prediction: Rey’s father will be created either in this lab we just saw, or in a close follow-up.
And, most likely, Snoke will be a slightly more successful product of Hemlock’s efforts as well, from about this same time. Snoke looks rather older, so it doesn’t make sense that he came about after the Galactic Civil War. He likely had to already be alive by the time of the original trilogy.
Maybe a bold call. But I think that’s what at least some of this is leading to. It’s possible Snoke still comes later, as a result of Gideon’s postwar experiments. But we’re definitely seeing the beginnings here. If I’m wrong altogether, it’ll be because Rey’s father and Snoke are both created as adults after the original trilogy.
But it’s still a fun theory, and this show finally has given us a reason to care why it exists. (More so than Rebels did as anything more than required viewing to understand or care about three quarters of what went on in Ahsoka.)
So that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Thanks for reading.
Musings of a Geekzer 