Last friday's episode of The Clone Wars marked the end of the Bad Batch story arc, and therefore the first story arc of the final season 7. While this was the story arc that I've been the least excited for (c'mon, we'll get 4 episodes of Ahsoka and then The Siege Of Mandalore, that just beats everything), I truly enjoyed the show's comeback-episodes. So here is my (full spoiler) review of the Bad Batch story arc.
The New Look
Almost 6 years had passed between the release of season 6 a.k.a. 'The Lost Missions' and the release of the first new episode 'The Unknown', which lead to a significant overhaul of the series' look. While I felt a little bit put off by the new look at the beginning, which felt like old TCW with a little bit of Resistance to me, I started to love it by the end of the first episode. With 4 episodes down, I have to say that I enjoy the new style very much, and especially knowing some of the details mentioned in Clone Wars: Download, the new new achievements are quite impressive. Yes, there were a few moments when the new style didn't really work for me, but in geenral, the show's optics truly got an upgrade.
Rating: 7.5/10
The Characters
The Bad Batch story arc introduced us to a bunch of new characters, especially Clone Force 99 a.k.a. The Bad Batch. These mutated clones with special abilities were introduced as arrogant yet effective troopers, who knew both that they are weirdos and the best. This lead to some trouble between the Bad Batch and Captain Rex, but the Bad Batch got a great arc of character developement, making the Clones truly likable by the end of episode 4. But also Echo's arc in the last episode, with the Bad Batch not trusting him in the beginning, but ending up accepting him as one of their own, was The Clone Wars at its best.
But the most important character developement scenes belonged to Anakin Skywalker for sure. His secret video chat with Padmé showed impressively well, what lead to Anakin's fall by the end of the Clone Wars. Even though he knew, that even his best friends Obi-Wan and Rex knew at least of his feelings for Padmé, he never trusted them to really open up, especially speaking with Obi-Wan openly might have prevented him from the dark side. But also his scene with Admiral Trench in the final episode of this arc showed, how much the war had changed Anakin, making him accept violence and anger as a justifiable way to victory.
Rating: 10/10
The Story
Since I had not watched the story reels before, the story was completely new to me. It may not have been the most important events in the Clone Wars in a military sense, still the story was entertaining. The discovery of Echo's signal at the end of the first episode was quite a surprise, and eve though the storyline after that did not have many unexpected twists, all in all it was a well written arc. Especially the last episode, which showed us some wider spread action, really delivered to the series' strengths. This aspect might not be the one to write the most about, and then episodes were ot the most thrilling of the series, but it was fine.
Rating: 7/10
Overall Opinion
In conclusion, the first story arc of The Clone Wars' final season was well done and I really liked it. The big strength of these episodes were (as often in The Clone Wars) its quieter character moments, which again showed the strength of Dave Filoni as a character-centred story teller. All of this leads to a good score for the Bad Batch story arc, while I am very excited to finally see Ahsoka back in action on friday!
Overall Score: 8/10
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