‘Tales of the Empire’ and ‘The Bad Batch’ Series Finale
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Well, it's up to them. They're free to follow their own paths. We've all fought enough battles for one lifetime. Now, we get to choose who we want to be. Like what? Whatever we want, kid. Whatever we want. Greetings! And welcome.

to House of R, a Ringerverse podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Mallory Rubin, and it is my absolute pleasure to invite you not only back to Mount Tantis, but also to House of R's new-ish-ish podcast feed. Joining me today, here to tell me that the lessons I learned from the Jedi greatly limit my power, but he will help me overcome this weakness.

Is that old Ben Lindbergh's music? It's Ben Lindbergh! With my silver beard and my older facial hair face. Great to be here. Bad babies meet the Bad Batch for the final time. Oh, man. We've fought a lot of battles, too, and now we can decide what we want to do, and what we want to do is do a podcast about the Bad Batch. That's beautiful. Ben, you were out on...

parental leave right now. But you are so determined to capitalize on every opportunity possible to talk about tech, even in absentia, that you couldn't miss this pod. You couldn't miss it.

To be clear, didn't have a new baby, just in case people want to wish me congratulations. Joanna was like, you had another kid? You didn't tell me? No, it's the same kid. It's just a later parental leave. But, you know, Omega is our kid too, forever, right? That's true. That's true. Definitely one of the lessons of the show. That's beautiful. In case people can't tell from these many references, the opening clip, etc., we are here to talk about the...

Season 3 slash series finale of The Bad Batch, but we're also here to talk about Tales of the Empire. So this is a double Star Wars animation extravaganza. Cannot wait to chat about both of these shows with you today, Ben. You cannot stop what has begun. No one can. This is what Morgan taught us. She had a vision. I've had a vision. I will fulfill my destiny on this podcast today. But before then...

Some quick programming reminders. I want to make sure everyone knows what's coming here on the House of R and over on the Ringiverse. Let's start with the Ringiverse. The Midnight Boys. Two pods next week. Wednesday, X-Men 97, and then Friday, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. But before either of those pods drop, you will have a new button mash. Ben, what is coming on Monday?

We're taking a page out of the big picture playbook, and we are drafting the great games from the year 2004, 20th anniversary. So I'll be with Justin Charity, Matt James, producer Steve Allman, who is with us right now on this call, and will also be on that draft. And we will revisit one of the great gaming years ever and put together our lineups of our favorite picks from that year.

I can't wait to listen to the pod, though I will say I'm not quite ready to confront the fact that 2004 was two decades ago, even though it's just right there in the math. Not really sure I'm ready to stare that in the face. Ben,

You'll be here next week as well on the House of R with the asterisk that plans might change. Who knows? Our current plan is at long last to deliver the fabled, long-rumored, something-something baseball pod that we have been mentioning and alluding to for the last couple weeks and maybe even months. We'll be here on Tuesday to...

you know, it's baseball season. There's not a lot of stuff, Aaron and May. We're going to have some fun. We're going to do a little baseball fandom crossover episode. Tuesday is the plan. If things change, you will find out when the podcast goes up on Tuesday and is about something else. But that's the plan right now. And then at the end of next week, Tropes course time. Joe is whipping up

Not only the bloodlust, but some vampire nuggets for a vampire tropes course. Benjamin, it's a lot. It's always a lot, even in a quieter release month. How can the people follow along?

Well, they can find us on our various social channels, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, at Ringerverse everywhere. They can see the clips that we're posting from our recent Ringerverse Recommends episodes. Jomi is cutting those individual promos and putting them up. So follow us. Check out all our content there. How are you feeling about the latest round of feedback from your adoring Instagram public?

The Instagram comments, I think I messaged you and said I might have to take out several restraining orders after I read the comments. But you said it with appreciation and love and joy in your heart. Yeah, it's flattering. I did a Palpatine...

chair spin because I just moved. And in this new apartment, much to my surprise, I found a chair that is shaped like Palpatine's throne. And so I've just been sort of putting my arms on the arms rests and spinning around ominously. So that's how I started the video. Great stuff. I don't know what else anybody would need to hear other than that to go check out the Ring Reverse Recommends videos and the pod. Check out the pod as well. Wonderful new tradition that we're starting. Give it a listen. Give it a watch.

While you're at it, your phone's in your hand, hit that follow button, you know, follow along and then email us because the inbox is always open. Hobbitsanddragonsatgmail.com. If you have vampire thoughts ahead of the tropes course, send the emails. If you have baseball thoughts, send the emails. If you'd like to comment on Gunnar Henderson's

AL Player of the Month honor. Congrats. Thank you. I do feel like I have won. To you, not just to Gunnar, but you. I do feel like I personally have won. I look forward to receiving your congratulations again in a few months when he is named AL MVP. Can't wait. Can't wait. Okay, lastly, on the programming reminders front, it is time for our friendly neighborhood spoiler warning.

You know what we're talking about today? Bad Batch series finale. Bad Batch season three. All of the prior Bad Batch episodes and seasons. Anything that's ever happened in Bad Batch might come up today. Tales of the Empire. We will be talking about details from the six new shorts. We'll be talking about

We will be mentioning here and there Tales of the Jedi, the first season as well. So anything that happened in the Jedi edition, season one, also on the table today. I'd say more broadly, anything that's ever happened in Star Wars animation or Star Wars is fair game today. All right, Ben. Crosshair thinks the Clone Force 99 died with tech, but we don't believe that's true. So let's pod! Yes. We are going to start today with the Bad Batch.

series finale and then we're going to get to Tales of the Empire after. So let's talk about the cavalry has arrived. Steve, clip us. I made my choice, Hunter. I want to do more. And we want to keep you safe. You have, but I'm not a kid anymore. You don't have to worry about me. You're our kid, Omega. You always will be. Hunter, you've all fought enough. This, it's my fight.

I'm ready. I know you are, but I'm not. Okay, right in the feelings right away. Unsurprisingly, Ben, the Bad Batch finale was emotional and cathartic.

Quick overall impressions. Let's just start with our kind of opening snapshot as we like to, but I'm giving you a trio here. This is a challenge for both of us because I would say neither of us is fabled for our brevity and we're trying to keep the overall pod pretty tight today because we have a lot to get to. So on the quick impressions front, I want to hear your quick overall thoughts on one, the finale, two, the final season, and three, the series as a whole.

Okay, it's a tall order, but here we go. I thought the finale was very strong. I thought it was a satisfying conclusion to the saga. I thought it was emotional. I thought it resolved most of the major storylines in pretty compelling fashion. We had one last infiltration slash assault slash heist scene.

after many, many, many previous such missions on this series. But this was the big one, right? To take it all. And we finally kind of got to see everyone show up at Tantus and mount that final assault and destroy the cloning program and save everyone who needed to be saved. So a lot happened here in sort of a supersized finale, but I thought it largely delivered on what I wanted from the end of this series.

I agree. I thought that the finale was quite enjoyable. It was action-packed. It was. It was like a very propulsive and dynamic and energizing Star Wars send-off. There were definitely sequences in this where I thought to myself, okay, I never complain about getting to spend time with our beloved Zillowbeast, but I'm watching this Zillowbeast escape from Tantus thinking...

this is, this would be like one of the more exciting things we could see. Right. And like, let's, you can imagine so easily the live action version of that, like Godzilla comes to star Wars, uh,

in a movie. This just felt very cinematic as the best stretches of Bad Batch. We talked about this a lot in the three-episode premiere breakdown we did. The best stretches of Bad Batch feel very visually stimulating. The score is and continues to be astonishing. And we got the emotional cathartis with our core characters that we needed. I think on the plot front,

We'll talk through whether some of that felt a little too maybe neat and tidy, and that'll connect back to some of what we discussed in our premiere pod on this season of how this series is

was able to balance the connections to the larger canon and the larger universe with telling the story of Clone Force 99 of the Bad Batch. I think broadly, like we might have some quibbles, we might have some notes, broadly it was successful. We left Bad Batch, we left this episode, we left this season, and we left this series feeling like a deep level of investment in Crosshair, who I cannot wait to talk about today. Yeah.

Omega, Hunter, Wrecker, Echo were still mourning tech. Tech did not come back, Ben. A genuine... Shocked. A genuine shock, I think. Like, it is rare to be astonished by something that happens in a series with this many episodes. And I love that they were clearly toying with our expectations there. We're going to talk a little bit about CX2 and how it just seemed like we were leading toward a tech reveal there that never came. I...

Don't think this was my favorite season of the Bad Batch. I still think season one was stronger. I would probably rank them one, three, two in terms of the overall success of each season. I think that I've been trying to kind of like assess my own desires out of the show and interrogate why I feel a certain way about a certain thing because...

We really talked a lot in our premiere pod about how season two felt like we were too often in some new place with new people, very much in a adventure of the week structure and rhythm of the show, maybe at the expense of feeling like we had our tether to that larger storyline. This season was almost the complete opposite, where I really appreciated and liked feeling more rooted in a focused story with a group of people who I am invested in ensuring are okay, but

Maybe one too many for me personally trips back to Tantis to get captured and then escape again. But overall, I still had a really good time. I will miss the show. I think there are a lot of positive lessons here for Star Wars about many of the things we talk about over and over again on our Star Wars pods, how you can tell a story that does feel simultaneously new and interesting.

steeped in the particular relationships and dynamics and arcs of a group of people who have come into our lives in that story and also feel like pretty neatly connected to the larger saga.

This did that well. Where does it rank for you, like on the Filoni-verse, if you want to make it more broadly, Star Wars animation rankings beyond that? Is this a top three show for you? Like, where does it check in for you? It's comfortably below, say, Clone Wars and Rebels, certainly, or I would put Rebels at the top and then Clone Wars. Same. Rebels won Clone Wars, too. I probably put this third, though.

I would probably put this third. I mean, I guess I would certainly put it above, say, Resistance, if we're counting that as part of the Filoni-verse. And then some of the shorter anthology-style shows, Tales of the Jedi, Tales of the Empire, which we're talking about today. Visions, of course, is not really part of this canon and continuity, but is so visually creative and experimental that it is quite compelling, too. But yeah, in terms of kind of the core Filoni-verse series, I would put this third.

I'm sort of with you on this season, I think. You're right. The action set piece at the end is really riveting, which is not, I think, always the case with this series. There is a lot of action, and sometimes it feels a little bit disposable to me or just...

you know, Bad Batch is going to go to this place, they're going to blow some stuff up, they're going to sneak in, they're going to get out. Like, it's going to work out probably, right? We're going to have a snack after. Yeah. And here, it was actually pretty pulse-pounding and we got the kaiju action Shades of Clone Wars Season 2 with the Zillow rampage on Coruscant, right? This season, though...

My main complaint or nitpick about Bad Batch heading into this season was the inconsistency, just the fact that you had that mission of the week structure, which can be good, but oftentimes felt unfocused. And I think when we did our premiere pod, I said, wow, this feels focused now. We have a mission, right? We're kind of in the end game. We know what everyone's goal is. And that largely held true for the rest of the season, which I think was sort of a double-edged sword, ultimately.

I think it was a much more consistent show. I think the highs were not as high and the lows were not as low, right? There was just kind of a tighter band of Bad Batch quality, which was...

My impression, and then I'm a data guy, so I always want to go to the numbers. And I looked at the IMDB user ratings and they kind of confirmed my feeling here. Like season two, for instance, the highest rated episode was a 9.1 on the 10 point scale. The lowest rated was a 6.3.

Season three, the high prior to the finale was 8.6 and the low was 7.1. So again, like no stinkers, you know, no like totally throwaway forgettable episodes, but maybe not kind of the Pantheon episode so much either. So it was good and bad, I guess, to end it. On the whole, I like this show. I'll miss this show.

I will say, like, it never became appointment viewing for me in a way that most other Star Wars series are. I mean, I'm in, what, the 99th percentile we both are when it comes to whether we're in the target audience for a Filoni animated Bad Batch style series. And yet there were times where a few weeks went by and I was like, huh, I should catch up on the Bad Batch, you know? And I was always happy to. I always enjoyed the catch up. I looked forward to it, but it wasn't a...

got to get to this Bad Batch immediately, right? Partly, I guess, because I wasn't really worried about getting spoiled. This was not really the sort of show where if I don't watch this right away, you know, but also I think,

Because of the structure of the show, because of the time period, it just it felt a little less essential to me, maybe indispensable, you know, so happy to have it. And I will miss it. And I hope that we get something to replace the Bad Batch sized shaped hole in our hearts.

But it also felt like it kind of had a modest audience by Star Wars standards and maybe even by Star Wars animation standards. Yeah, to that last point, I might just anecdotally, unlike you, I'm not armed with a...

than the spreadsheet and an algorithm, you're the best. But just anecdotally, a lot of my Star Wars loving pals are also animation pals. And I feel like among the group of people who are inclined toward a Star Wars animated series, people really liked Bad Batch. It was something that people enjoyed watching and enjoyed discussing. Whether it was able to penetrate beyond that

I think it's a fair question. Though, you know, not everything has to. And ultimately, there's a part of me, of course, that would love for more people to discover and watch the high-quality Star Wars installments. That would be great. And then there's a part of me that thinks one of the mistakes not to already bring things back to...

Rise of Skywalker. But there is a part of me that thinks that sometimes the mistakes that Star Wars has made is like feeling a compulsion to make everything for everyone and try to please everyone, which is, of course, the surest way to fail. And so making a really good, assured, confident version of the thing for the people who want it

I don't mind that. The thing that I think part of what we're both kind of getting at here that puts Bad Batch in the we really enjoyed and it was a show that we had fun watching. I also think we probably both feel that this was the appropriate amount of time for a Bad Batch series to run. When I first saw that they announced that the season three was the last, I was like, ah, fuck, man, I don't want Bad Batch to end. And then we got to the end of the story and I thought, no, okay, this was the right decision. These characters, without question,

Our question is, we will talk about momentarily some of these characters. We'll be back in our lives, I assume, very quickly. We should say we're banking this because we had Tales of the Empire. Obviously, the Bad Batch finale came out a few days ago. We had Tales of the Empire screeners. So we're recording this on Friday morning. Tales goes up on Disney Plus on Saturday.

Saturday is also May the 4th. If there is an Omega spinoff announcement as soon as, for when people are listening to this now, already in the past, and for us, like, 18 to 20 hours in the future, I won't be surprised. Like, if it happens that soon. But what I was about to say is that Rebels and Clone Wars each felt like they...

We were just so in the bag for those shows. It's almost like not worth spending too much time talking about this. Our feelings about those properties is like established ringer canon. Yes. They, I think seismically altered something about the Star Wars landscape in different ways. Right. And I don't know that Bad Batch did that, but I also think that's okay. Bad Batch felt like the continuation of an essential mission for the Star Wars creative force of creating

telling the story of the clones and what it was like to get to know them as individuals. And we have a lot of characters across our Clone Wars experience and elsewhere that have allowed us to think about that in a way that became genuinely meaningful to us as Star Wars fans. Like when Wolf shows up in this season, we're like a million other things right away and that's just such a cool feeling. Clone Force 99 does that as well as

All but a few other things, our time with Rex, et cetera. So that was very satisfying. Let's talk about, if you're ready to dive in, the members of Clone Force 99. We're going to hit the characters one by one here, but I think in the process of doing so, inevitably talk about some of their shared dynamics. We have to start with Omega. Ultimately, this was Omega's show. I think the two of us might say, to us, it was Crosshair's show. Yeah. Undeniably, this was Omega's show.

Can we just start at the end here? Because the finale ends with a large time jump with a grown Omega heading off to be a pilot in the Rebellion. Hunter, bearded, salt and peppery, hot Hunter looking great. When I saw that, I thought...

Someone is making this for Mal. Oh my god. This could not be any more for Mal. I'm sure there were a lot of people watching that at home thinking, yeah, I'm really understanding concretely what they mean by accelerated aging for the clones. Like, Hunter looks like he's been through it and fairly decrepit. And I was like, I cannot wait until Ben and I return to our favorite tradition, which clone looks the most fuckable right now. Yeah.

because Hunter is looking great. Amazing beard action. Oh, yeah. I mean, Rampart is such a piece of shit. I can't wait to talk about his return this season. But the beard on Rampart, I did have to really, I had to ask myself some tough questions because he looked great too. Yeah. But Hunter is there.

Sweet Batcher is there. Absolutely broke my heart when Omega flew away and Batcher was just there like watching her go crying. I know.

Yeah. Thought you could sneak off, Hunter says. Jump snow all over again. Well, I can't. I mean, let's not, please. It's still too soon. Five years later, Ben, and it's still too soon. This shouldn't be a surprise, Omega says to Hunter. The Rebellion needs pilots more now than ever. We heard the clip a few minutes ago of the rest of that really beautiful, lovely exchange. Did you want to know this? This is my first question. Like, do you like having this experience?

data point, having this dot now on Omega's timeline. Not that it's a surprise, again, but you know something on the one hand specific. Omega setting off to fight in the Rebellion.

It opens up a lot more questions. It opens up many possibilities about how Omega could be brought back into the story. Are you glad that you know something? Or do you wish that it had been completely open-ended and the question of how or when Omega was going to come back into the story was something that we would...

wait however long to discover. I mean, I guess the how and when is still something we'll wait to discover, but we do have one more bit of information than we did before. How do you feel about that? Yeah. I was already emotionally reeling from a recent flash forward on Bluey, where we got grown up Bluey. The parents in the audience know what I'm talking about, or the non-parents who are still watching Bluey. That's okay too. But I thought it might've been nice to

to let the moment breathe for the bad batch more than a few seconds, right? Because we got kind of that fade out of the full batch sort of sitting together on Pabu like their war is over. And then we got essentially a post-credit scene, except it was a pre-credit scene, right? We didn't even have to wait post-credits for this. So it did feel very much like

Okay, that thing's over. Now we're going to have some connective tissue here to the next thing, which it certainly seems like based on this that, yeah, we will get an announcement sometime soon and maybe so soon that there would have been no point in sort of hiding the ball here because we're going to get some news about Omega so soon that you might as well just sort of set it up here. I didn't mind it. I...

was wondering where Crosshair and Wrecker were in this scene. I guess, you know, Hunter, his senses allow him to detect that Omega's sneaking off, but would have been nice to see the full team say goodbye. Would have been nice to see if Crosshair has a beard now. That might have been a major moment for you. I'm not sure I could have handled it. I know. And

Would have been nice to see her go off with the blessing of the full family, all of her dads, right? I mean, I guess she was sneaking off. I mean, my assumption based on the number of injuries Wrecker incurred this season is that he's like a vegetable at this point. So maybe they didn't want to break our hearts by showing us that. But I certainly would have loved to see Kropp.

Yeah, it's totally on brand for Omega to feel like this is my fight. I got to get out there. I mean, that's kind of her consistent character trait is I have to help everyone at all times at any cost to myself. Right. So, of course, she would heed this call and she would want to jet off across the galaxy to go pitch in. And, you know, her dad's had their fight and she has her fight, although she's had plenty of fights already. Really, she'd be entitled to take it easy, too, but she's not wired that way. So, yeah.

Yeah, on the whole, I would have been fine with an ending that just really respected the bad batch as opposed to setting up the next thing in the fashion that we are so accustomed to with Star Wars projects and MCU projects. But I didn't mind it. I wasn't mad about it. Yeah, I feel the same way. It was...

It was emotional. It really was. And I was already excited, of course, to eventually learn how Omega will fit into the wider Star Wars canon. And I'm... This didn't necessarily... This little glimpse didn't necessarily change my excitement level, but I think only because it was already pretty high. So I'm looking forward to that. There were some other, like, subtler aspects of this scene that I found very satisfying. The fact that...

Omega is talking about being a pilot. Like one of my favorite stretches of the show ever is the Ryloth stretch in season one where we got to be with, you know, our beloved Chop, but also young Hera and see Omega and Hera bond and like thinking about how they're talking about flying is about a feeling, you know, that idea you're free. Omega being a part of this

larger Star Wars tradition. We'll talk in a second about Crosshair becoming a part of a Star Wars tradition with his severed hand. But so many of the characters we talk about, like, what does flight represent to them? Not only what does the fight represent, but what does that aspect of flight represent?

That was really fun and cool. Yeah. And the tech turned, right? Tech gave Omega lessons too. We had a tech turn here, which was that we didn't see tech, but also. The goggles though. The goggles are on the dash, Ben. That was the moment that really got me. Tech was my guy, maybe even more so. Crosshair was your guy. I'm pro Crosshair too, but tech was my guy. And so, yeah, that little nod at the end, once it became clear that we weren't actually getting tech in the flesh.

that hit me hard. The lessons. Tech is there with them still. That was beautiful. Quickly on the Omega front, a couple characters who weren't here in season three who we thought might make an appearance. We did not see Boba. We did not get... I can't believe it. Yeah. Of the, like, all of the things that we felt sure might happen, Tech actually being alive would have been honestly my number two behind Boba.

Yeah. Jango, pure clones, Boba and Omega meet on this show. I am astonished that this didn't happen. It feels like an absolute lock for live action and maybe just something they wanted to save for live action. Like we will get it at some point. We have to, but I couldn't believe we didn't get it here. Yeah. I'm slightly less surprised that we didn't get some sort of Grogu. Yeah.

Omega early tie, but that also feels like a lock for their, I mean, for so many reasons, right? Being pursued for your blood by the folks who were a part of Project Necromancer. But also, you know, the sweet little

Cubs in a lone wolf and Cubs story somehow crossing paths just feels like something that has to happen at some point in Star Wars. Later in the timeline actually makes more sense for that than it would have here. But,

Did you think we would see Grogu or not? And like, where are you on the Boba shock scale? Yeah, I mean, Grogu is the superstar. He's the franchise player at this point. So I'm not shocked that they reserved that meeting, which will probably happen for something that more people will see. Right. But I am shocked that we did not get Boba and Bad Batch. That felt like a lock from the get go.

And we will still get it at some point. Maybe it's Ahsoka season two. We get Omega live action, Omega meeting Tem or something. And that will be great because we waited so long for it. But yes, that completely...

flummoxed me and this season I mean it sort of subverted or countered my expectations in a few ways that I admire I guess keeping Boba out of the show not bringing back tech despite seemingly hinting at it not confirming for sensitivity for Omega we'll get to how they handled that but

It certainly wasn't the full Sabine or something even more so than Sabine, right? And then, yeah, no Grogu. I mean, there were a lot of times where I sort of thought, this is what they're planning. This is where this is all heading. And it didn't, which is good. I'd like to be surprised sometimes if it were too obvious. You know, everyone who seems to be dead actually is alive. Okay, they did do that with Asajj Ventress, for instance, right? That counts.

Wait, I honestly can't wait to talk about my wife, Asajj Medras. And maybe it would have been a distraction to inject Boba into this final season because it was so focused on the Tantus mission that maybe it just would have felt like, you know, throwing a thermal detonator into the plan for this season to have Boba. But we did have

guest stars. We did have Fennec come back. We had Cad come back. And we had Ventress. So I thought for sure, oh, Fennec's going to call Boba. It's all happening. It's all coming together. I know. I honestly can't believe it, but I agree with you. In a way that I admire and appreciate,

I always like, and not always, I am a sucker for a well-deployed Star Wars cameo or crossover. And I think that the Filoniverse shows have done a particularly good job of making those count. Like you and I have talked about a million times, but when we see Caleb, like when we see young Kanan, we're like...

transcending to a different plane of existence as Star Wars fans. And so I was really inclined to anticipate a lot of that this season. The fact that we got some of it, but maybe not a couple of the things we were thinking just makes me feel like they were even more confident in the story that they were trying to tell. Like, didn't feel necessarily, not that all the other times we get Star Wars crossovers, it's

oh, we need the boost of person X to like make sure people are talking about this or care about it. But it didn't feel like they needed to strive for that. They're like, this is, we got enough to focus on here, so let's let that shine. Yeah, because there are oftentimes in spinoffs, not just in Star Wars. So we were talking about Knuckles on Button Mash recently, where Knuckles sort of isn't the star of his own show for half of it. And of course I brought up

Bookaboba, where he just kind of gets shouldered aside, right? It's not his show anymore, which was ultimately maybe for the best because it became a better show when it wasn't his show. But this was the Bad Batch. This really was the Bad Batch's show throughout. And yeah, we got some cameos, we got some guest stars, but no one ever really took center stage.

I did think that there were times in the series when the episodes that weren't about the Bad Batch or at least the entire batch were the best. When we got sort of a solo episode, when we were tracking, say, Crosshair on his own or Emery on her own. That was one of the highlights of me for this season, the Emery episode where I thought this series did a great job of the weight.

Are We the Baddies type episodes, right? Where someone has that moment where they realize maybe following orders, maybe good soldiers shouldn't follow these orders, right? Let's interrogate that. So often the bad batch...

centric episodes would kind of fall into this formula of, you know, people playing hot potato with Omega, right? Someone's kidnapping her. She's turning herself in. Someone's rescuing her, right? How many times did Omega change possession in the series? It's like a back and forth football game or something. But there was a lot of that. And then there was a lot of infiltration, just like

Bad Batch has to infiltrate this base. Someone says, there's no way we can, you know, three people can take on the whole empire, you know, two fighters against a Star Destroyer. It was that sort of thing over and over and over again. And ultimately they always make it. And so a lot of those missions and kind of changes in possession blend together in my mind. And maybe that's why

I really like the series, but I loved individual episodes more so than the series as a whole. And I am glad, though, that we focused on the Batch here at the end because I think that's something we talked about in the premiere pod, too, was just like, let's get the gang back together again. And they did not wait very long for that to happen, as you predicted. Yeah, which was great.

On that good soldiers follow orders front, Ben, a lot of the orders in this season of The Bad Batch connect to Project Necromancer and the pursuit of and study of your favorite thing. How Palpatine returned. Somehow. Palpatine returned. So we're going to finish going through The Bad Batch and then we're going to talk about the villains. So we'll get to Project Necromancer and how the show handled that.

a little bit more there. So it's fine, actually, if you want to put a pin in this until then. But just on the Omega front, any thoughts that you want to share on the Omega midichlorian force sensitivity question and how this season handled that?

Yeah. I mean, it was such a centerpiece of the fan discourse about this series from the get-go. We were all kind of waiting to find out what is Omega's special power. And it's Star Wars, so you assume it's Force sensitivity. And this season did not totally refute that, but also didn't really provide a lot of evidence that supports that theory. We got the Asajj

episode, The Harbinger, right, which was devoted primarily to testing Omega, finding out whether she is Force-sensitive. And ultimately, Asajj says, she concludes that there's nothing there, that Omega doesn't have a high M-count, that she isn't a Jedi prospect.

But it is quite possible that she's not being truthful about that. And the batch calls her on that. I would say it is more than quite possible that she's not being truthful about that. When is she ever truthful about anything, really? So based on past precedent. But yeah, I mean, they kind of call her out on lying about something.

She says, what? You know, and she doesn't confirm that she was lying about anything, but there was plenty of ammunition there for anyone who's been, you know, firing the omega will be for sensitive theory from the start.

And they kind of kicked the can down the road a bit when it comes to that plot line. That still seems to be resolved. And frankly, I'd be fine if it were never resolved, if we never got more info about that, or if it were confirmed that, no, she's just kind of like her blood is a base for transferring the midichlorians, but she does not herself have a high midichlorian count.

Because again, we've seen that storyline so many times, right? Just, oh, this person seems to have some suspicious intuition. I wonder whether that means anything. And it always does. I mean, you know, 95% of the time, right? So it would be great if...

were not the case. I know that a lot of people have some fatigue when it comes to secret force sensitive characters, and I would be fine with this not being one of them. She's so capable without that, without developing her force skills. Now you could say it's because she has this latent connection all along, and she's drawing on it without being conscious of it. But it could also be that she's just

good at stuff and I'd be fine with that. Yeah. I think to the secret force sensitives who are, you know, eventually revealed point, they have done enough in my mind, which is

with the Omega possibility to avoid that claim if this is where it eventually goes. Like, the groundwork has been laid. I liked my read on it, you know, with the... I basically agree with what you just said. I think the combination of the immense focus, like, immense focus on Omega's blood and the M-Counts and Project Necromancer this season...

pairing Omega with the darling children, the darling Force sensitives, lumping her as infiltrator and rescuer or not in with that group. And then the Ventress episode. And what struck me as a clear bit of misdirection and deception from Ventress, but you know, like you said, room to interpret, certainly. It felt like they're leaving the door open for that to become...

definitive in the future, but I like that they left it open this season. That's also pretty high on my list, I think, of twists and surprises from this season, that it wasn't necessarily hard, fast, cut, and dry either way. We leave wondering, and we not only leave wondering, you maybe have a very hard lean. Maybe you're like, I am certain that Omega's MCAL will become a key focus again before too long. Maybe you feel differently. But

whatever direction this goes, I think they've done an effective job of positioning the choice that they make as one that we were prepared for. So yeah, if that turns out to be the case, I could see objections based on the fact that we've just seen enough for sensitive characters, but not based on the wait, where did this come from? Right. The reaction that some people had to Sabine, like clearly they have laid the groundwork here. I just I don't necessarily want them to

pursue that just because we've seen it often enough, but it would make sense. And it would be sort of strange, I guess, that that never came up given how many times her blood was tested in the series in this facility where they're experimenting with them count that no one would be like, oh, by the way, she's also super force sensitive. How about that? Right. I mean, maybe it's a different test, but still, why would they not at least try that? You know, you could say maybe because she was placed into the vault with the force sensitive kids, right?

That's kind of confirmation, but could also just be because she was also a kid who was being kept captive for different reasons, right? So nothing definitive, but certainly suggestive. Let's talk about Crosshair. Yes, please. Ben, we love a Star Wars redemption arc, and we got a great one. The moment after Hemlock is...

blasted repeatedly in the chest and then cast over into the abyss. Yeah. When Omega runs down the bridge toward a kneeling Crosshair and Hunter and looks at both of them and then Hunter gives the little side glance and she runs into Crosshair's arms first. Yeah. I was like...

A wreck. That was just such a beautiful little moment. I think that the Omega crosshair relationship was my single favorite part of the season. It's not actually particularly close to me inside of this season. I just thought that was consistently wonderful. Obviously, the relationship between crosshair and the other members of Clone Force 99 and his brothers...

slowly, but eventually, poignantly, deciding to forgive him and support him and stand by him was also very moving. This larger idea of family and...

a unit and how this show explored that through Crosshair's character and his relationships, what you think you have to do, what it means to change your mind. Like, is it ever too late to try to live your life in a better way? I was really, like, emotional when they're plotting their path toward infiltrating Tantus,

Again, Wrecker is just barely alive at this point. He's just barely hanging on. And Crosshair says...

Omega needs them, right? Omega needs you both. So I'm doing this alone. It's what I deserve. Like, he does not, into the final episode of this series, believe that he deserves to be forgiven, believes that he deserves to be welcomed back into the family. And when Hunter tells him one more moment where they're invoking tech, right, don't even think about Plan 99. Like, this isn't a moment for sacrifice, actually. This is a moment for us doing this together and figuring out how to do it together. Right?

Omega needs all of us and so do those clones and wrecker adds on. We do this together. It was just really, really, really lovely. And that was like before he got his hand cut off and joined the God tier of Star Wars. How did all of the Crosshair season three action and continuation down his redemption arc work for you?

Great arc, predictable as it was in some ways. Obviously, we sort of saw this coming, but loved watching it happen. And when he said, I mean, that was a little bit more misdirection in the finale where he says, if we all go in, we're not all making it out. He states that pretty definitively. Yes. And yet they do. Right. And we know that they could have gone there because they obviously went there with tech.

you know, to have another fallen soldier in the finale. That was in play. That was within the realm of possibility for Crosshair to fully redeem himself by sacrificing himself for the bad patch for others. Talk about a proud Star Wars tradition is the redemption arc ending in a death.

Yeah, especially coming on the heels of that conversation he had with Rampart, where Rampart's like, you're just like me. We're only out for ourselves, right? And so for him to show in the end – granted, he did demonstrate that that was not the case by going in and risking his life. But giving his life, that was on the table, right? I would not have been totally shocked if that had happened, though I would have been pretty devastated. So I'm sort of relieved that it didn't. He did lose his hands, although really like –

The full season storyline of the tremor in his hand and the psychological trauma, just chop it off, I guess. Problem solved. You know, no more shaky hands. Now he doesn't have a hand at all. So sort of an easy, simple solution to that problem. Did you shout out loud? Like, did you channel your inner thoughts on Jamie Lannister? He wants that hand! I want that hand!

Yeah, well, he can learn to shoot with his off head. He's still lethal. As we see. Yeah. Yeah. And that final confrontation with Hemlock, I don't know if this was intentional, but the scenery, the visuals felt very Camino coded to me. Just the pouring rain, the platform, almost like

Camino-esque architecture there felt very like, you know, the fight with Jango or any number of other battles that we saw. And the season one finale, like the choice that Crosshair makes to not go with them. That was so top of mind for me because of the setting. I agree. Yeah. Yes. So sort of sad we didn't get to see old Crosshair, but I thought the ending that we did get for him was...

was really rich, really fulfilling. It was. I felt like the most likely outcomes were Crosshair completing the redemption arc by sacrificing himself or...

the deeply tragic outcome where Crosshair got to live and be at peace but had lost all of these other people. Like, that was one of the things that we had talked about maybe. Like, is Crosshair the one who ends up on Pabu but maybe alone? And so I think on the one hand, you could say, like, you know, happily ever after and not losing after Tech last season, not losing more of our central figures, right?

maybe was like a predictable happily ever after. But in a way, I think it did surprise me. I was expecting that we would say goodbye to maybe more than one of these characters. And I'm...

I'm thrilled most of all that Crosshair made it out of the season alive and gets to like linger in that embrace of people who have welcomed him back into their hearts. I think that's really lovely. Yeah. R.I.P. Rampart, Hemlock, and Nala Se. So we did have some deaths, but not protagonist and hero deaths. And Nala Se got to... Yeah. ...welcome him back.

this and boost her total run time

Perfect impression. We're trying to keep this podcast tight. We can't do Nala Se impressions. It takes too much time. Just wild stuff. I know. I was with you, though, as we talked about last time, just the counterbalancing effect of pairing Crosshair and Omega because Omega's irrepressible optimism could maybe be a bit much at times in isolation and then...

Crosshair's sort of cynicism and his dour mood, those two together, yeah, they brought out the best in each other. For sure. Let's talk about Hunter. Yes. Like Tony Stark, he can rest now in a slightly different way than Tony. This finale had real like...

I just felt like Pepper Potts was there whispering, like, you can rest now to Hunter after this. You know, the premiere, the triple premiere, one of the things that we really, like, lingered on in our pod on those episodes was rescuing the regs and the conversation that Hunter had with the three kids. We get to glimpse very briefly, you know, hanging out in Pabu.

You have time to figure it out. This is what Hunter said to them in the premiere. Make your own path. Be something other than a soldier. And they asked, what about you? Our mission is not over yet. So to hear him say here in the finale that,

Whatever we want, kid. Whatever we want. Yeah. And to get to grow old and just live a quiet life and be at peace and enjoy for a moment some of the thing that he had worked so hard to ensure and protect and preserve for other people was really wonderful. And then, of course, they're balancing that with his parting words to Omega, if you ever need us, we'll be there. Like, he's not...

He's not giving himself permission to be out of the fight forever, but he is giving himself permission to enjoy a quiet moment until he's pulled back in. And that feels right to me for a concluding place for Hunter to be after the time we've spent with him.

I really liked where we landed with Hunter. Me too. And maybe another slight semi-subversion of a Star Wars trope, which is just the hero can never walk away from the fight, right? As much as you might want to, you're always pulled back in your duty and

and honor always just calls upon you to get back into the fray. And that was kind of a conflict in attention throughout this series with Hunter just kind of wanting to keep his brothers and Omega safe. And, you know, we can't possibly take on the Empire here. What are we going to do? Let's just keep ourselves safe. Let's just find a safe haven. And more of the Rex attitude of, yeah, I could use some help here, right? Like we're trying to take down this Empire. And you're right. He didn't completely turn his back

Yeah, you're doing a great job. I know, I know. I'm not really living this subversion of the trope myself right now, but...

You know, as I say, not as I do. But yes, I'm glad that he got a little leeway to just relax a little bit. These guys have been through a lot. And we've seen that with other clones in the past that, you know, they've set up on their own with their own families and

Often they do kind of just get pulled back in at some point, like the conflict finds them. Like the Cassian Andor, I'm just going to get away from it all. I'm just going to chill on this beach planet, you know? And that's not the case here, right? Hunter actually does get to chill on the beach planet for a while. So wonderful. Let's quickly, before we move on to the Empire, hit Wrecker and Echo, and then if there's anything else you want to say about TACC.

I'll go rapid fire here and then you share your thoughts. Wrecker, I was quite worried about him making it out of the season alive. I'm glad he did. I don't think that Wrecker was particularly well served by this season. You know, we've chatted before about how like seasons one and two felt like they deliberately recalibrated which of the clones we focused most actively on. Wrecker felt we didn't.

Really get a lot of meaningful new story with Wrecker in this season. It's always nice to be with Wrecker, but not a ton of core Wrecker canon this season. Echo. First of all, let me just admit something to you, which is that I was briefly shipping. I found myself shipping Echo and Emery and then remembered, of course, that they're...

You know, siblings. And then had to confront the fact that I just have the Targaryens on my brain as I dive into House of the Dragon season two prep. It's a beautiful thing when it starts, but... Yeah, probably not right here. Genetic siblings in this case, but, you know, it's not quite a Jaime-Cersei situation where you were, you know, in the cradle together, which makes it a little weirder, but...

Also, it'd be more beautiful from their perspective. I'm hearing that you're into it. I'm hearing that you're shipping Echo and Emery too. I love it. I mean, look, if they don't have kids, you know, maybe it's okay. Maybe no harm done.

Great. We have our first spinoff idea. We didn't even have to wait for that section. She's a geneticist, too. Like, maybe she can, you know, do some anti-incest inbreeding tinkering and they can form a family. What's a data pad for if not this? Sure. You know? The...

The really close tie, the ongoing close tie between Echo and Rex in this season and where we left off with Echo and Emery going to rejoin this fight, working with senators who were pushing for clone rights, etc. The opposite of the hunter. Walk away from it all. But because of that, it was then very difficult to not think about what we know of Rex's future and what we...

I don't know of Echo's and what that might mean. Like, I don't know. We'll find out, I guess. Is Echo just elsewhere come rebels? But, you know, he's... Kind of concerning. Yeah. He's not there with Rex, so that's, like, troubling. And then, you know, on the tech front, we're on the record here that we were shocked he didn't come back. We think it's bold and cool. Actually, as sad as it is that he didn't, I was certain that...

Inside of the, we were sure he would come back. CX2. The CX plotline, the Clone X plotline. CX2 in particular. CX2's deployment across multiple episodes. I mean, we had cuts.

cx2 pursuing the bad batch to like putting tech's goggles on a shelf to remember him it really felt like they were leading us to believe that tech was going to be revealed as a as a reconfigured clone a reconditioned clone under that black helmet and that was not the case so yeah shock just a shock what

Would have been tough to see our guy Tech turning to the dark side like that, even if he had ultimately been redeemed at the end, which might have like tread a little too closely on the crosshair arc of like, I was following orders. I was brainwashed. And now I see the light again. But yeah, it's at least one counterexample to the, oh, we haven't seen the body yet.

Therefore, they must still be alive. We saw the goggles. That's as close as we ever came. Look, I'm holding into the Zoom screen right now, which no one listening to the pod will be able to see. But this close-up of one of the CX soldiers that we got in the finale. The helmet. The shape of the helmet. The eye holes are goggle-esque. It just looks like tech. I think that was intentional, right? Yeah. Yeah. Ultimately, no. Wild. Wild times. Mm-hmm.

I'm with you on Wrecker not really having much of an arc compared to the other batchers. And, you know, like he's a simpler man. He likes blowing stuff up and killing people and body slamming everyone. That's kind of his thing. He's happy doing that. Maybe there's just not a whole lot of depth or complexity or inner life there. You know, he's clearly a caring guy. He loves Omega. He loves his brothers. And that was kind of who he was more or less from the start. And that was more or less who he was at the end. It's true.

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doting and caring figures the empire the villains yeah you mentioned rampart you mentioned hemlock we have mentioned project necromancer let's just quickly tie a bow on all three of those project necromancer is an arc and a focus of that match satisfying for you inside of the show

helpful for you in terms of the overall connection to Project Necromancer and somehow Palpatine returned on a franchise-wide level? This was one of our big questions after the premiere was how the series would toe that line between pursuing the ties and maybe even helpfully filling in some of those gaps in a way that Clone Wars did for the prequel while still feeling like it was its own fully realized thing.

We leave the Project Necromancer aspect of this finale with a rampart shot, Nala Se. Nala Se dropped and detonated the grenade that she had stolen from the dead trooper. It blew up. Yep. Back to the drawing board, basically. And all of the data is lost. Yep. This is confirmed. Omega references the lost data. This is confirmed when Tarkin arrives on Mount Tantis at the end. And he's like,

Sounds good. I have no follow-up questions about whether anybody was using the cloud to back up their data. Please just redistribute the funds to Project Stardust. That part of this felt like, on the one hand, a way to achieve what we're talking about. You keep something contained inside of this story while also connecting to the wider universe. But I think without question, a little too neat and tidy at the end there. But Project Necromancer has to go on and on and on for a long time.

time into the canon. In our premiere pod, I mean, we mentioned the Mando, you know, season three, episode seven, Huck's reference to Project Necromancer. Think of how far in the future that is. Obviously, everything that will eventually happen in Rise of Skywalker, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply deep in the future. So,

it's not like this is the end of Project Necromancer. There's really no reason to even assume it will be the end of people pursuing Omega as a tie to Project Necromancer, but it felt like a way to say this particular chapter and threat is contained for these characters right now. How did that work for you?

I've written and spoken at some length about my misgivings when it comes to the degree to which the Star Wars metanarrative is concerned with how Palpatine returned. So I won't rehash that whole thing here. But that was kind of our misgiving coming into the season, just...

what's the end game here? Like, how could this end in a satisfying way, given what we know about what's going to happen down the road and what's not going to happen in the ensuing decades here? And ultimately, I guess they ended this in such a way that they are kind of implying that, okay, this is why it took so long or why it never really came to fruition, right? That they were dealt a huge setback here, which in a way is,

this series significant from kind of a continuity perspective. Wow. Okay. Maybe it was Omega and the Bad Batch who really sabotaged Palpatine's plans. Maybe that's why he doesn't have workable clones ready to go when he needs them. Right. So in that sense, it elevates the series to a level of great importance. Like, okay, this is

Why everything that happened later, why the sequel trilogy, Rise of Skywalker, all of that flows from the Bad Batch. And so I guess you could say that places great importance on this series in a way. On the other hand, you kind of knew that it was going to end somewhere like that because of what comes after. Right.

And, yes, it was all resolved a little neatly. I do have some notes for Hemlock just about just backing up your data, first of all, dude. But also... Frankly bizarre. Yeah. And, you know, that's on Palpy, too. Like, Palpy, he's always supposed to have, like, redundancies and backup plans. And you'd think he'd have, like, 10 Tentuses spread all over the galaxy, right? But he might. He might, right?

Yeah.

All of the ways that we are reminded of the secrecy and the prominence of that secrecy, the focus on maintaining that secrecy, making sure that people who should not be in possession of information are not in possession of it. It's interesting even to see Rampart come back into the mix here and a character who was at a high level of Imperial rank and had real ties to and bearing on other

central movements and decisions. I had no fucking idea what this was until he held Nala Se at gunpoint and scrolled through a data pad that he was never supposed to see, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But...

Part of why I find Hemlock an interesting villain is because he is to me like on the one hand, I just like the Jimmy Simpson voice performance is so good. I mean, it's just so good. Like Hemlock is a really interesting character who I actually enjoyed watching a lot. But the voice performance elevates this to like really memorable villain deployment standing to me.

Hemlock is in some ways unique because of the exact thing he's doing. And in other ways, he's a very cookie cutter, imperial figure, like the sycophant who is

can't wait to tell you why the thing that he's doing is more important than anything that you've ever touched in your life. And so the idea that Palpatine would have other people doing exactly what Hemlock is doing without him knowing feels like so delicious and true to me. And obviously, like we've both said, you know, Project Aquamancer continues and other people will be leading that charge, whether that's a full reset or...

I mean, you know, we talked about this so much during like our, you know, and Ahsoka pods with everything that's going on in the new Republic era at that point. But yeah,

It can be both at once, I guess. It could be a neat and tidy resolution inside of the story and still leave all of the necessary doors open for continuing. The question becomes then, I think, how many more stories feel compelled to in one character set or one moment on the timeline show us what is happening with Project Necromancer then?

Right. I'm good. You know, I'm good on that personally. But I mean, clearly some stuff survives because we get Persh and Co. down the road and we see the insignia. The guy Persh. Can't believe it took us this long to mention. Still seems to be like some Kaminoan, Kaminoan thing.

connection there. So not everything was lost, right? And I don't know how valuable- Despite Nalase's dying words that the empire will never, their science will never make their way, it's way into their hands. Yeah, some cloning equipment later and Gideon and everyone else, right? So, and who knows how valuable this research actually was that was destroyed because they hadn't actually accomplished anything yet, right? Until Omega showed up. So it's just a record of their many failures. But-

And you'd think like, man, can't they like synthesize Omega's blood or something? I mean, I guess if they can't figure out how to stabilize the M count transfers, maybe they can't figure out what it is about her blood that enables those transfers to stick. But yeah, I also, I mean, Hemlock, like his delegation, his decisions about who to appoint as his leaders, he's got like loyalists and true believers all over the place. And he's like, now I'll say Emery, you take over here. Yeah, you too.

My only lackeys who keep catching a conscience here. Let's put the data pads in your hands. So, you know, just leadership decisions. You have to choose who's going to be your subordinate and your minion. And he did a terrible job with that. I did like just how menacing he was. And as you said, the vocal performance, I guess I would have liked a little more, you

fleshing out of his motivations as you said like is he just kind of a cookie cutter Imperial bureaucrat villain who is

kind of jockeying for power and favor? Or is there more to it for him? We never really got, you know, I like to understand where a villain is coming from. Like, why do they think they're the good guy? And I don't know that he necessarily made that case. So was it just about currying favor? Or does he like truly believe in the Empire's mission? Or, you know, is he such a big fan of

Palpatine's politics or something that he just wants him to live forever. You know, we didn't get a whole lot of that exactly what was motivating him. So I would have liked a little more about that. And also,

Yeah, at the end where Tarkin shows up and is just like, well, let's pivot to Project Stardust. I guess we have no choice but to just devote all our resources to building the Death Star now, which that's on brand for him. That's what he always wants to do. But is that his decision to unilaterally be like, let's stop funding the Emperor's secret cloning program, which is his top priority? You know, like, does Palpatine have any input on that and those decisions about how to allocate these resources? So...

Yeah, a lot of it was a little like, all right, let's just kind of resolve all the threads here in the neatest way possible. Well, don't worry. We're about to get a Thrawn Tales of the Empire cameo where we get a real speech on leadership. So let's hang tight for a few more minutes and then we'll be there. Some Bad Batch odds and ends before we move to Tales of the Empire. Favorite cameo or crossover?

I guess I liked seeing Ventress, even though we don't know anything about how that happened, right? Which, you know, there was so little explanation of how she came back from the dead that clearly it's setting up some future reveal. Yeah. And they've said that they're not contradicting canon, like she died in a book, like they are going to explain that at some point.

But we have no idea how that happened, right? So some of the cameos this season felt a little like, well, we got to work in this person at some point. You know, we need to see Cad Bane again sometime. So he can be the one who's kidnapping a kid. Like, it wasn't really substantial roles. Yeah. No, neither do I. But sweet little Bairn. How cute was Bairn? Darling little Bairn. All the kids were so cute, but Bairn was just like unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah.

But Ventress, that was like the headline cameo and comeback. I think so. It has to be. What an actual genuine joy and thrill to have a side of Ventress in our life again. I really felt the energy when Crosshair extends the hand to Ventress. I was like, is a Crosshair-Ventress romance possibly afoot? So I'm holding out hope for that.

How did Ventress return? Somehow Ventress returned after the events of Dark Disciple. Can't wait to find out. Feels like a lock that we will. Yeah. You know, we're about to talk in a few minutes about the Nightsisters. Some Nightsister magic, perhaps it seems possible or some other way to explain the return. Just a delight. A delight to be with Ventress accidentally summoning sea monsters. What a thrill. Did you have a favorite episode of the season? Was it that one? Was it a different one? I don't know.

I really think it was the one where Emery had her moment of realizing like, gosh, this seems like a bad thing that we're doing here. We're imprisoning innocent kids and constantly testing their blood. And I'm complicit in this, like that episode just being pretty much solely focused on that.

That was, I thought, one of the rawest depictions of imperial cruelty and collateral damage. Like, they did not really flinch away from, oh, this is pretty horrible what's happening here. This is not just, like, strand casts or, like, Snokes in test tubes, you know? Like, there are real costs here and humans and kids who are suffering, right? So that was identity crisis. Yeah, specimens. Episode 10. Yeah. It was tough. Yeah.

and digits for the kids instead of their names. That was heartbreaking. Yeah, that was a great one. Identity Crisis was great. And then The Harbinger, which is the Ventress episode, was episode nine right before. That was probably other than the three-episode premiere, my favorite stretch of the season, those couple episodes. Yeah.

Anything else, Ben, on Bad Batch before we hit Tales of the Empire? You want to share your final hottest clone power ranking? I have got Hunter on top with the beard at the end, of course. Yeah, because Crosshair's topped your rankings consistently from the start, right? Still looks fabulous. And I had my guy, Brown Eyes. I had Tech on top initially. Brown Eyes, yeah. Sadly, I have to remove him from the ranking, apparently. But...

Yeah, it's really hard to displace Hunter given the look that he cultivated at the end there. I mean, he was looking fantastic. Like the accelerated aging suits him. So given that we didn't get to see whether Crossfair and Wrecker were aging quite as gracefully and in as distinguished a fashion, I think Hunter goes out on top here. Beautiful. Okay. Yeah. Any final Bad Batch finale thoughts before we hit Tales of the Empire?

We didn't really touch on the Nala Se sacrifice that much. Is there anything you care to say about that and ultimately how she sort of sacrificed herself? Not so much for Omega or exclusively for Omega as for the data, right? Which, you know, like, I'm a data guy. I said it. I get it. You will not get my fan graph, Dash 4.

Wow. A WRC Plus is on

It makes sense, I guess, for Kevin Owen to ultimately prioritize the science, right? And keeping it out of someone's hands. Because that was the curious thing about Nala Se all along. Like, oh, she really has some fondness for Omega. How did that develop? Like, how was Omega decanted? Like, was she designed this way? I'd still like to know a little bit more about that. We never really found out, like, how did she become the favorite of Nala Se? And ultimately, how much did that relationship matter to her? Because...

you know, when she detonates, it is for the data. She's not like, this is for Omega as I die. I guess it can be both in the sense that, like, it's for Kamino, right? And the idea that, like, you know, Omega is a Kaminoan and the clones, like...

My most generous, I guess, read would be that in that moment for Nala Se, it's like the clones are of Kamino 2 just as much as the data and the science and the intellectual breakthrough. I thought that the sacrifice was fine. I wasn't like...

to tears saying goodbye to Nala say, like I was literally just watching Crosshair and Omega hug or hearing Batcher, the whine and cry at the end, which really, really crushed me. I think that is an example of something where our knowledge of the eventual and ongoing role of Project Necromancer, it's sort of, you almost pity her in that moment because it's like, you're hitting pause, right?

But you're not thwarting the thing that you think you're thwarting. And that's...

That's a bummer for her. Yeah. Well, we'll miss you, Batch, at least until some of you show up on our screens again. So farewell to Fi. Shouts to Sid, who was unceremoniously shouldered aside this season in favor of other plot lines, which I was not broken up about. We'll miss you, AZ. Yes. A lot of greats. A lot of greats in the Bad Batch run. Fi pining for brown eyes just like we are. Tragic.

All right, Ben, let's talk about Tales of the Empire. Yes. Steve, clip us. I believe this is a question Captain Pallion already asked you. Your answer was a lie. Men like Istane join out of greed and self-interest, others out of fear, all with ambitions of power. Answer again, Pallion. Do you seek imperial favor? Revenge. Revenge.

Offer accepted.

Not my favorite animated Thrawn. Oh, what a treat. I feel slightly bad picking a very Thrawn-centric clip instead of like a Barriss-centric clip there, but I couldn't help myself. And Morgan got to speak in the clip too, so it's fine. Okay. Tales of the Empire, Ben. We have another...

batch of six shorts, six little vignettes. Tales of the Empire was similar in structure to Tales of the Jedi in the sense that we got six episodes. They are mini, like somewhere between, you know, 11 and 16 minutes. Tales of the Jedi, we weaved in and out of the Ahsoka and Dooku series.

vignettes. Shout out Yaddle, now and always, still. R.I.P. Tough one. Yeah. Tales of the Empire, three shorts in a row on Morgan, three shorts in a row on Barriss. These were the two characters that the new season was built around, and we got to really travel in an arc with both of them for three installments in a row. So,

Quick overall impressions. Let's start there again. What were your quick overall impressions of...

Tales of the Empire. And how did it compare, like, head-to-head to Tales of the Jedi for you? Did you prefer one or the other? Well, with the caveat that we watched this back-to-back with the Bad Batch finale, which, you know, tough act to follow when you're following up the dramatic, stirring, emotional conclusion of a series that you've been watching for years, and then you watch sort of, like, the deleted scenes, essentially, of the Filoni-verse, the Filoni loose ends. But I...

generally enjoyed it. I think I would put it a little below Jedi for me, you know, both structurally and in terms of the characters it centered. I could see the argument for let's just devote this to the characters who really didn't get much screen time at all. And we'll find out more about them. And I think it's valuable to have that screen real estate to let those characters shine. But also I wasn't like,

thirsting for more Morgan and Barriss exactly? I mean, I was wondering, you know, like we had lingering questions. What happened to Barriss, right? Like people who watch Clone Wars watch the other series. Barriss comes up pretty often among Star Wars animation fans of like, yeah, in theories. And especially I feel like in recent years, like Barriss is in the theory mix online regularly. Did Barriss save Grogu, right? Which, yeah, the Bad Batch also mentioned as possible saviors of Grogu, but nope. But yeah, I mean, I...

think that I would almost prefer like maybe some blend between the Jedi approach and the Empire approach in that I would kind of like it if they went full on anthology and it was just every episode was something different and just catching up with someone in a completely different space you know like I don't if

If we had had one episode with Morgan and one episode with Barris and then we were jetting around to someone else, we've been wondering about what happened to that person. That would be interesting. Or if it were just following one person or one storyline, I mean, then it would almost be like a mini version of one of the other Filoni shows. And maybe it wouldn't really be distinct at that point. But I think the fact that the first season that the Jedi season gave us a look at Ahsoka and Dooku, who were...

really prominent characters and in Ahsoka's case, beloved. I mean, these are, you know, live action characters now in Dooku's case, a movie live action character, like, and also people who we knew next to nothing about their origin stories. That's the, I guess the nice thing about

Jedi is that you kind of don't know where they came from and the circumstances of their birth. They made themselves not know in many cases. So there's always an origin story and a backstory to explore with those characters. So when we got to see like baby Ahsoka or, you know, the young Dooku and Qui-Gon and all of these like characters we care deeply about,

as opposed to Morgan and Barriss, where like, okay, I'm interested in how Morgan got paired up with Thrawn. Like, that was something I wondered about during the Ahsoka season and thought, huh, are we just never going to find out, like, how these two got in league and got in cahoots? And now we know, which, I mean, given...

What we know about what befell Morgan, I guess like the pressure to like explain her backstory now that there's no future story is a little less intense. Right. But I'm still glad to get these looks at what happened to these characters. But it felt a little like this was...

This was almost more for Filoni, like, I want to tell these stories. I want this lore to be out there. And for the hardcore fans who were just like, okay, now we know. Now we can at least put that to rest. Although I guess there's still some uncertainty at the end of at least the Barris story, right? For Barris, for sure. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, in the first short when we hear the Matron say, it appears your path is set, Morgan Ellsmith. I pity you, for I can see what is to come. So could we. Yeah, there was...

Honestly, I had this kind of interesting, like, duel experience because, like, it gave me a chill. But also I was like, yeah, right.

We know what is to come. And like, did we need to, how deeply did we care about learning more about Morgan? I really liked the Morgan Thrawn insights because I was so coming off of Ahsoka, curious about that relationship. And then of course, like we're interested in the Nightsisters tie, but then this was, Tales of the Empire was an interesting experience.

experience and dissonance and dualities to me because like a lot of what intrigued me about it and what I liked about it does quickly ping a follow-up question or a potential concern. Like,

The prominence here again of the Knight Sisters and the Inquisitors. Like I'm genuinely as a Star Wars fan interested in both the Knight Sisters and the Inquisitors. I like learning more about both of those groups. I like learning about more key moments in history. I like understanding how other characters are connected to those groups. But we're like, it's been a lot in recent Star Wars releases. Like,

We are never away from the Nightsisters or Inquisitors for long recently. And so then immediately I'm like, okay, I'm interested, but also it can risk feeling samey. And I think that inherently the tale structure presents that risk because part of the proposition is,

and the appeal, then you know what the other edge of that sword is. Like, you're taking characters who you already have spent time with. It's like not new story full stop, but maybe you learn a new sliver, right, of what ultimately contributed to the sphere of this person's life. I'll say, I enjoyed watching Tales of the Empire. Like, I thought it was good. I thought it was well-made and good. When I watched the trailer for Tales of the Empire, I was...

You know, you get to see, I mean, it's just, it's almost unfair to be able to put Thrawn and the Grand Inquisitor and Rick Revis. Vader in a non-speaking role. Yeah, Vader, boot, merging into the screen, the breath in our earbuds, like perfect. And then of course, when you get into the flow of the six episodes, those are perfect.

and moments and the bulk of our time is with Morgan and Barris who are like characters that we just simply, I think you're right, it's irrefutable, do not care about as deeply as we care about Ahsoka and Dooku. So, you know, when I watched Tales of the Jedi for the first time, I just had no idea what to expect out of that

And some of it I loved right away and some of it I was like, okay, all right. It was not until I watched it a second time that I really loved it. But then I really loved it. And I have found myself actually revisiting those vignettes. Like watching Ahsoka and Anakin train is something that I return to a lot, that little vignette. So I...

On the one hand, I am glad that they're trying to do different things. How many times have we said some version of we don't want everything to be about the Skywalkers? Well, at a certain point, if you keep spending time with whatever the next group of characters is, they become that, right? So there's something interesting to me about Morgan and Barriss as people who have...

played a central role in core stretches of the story who we just don't know a lot about. And in Morgan's sense, that's more like how did she and Thrawn come together or what is the exact Nightsister history? Like even just watching the face tats melt away because the Nightsisters had been decimated by Grievous and his troops was like a fascinating thing to see.

For Barriss, obviously, the question of... You know, Barriss' role in Clone Wars Season 5, the thing that Barriss does, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Barriss is connected to, is tied to, something that we would both say is, like, one of our 10 favorite Star Wars storylines, like, ever, in moments ever, which is Ahsoka leaving the Jedi Order, leaving Anakin. Yeah. And so, of course, like, we've wanted to know what happened next for Barriss. I...

I preferred the Barris episodes to the Morgan episodes. I did too. I thought that they were overall stronger. And I think that it's probably somewhat because of what happened inside of each of those episodes, but more so because of this thing that we're talking about right now, which is we just, it was all unknown. Like the question of what happened to Barris after the arrest, after the big speech, um,

to everyone, right? Anakin, Ahsoka, the Jedi Council, Palpy, about how the Jedi Order had gone astray. Like, what happened to that person after that? It's interesting to find out. One of the limitations of a vignette-driven, shorts-driven series is that you're moving quite quickly through sweeping radical shifts in your personal worldview and moral philosophy.

So there was a lot of that in the Barriss storylines, both for Barriss and for Lynn, for fourth sister. But it felt really new. I think the question of how Thrawn and Morgan came into each other's lives and learning about the Morgan connection to the...

you know, one of the fabled things in Thrawn's arc. Like, the TIE Defender program is really interesting to me, but just didn't feel kind of as new as what we learned about Barriss. So, I think we're in, you know, similar places, it sounds like, overall. I preferred Jedi to Empire, though I enjoyed Empire. And I preferred the Barriss episodes to Morgans, though I did...

I did enjoy all of it, ultimately. I'm with you. Yeah. Morgan just wants to watch the world burn to the extent that she just- Quite literally. Has the flamethrowers at hand. Just punishing the trees. Yeah. But that's maybe a little- Tough to see how all of our friends from Corvus came to find themselves in those particular predicaments, Ruff. Yeah.

Always. Always a good one.

Always a delight. But there's a good contrast, I think, watching the two back to back because Morgan does proceed down that path pretty much without deviating. You know, this path is set early on. I mean, even the episode names followed the most rhythmic, lyrical, predictable cadence in Star Wars. The path of fear, the path of anger, the path of hate. Like, we know what Morgan's story is. Once you start down those dark paths. And it's about filling in some of the dots. Yeah, the spaces. Right.

Yeah. So whereas with Barriss, well, she starts to head down that dark path, but it doesn't dominate her destiny forever. She manages to extricate herself. But there's some uncertainty. Like you're wondering, wow, is Barriss going full Inquisitor, full dark side here? That would be interesting. Ultimately, that doesn't happen. But there's at least the chance and someone who like turns away from that fate in a way that Morgan didn't.

And as you said, because there are all these time jumps and we have a limited amount of time with these characters, some of the decisions and the changes of heart

both good and evil are abrupt because we're not seeing everything that leads up to them and follows them. So it's just like we're seeing these isolated moments where actually, okay, I'm going to become an inquisitor. Actually, maybe not. Let's flip-flop on that and I'll go back to being a Jedi all of a sudden. And it seems very quick because we just don't have a lot of time to watch the development and the inner struggles and the wrestling with these moral decisions, right? So I think that is kind of a casualty of the format here.

So do you prefer the approach of centering these vignettes on the more, the figures of a higher stature, the Ahsokas and the Dooku's, like whatever season three is? Maybe it'll be another season of Tales of the Jedi. Maybe it'll be another season of Tales of the Empire. We're going to talk about some of the other characters that we, I mean, we can do that right now, actually, that we'd like to see given this treatment. Like part of what I was thinking of is maybe every season has a new rapper. Like, are we going to get Tales of the Rebellion? Are we going to get Tales of the Bounty Hunter? Right?

Are we going to get tales of the droids? You know, like does each does each rapper give us a way into a new character focus? But kind of regardless whether we're going back to Jedi or Empire or pursuing a new a new rubric there. Do you want the focus to be on a character like Ahsoka or do you like the idea of continuing to experiment with people who have a different level of prominence in the story?

I think if you're going to focus on one character for half the season, it should be a prominent character we have some attachment to. Maybe it's Obi-Wan's origin story or something, right? Like we've heard little bits about his family and maybe we could actually see little kid Obi-Wan. How wonderful would that be, right? So take some major character. And then the third vignette is just him and Shaquille fucking. That would be... Wow. Sign me up! Star Wars contains adult content. That would be...

Quite a turn for the franchise, but you're just watching the first vignette. You're watching the second vignette. You get to part three and they're like, you need to change your parental settings before you're allowed to watch this episode. I'm in. Or they could go in the completely opposite direction. And just I like that. It was just like, hey, whatever happened to Yaddle? Let's show people what happened to Yaddle. Right. Which was like a character, you know, we didn't have like a deep emotional attachment to, but there was a lot of curiosity about Yaddle.

And so we got to resolve that story and in a pretty touching way in that case. But I think that would be nice because so many times like the loose ends are tied up

in some place where most Star Wars fans aren't going to see them. You know, they're in a book, they're in a comic, they're in a Wikipedia footnote, right? Which you can like cite, you know, like Ventress, for instance, and her death or so we thought. Many Star Wars fans, even many Star Wars fans who watched Clone Wars are like, what happened to Ventress? Oh, she died in a book I never read? Okay. Right. Yeah. And so to have this space on the screen on Disney+, where you can say, here's what happened to that character.

That'd be cool, but I'd like to jump around in that case and just give us the full sweep and scope of settings and characters and locations and time periods, frankly, because again, I think

Many Star Wars fans feel some amount of fatigue when it comes to, all right, can we escape this box? And hopefully we will with the Acolyte and the Dawn of the Jedi and the Rey movie and everything that's coming down the road, right? But we've spent a lot of time in a short amount of time in the Star Wars timeline. So I would not mind jumping around a bit in that direction too. Well, obviously it's too soon for us to say which characters from the Acolyte or...

Or, I mean, there are certainly High Republic characters we could mention, but... Or a future Rey movie we want to see given the stream. In terms of characters we've spent a lot of time with on the screen so far, or some time with on the screen so far, you know, I would love to get a Gideon treatment in this way. That would be really fun. Because he strikes me as a character who would benefit... We don't need...

like a three-season Gideon show. Yeah. But we do have these lingering, like, thinking face emoji questions where it would be nice to fill in some of those blanks, actually, in these little bursts across Gideon's story. Like, we could have something back in the Night of the Thousand-Tier Mandalore timeline. Like, we could move through some of the stretches of Gideon's life. And obviously, there would be opportunities for some of these, like, little, you know, classic moments

vintage Star Wars cameos inside of that without necessarily like disrupting or over committing to anything else. I would similarly be inclined for more time with who Yang in this kind of treatment. That would be wonderful. Like just, I mean,

every minute that we've gotten has been for perfection. So if David Tennant is up for it, like why the fuck not? Anyone else who we already, again, you know, with the like, maybe we'll find someone in the accolade who we think would really benefit from this treatment. Anyone else who's already a big part of your life who you'd like to see get the

The Tales look? I've always been a big Pelion person. And now that he's playing a more prominent role, I mean, going back to the Thawne. We got some Pelion action right here. Wonderful. We did the Thawne trilogy, but I'd like to catch up with his backstory a bit. You know, give us Pelion at the Battle of Endor. Just a little look at him as a Republic officer, as an Imperial officer, and catch us up on what he's been up to in the current canon.

That'd be a fun one. Or, gosh, I don't know, maybe some Rogue One type character, like Chirrut, for instance, would be a good person to... That's a great one. Yeah. Yes. Where did he come from? How did he go down that path? His training. I love that one. That would be a fun one. Damn. That's a great one. This is why you're you. No notes. Yeah.

You know my favorite, my personal Masamita, who I will one day write a book about. Hold out. Hold out for the trilogy. The full movie treatment. Yeah. The Masamita biopic. That's mine. Oh, my God. Of the six shorts that we got in Tales of the Empire, did you have a favorite?

Well, like you, I really enjoyed the Thrawn appearance and the meeting between Thrawn and Morgan. So even though I preferred the Barriss arc in general, that episode may have been. Yeah. It's like I did prefer the Barriss arc, but the Thrawn episode was the best. And anytime, I'm sorry, but anytime we get animated Thrawn, I'm just like, I feel so alive right now.

I feel so alive. Thrawn is making a speech about incompetence, and I feel so alive. The Empire is a magnificent construct. However, it's not without its vulnerabilities. While many of my colleagues think on a grand scale, they often overlook where problems begin, and they always start small. And then Morgan says, you speak of the growing rebellion. Thrawn says, a sickness which kills both common man and king. Yeah.

We'll need minds like yours if we are to eradicate it. This is perfection. Perfection. Love it. So that was the second episode of the season. I also, I like this, I guess my set, my runner up for like favorite short would be the sixth one, which was the final Barris one. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that was another one, again, where the pivot felt fast for Lin, for Fourth Sister. Just all of a sudden. That was... Like, you are the hardest core of the Inquisitors up to that point. And then you get lost in a cave for a few minutes and you suddenly see the light. Like, that was abrupt, right? That's kind of what I was... Yeah. The Fourth Sister part did not really work for me, but on the Barriss front, it's like the idea that the...

the decision that Barriss made in the Clone Wars and the reasons that she made those decisions. And then the, like, even in the Inquisitor initiation episode, does, okay, does Barriss force choke? Yeah.

someone that she's clearly known for a long time in order to survive this death pit. She does. Yes, Ben, she does. Does she put on that helmet and say long live the empire as Vader sits on his throne? She does. But do we also see just, you know, a couple of glimpses of trepidation, even just like we don't have to do this. We don't have to play their game. And that was

part of the Jedi Order rebuke too. It's like, what does it mean more broadly to opt into any institution that behaves in some sort of sweeping way and that deigns to make decisions like that for all of society or the galactic, the galaxy at scale? Little kernels like that. The fourth sister turn, there was, as far as I could tell, nothing wrong

to prepare us for that. And even, honestly, I'm saying that the sixth episode was my favorite, but now I'm really nitpicking a lot because, like, in addition to that, even the fourth sister's arrival at Barriss' ice hut, it was more important to pursue the Force-sensitive child than to face Barriss, who had escaped the Inquisitors and pushed fourth sister, never trust a fallen Star Wars, but over a cliff.

I've been searching for you for years. Now, let me just go massacre this baby. I'll be right back. Hang tight. Granted, I guess the baby was going to get away. Not that your sister necessarily knew that. But yeah, I mean, the turn from like, man, cannot wait to kill this baby. And then you, too. You know what? Maybe I've been wrong all along. I've suddenly seen the error of my ways. Yeah, that was quick. Well, you know, a force-attuned cave. Yeah.

Yes, that will change your mindset quickly sometimes. You have the wrong vision. You hear the wrong voice echoing in your head. But we are left with kind of the same question we had about Barriss coming into this, which was, where's Barriss? What happened to Barriss? We're still there, right? Clearly a grievous injury, so to speak. Not general, but not a mortal one, seemingly. So she's still in play, apparently.

The only thing less fatal than falling off of a cliff or into an abyss in Star Wars is a lightsaber thrust. Getting stabbed is eminently survivable. You're fine. You're good. A lot of ice there to pack into the wound. Right. It's fine. The end note for Barriss was intriguing to me. Even just seeing Barriss, it didn't look like Fourth Sister at age today, but Barriss has this...

carrying these lines of experience and age and regret, certainly, and newfound wisdom on her face. So, like, what she will do with that moving forward, it was obviously really cool to see that she had devoted this stretch of her life to helping, helping other people find their way

Even just hearing Barriss when talking about, I mean, obviously, Path was a big part of the titling structure for the Morgan episodes, as we noted, but talking to Lynn about, like, you know, what the path in the cave will be and whether she will be able to find the path and follow the path, like this idea of the path. And then it makes us think, I think, probably coming off of Obi-Wan, the path.

literally like this network, right? And interesting to think of maybe what Barris' connections to that would be. Like, in general, I thought the Tales vignettes did a good job of giving us these little either tantalizing expectations of maybe a tie between characters. Like, you know, the coordinates banner in the ship. Well, like...

To where and to whom? And then in the Morgan episodes, of course. Yeah, in the Morgan episodes, like the com link, we hear Bo-Katan's voice. So all of the different ways that this like larger web of the fight and how these characters either are rebelling against it, challenging it, or finding their way inside of it again was cool inside of these episodes. You know what else we got a lot of in these episodes, Ben, that you love? I know you're a scholar of.

One person's holding a lightsaber and one person isn't and they're fighting. Barriss was on both sides of that. Unarmed evasion of lightsabers. We've got a lot. That's another like, other than maybe the Nightsisters and the Grand Inquisitors, the thing we've seen most often in Star Wars recently. You love this. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Fancy footwork. I would also, now that you mentioned the path, maybe we get a Quinlan Vos path. That would be fun. Origin story tale. That would be great. That would be fun. Yeah. I would love that. I would love to get some more Quinlan in our stories. Did you have a favorite cameo? Is it Thrawn? Do we even need to ask? Was it Grievous? It's got to be. It was great to see Grievous just laying waste to everyone. Favorite non-Thrawn cameo. Let's ask it that way because it's obviously. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

Vader didn't do much here. I did enjoy seeing him get to take the throne. Usually he's the one kneeling in front of Palpy's throne. Here, he gets to play king for a day. He's the boss of the Inquisitors. So that was a nice little role reversal. Can't be comfortable to sit in that suit, I would think. It seems like it might be better to stand if you're more machine than man. I don't think Vader's life is really...

one of comfort no that's true he can channel the discomfort into rage and power it will only make him stronger yeah it was it was a display of dominance it was uh it was a power sit more than anything else but yeah he didn't uh have a whole lot to say on screen so let's go with grievous if not thrown it's always it's always a treat to see grievous we're all in those sabers wonderful stuff did you have a favorite location

Some of the locations were undisclosed and unidentified as far as we could tell, right? So there's the question of where were we actually here? I mean, getting to be on Dathomir and see the Nightsisters, even if it was not under the best of circumstances for them. Always nice to pay a visit to the sisters. Yeah.

It is always nice to be anywhere near the nine sisters and Dathomir. It was cool to see like fortress inquisitorious and construct under construction. Yeah. That was fun. Yeah. Some spiky edges. Hope everyone's being careful there. Uh, but yeah, I think that, that, that Paris ice layer at the end and the like force attuned. Yeah. Cave path. That was, uh, that was really cool. I liked that a lot.

Anything else? Biggest questions coming out of the season? I mean, we already said, what will Barris do next? Are there other questions on your list? Things that are top of mind here? Yeah, I don't have a whole lot of questions about Morgan anymore. I think that case is closed, more or less, in my mind.

But, yeah. Do you have any questions about how many people Thrawn was really candid with about the TIE Defender program and Morgan's particular bearing on that? Yeah. Yeah, I guess I'm interested in seeing just what this sets up, right? That's always the inevitable question when it comes to any of these interconnected universes. So, yeah.

As you said, we're getting more Nightsisters here. Obviously, we've had a lot lately and we're going to get plenty more in Ahsoka season two, presumably, if not also the Filoni movie. So just more backstory here to help us understand the context and where they're coming from. So that's valuable, useful, doesn't necessarily leave me with a lot of questions that I didn't have already. So aside from Barriss, I don't know, anything that this prompted in your mind?

Just when are we going to see Paris next? That was really the thing. You know, I guess I have some merch-centric questions about all the new weaponry we saw across both tails. But we didn't talk about this in Bad Batch, but the CX Troopers, that was just so wonderful. I mean, with love and respect to Crosshair's severed hand, you know, tough to see. Yeah.

When can I buy that particular sword? And, you know, we talked about how no batchers died on top of the ones who had already or one who had already. But the ship destruction, that's always a meaningful loss in Star Wars, right? Because the ship, especially for the batch, that's their base of operations. That's, you know, where Omega has her little cubby and her deck.

And yes. So, you know what we didn't mention, but seeing Gunky wobble out of that ship at the not stinger stinger, the wave of relief I felt. No crosshair, no record, but at least Gunky's okay. At least we got Gunky. Honestly, I felt so relieved. Yeah.

To know that Ganki was okay. Going back to Mandalorian, like, you know, when Din's ship is blown up, like, okay, you know, that's a major loss. Of course. Not only from a merch perspective, but also because that's your... The merch lives on. Home away from home. That's the closest thing you have to a home for your found family in Star Wars, the ship. So that's... It's almost a member of the family. Absolutely. Steve, let's hear our final clip today and then we'll hit our final topic. You do not know the path. And if you go in...

You will not come out. Fear is my ally, not yours. You choose your allies poorly. All right, Ben, to conclude today, let's talk just about the larger Star Wars animated world for a second here, a hot second, just a moment.

You do not know the path. Well, we don't ever really know the path when it comes to the future of Star Wars stories on the screen. We never know what's coming on the movie front. We tend to, in recent years, have more clarity about television. But with the new Tales season, with Bad Batch concluding, a lot of the animated stories that we've been spending our time inside of, we have just now watched. So...

Whether it's a lesson from either of these properties or something broader, where are you right now as a lover and enthusiast on the Star Wars animation front in terms of what you want to see moving forward? Do you want to be spending more time in these connected worlds? Do you want to see something new entirely? What about what worked for you inside of these stories do you want to see ported over into our future animated world?

Yes. This is an inflection point, a time of transition. We have questions about the direction. Those questions may be answered soon, but for now, at least.

We're wondering about the direction of the Star Wars universe, just I think in part because there has been such a melding of animation and live action now that you are kind of wondering, well, what is the role of Star Wars animation now? Right. Is it just the farm team for live action? Is this where we debut prospects who can one day show up on screen in a series or a movie? Or is it more than that? And I hope that it's more than that because it certainly has been more than that in the past when there was no live action. Yeah.

animation was what we had. Animation was Star Wars for years at a time, right? And there was never really an expectation of, oh, we're introducing Ahsoka because one day Ahsoka, I mean, granted, okay, she was introduced in a movie, to be clear, but in an animated movie, you know, it wasn't like one day there's going to be a streaming service and

There will be a live action show about Ahsoka and also there will be an interconnected universe and a movie, right? It was just Clone Wars was not a means to an end. It was the end in itself. It was our story.

supply of on-screen scripted Star Wars for years, right? And so it meant so much to people who grew up during that era and that was like our sole active link to this franchise, to this universe. And Rebels, of course, coming after and sort of spanning the transition from Lucas to Disney, like at these times of transition and uncertainty about movies and trilogies, animation has always been there to kind of carry the torch, right? And so it meant so much to people

And so I wonder what form that will take now. I hope that there's something in the chamber and I expect that there is, that we won't go long without some sort of news about the next animated act. Again, it's entirely possible that by the time people are listening to this very podcast, that news will be known. Yes. And then the question is like, okay, are we going to continue to build on this Filoni foundation here? Right.

He has his hands full, obviously, with Ahsoka, with the movie, with Tales. And he's not scripting and directing all of these series, obviously. He's creating, co-creating some of them and then kind of delegating in a supervisory role, but not as the supervising director.

There's part of me that feels like a fresh start that as much as the Filoni-verse has meant to me for all of these years, as much as I care about these characters and these storylines, that if that were the end, which clearly it isn't because of the way that Bad Batch ended, but if that were kind of like...

the last installment of the Clone Wars and like the Filoni animation style, you know, which has grown on me and which has improved dramatically from the beginning. But I would not be averse to just switching it up visually too. I mean, there's just so much potential in the animated medium as we've seen in things like Visions that what if we had a completely different look for Star Wars animation, you know? So we've

We've just spent so much time, what, 15 years basically at this point. You know, Clone Wars, Rebels, Tales, Bad Batch, on and on. Resistance was different, I guess, not in a great way really. But I would kind of be interested in a clean break and just let's let someone else take the reins and tell a totally different story, maybe in a different timeline. Is it High Republic era? You know, just something that there's not a lot of connective tissue around.

I don't necessarily expect that to be the move, right? I would not be surprised if we do get kind of a blending of the eras, a crossing of the streams here because we had this flash forward with Omega. There's potential, obviously, for not just for her to show up in live action. But for her to carry her own animated series in the future. Which would kind of like be in the time period where you could get

Rebels characters. You could get Clone Wars characters. You know, it could all kind of come together in this crossover, Filoni animated universe. But then how does that

march in lockstep with the live action universe. Like if you have Ahsoka animated in that time period of like in the Mandoverse timeline and also live action Ahsoka. So it starts to get kind of complicated, just like directing traffic. But there is a lot of potential there for the different eras of Filoni shows like the

rebellion era, the old Republic era, the between times era of bad batch for all of that to maybe kind of cross over and come to a head in some sort of culmination. Do you think we should have an animated series that are, it's just a series of mini episodes of, of Obi-Wan confronting the fact that Vader's still out there. Yeah.

Why did I not kill him when I had the chance multiple times? Today, as I slice my rank fish meat under the beating sun, so I will once again confront this choice that I made. Yeah, no, I'm broadly with you. I think it's a question of like that, that framing of is animation just the farm system now for live action?

I have a desire, on the one hand, as a lover of the animated universe, to see these characters keep making their way into the live action. It was just such a thrill. It was such a thrill to see Ahsoka arrive in season two of The Mandalorian. One of the great thrills of my life as a Star Wars fan. I was overjoyed to see Sabine and Ezra and Hera and Chop and Zeb come to the live action, etc.,

But I don't want it to only be that. I think that the prospect of that continuing to happen is exciting, but part of what made that feel like a necessary thing, part of what made it feel strange at a certain point that those characters wouldn't be in the live action, is that they had become indelible to us. They had become inextricable from what it meant to care about Star Wars for us, having spent so many years

hours and hours and hours watching their stories. And so you have to do that first. If the origin point is let's,

sketch out a figure who's going to make their way into a different uh a different version of the screen at a future point like it'll just never be as good as if the goal is to tell us a good story in the first place right you can't fast forward that investment in those characters right like if you try to speed up the animation to live action pipeline and just okay let's introduce this animated character and then they'll show up next year in this live action project i feel like you're about to make like a jackson holiday joke that i don't want you to

No, I would never. Okay. But, you know, maybe not ready for the show, you know? But will be. Yes. Yes, he will be. Long-term expectations remain undiminished, you know, just some growing pains, right? But...

I think the fact that we had spent several years with those characters in their own show, that's what made it meaningful. And we've made, you know, three seasons with Omega, right? Like there's a level of investment there that I think you have to have. So you can't cut corners and just be like, here's a character. One full season with Batcher. So when we get the Batcher live action debut, we'll fucking earned it. Yeah.

Coming to a streaming service near you, like you have to wait and sort of, you know, build that foundation for us to care as deeply as we did about those characters. And just from like a production standpoint, yeah.

Animation is cheaper. It is easier to make in terms of the production and the timeline. And so if you want to have sort of a steady stream of Star Wars, which Disney does, you know, even though it's been somewhat rolled back, it's still a ridiculous degree amount of Star Wars compared to some earlier eras. So you have to have those animated shows ready to go in the in-between times, you know, because even if you have a few live action releases per year, you

it helps to have, okay, we can stick Bad Batch in there. We can stick a Tales in there. We can kind of keep people engaged with this franchise by making something that won't take years to write and shoot and film and produce, right? So that's why I think we will continue to have animation play a prominent part in Star Wars. I just hope that it's not solely in service of the live action universe. Agreed. We are of one mind. All right.

We did it. We talked about the Bad Batch finale. We talked about Tales of the Empire. We talked about...

the future of Star Wars animation in a way that may have no shelf life because it's possible by this time the pod is published they will have announced something we'll find out on May the 4th tomorrow together but that is a wrap on today's podcast may the 4th be with you as well Ben please redistribute all funds to Project Stardust the only thing better than talking about Bad Batch with you would be talking baseball so maybe sometime soon we'll get to do that too stay tuned

If you'd like to talk about Gunnar Henderson, you know where to find me. I mean, for public consumption, not a private Facebook conversation. Thank you, not only to Gunnar Henderson, but to our Jedi Masters, Steve Allman, for producing this episode. Arjun Ramgopal for his additional production work on this episode, and Jomi Adeneron for his work on the social for this episode.

Remember to head back into the ringer verse next week. Three pods coming your way. Monday, button mash 2004 games draft Wednesday, midnight boys, X-Men 97. And then another midnight boys episode on Friday on kingdom of the planet of the apes. We will be back twice on house of ours. Well,

Something coming on the baseball fandom crossover front on Tuesday and then a vampires tropes course on Friday. Send us your emails to hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com if you have thoughts on either. Until then, remember, if you ever need us, we'll be there.