Spoilers for The Bad Batch season 3 ahead!
With Crosshair finally reuniting with The Bad Batch this week, it's really left me thinking a lot about some parallels between him and one of my favorite Star Wars characters, Tam Ryvora. I loved Tam in Resistance, and I really loved the character journey she went on throughout the series. It's been a thought in my mind since early in season 2 of The Bad Batch, but as we go through Crosshair's (also very fascinating) arc, it feels like familiar ground in the best kind of way.
If we start all the way back in season 1 of both of their respective shows, the seeds of leaving their families are both planted in very similar ways. Yes, Tam is missing the whole "brain chip" thing, but the emotional component of both characters' choices are the same. Tam feels like she's been replaced as Kaz moves in and takes up a lot of Yeager's time, and even gets to fly the Fireball when she doesn't (she doesn't know it's because of Kaz's cover as a spy and that Yeager still cares for her deeply, but it's still how she feels). This leads her to feeling inadequate about her role in the team, and like she's unloved and underappreciated.
It's very similar to how Crosshair feels early in season 1 of The Bad Batch. Yes, there is a brain chip that contributes to a lot of that tension following Order 66, but Crosshair is also feeling like his brothers don't love or value him as much anymore. He doesn't ever seem to necessarily feel replaced by one particular person, but it certainly doesn't help that the rest of the Batch gets a lot more smitten with Omega than he does in the beginning. There is also the fact that years of training (and more brain chip) and time in the Republic that gives Crosshair a lot of his desire to stay within the Empire- he wants to continue feeling like being part of something bigger than himself, and to feel important. So when the time comes for him to make his choice- flee with his family or stay with the Empire, he makes the choice to stay.
Tam doesn't have that same military background, but her family had a history that made her more sympathetic to the Empire and First Order, as they worked on ships for them and the fall of the Empire really hurt the family business. She grew up hearing about a better version of the Empire than what it actually was. So when she hears about a propagandized version of the First Order, she's already more open to it because of that. Coupled with Agent Tierny also preying on her feelings of feeling unappreciated and her own desire to feel more important, it's easy for her to get swept up into the First Order. Similar yet also opposite to Crosshair, a time comes where her options are to leave with Tierny, or stay with her family- she makes the choice to leave.
At first it's exciting for them, but when the reality sets in of the Empire for Crosshair and the First Order for Tam, it's certainly sobering. It's almost eery how similar a lot of the framing of the episodes focused on both characters in both series' second seasons are. For both Crosshair and Tam, everything is cold and sterile, lacking the warmth and familiarity their homes (The Maurader and The Colossus). They may make some friends and allies there, but they're either fleeting or surface level only. Everything is controlled and routine, their freedoms are limited and each day is the same. And despite the fact that they felt like being a part of something like this would fix the alienation they were feeling in their families, the loneliness and feelings of unimportance only intensify as they are more truly alone than ever.
It's here where they begin to learn from their mistakes. They realize not only how little the Empire/First Order has done to help them with the things that they signed up for in the first place, but how it's not what they thought it was at all. Crosshair is certainly a little more okay with the violence of it all at first than Tam was, but both have their own morals clashing with what they're being forced to do or witness. The Empire/First Order is not what they thought it was, yet they're in so deep it feels impossible to get out.
This is where their stories really differ. Tam makes the bold choice to reach out to her family, even though she's scared they won't forgive her. But Kaz and Yeager always held out hope for Tam, and help her to defect. She's able to help them with their fight against the First Order in return to begin to make up for her mistakes, and her warm welcome home is a reminder that her family will never give up on her, and in the wise words of Maarva Andor- they "love [her] more than anything [she] could ever do wrong."
Crosshair, on the other hand, doesn't do quite the same thing. He's lost all hope. For the first time, he begins to make his own choices to do what he thinks is right, like trying to save Mayday and betraying the Empire. He reaches out to the Batch to warn them of a danger, but not to try and rescue him. But he resigns himself to what he believes to be his fate. He tells Omega early in this season- he thinks he deserves this. He doesn't believe his family could forgive him, because he can't forgive himself.
But his and Tam's stories still aren't so different. Just like in Tam's case, family doesn't give up on you. Omega insists, despite all of his protests, that she won't leave without him, and they escape together. We see even in the end of last season that Tech still had some hope for Crosshair, because he trusted his message as a warning, even though Hunter was skeptical. Tensions are high, yes, and I know we're all on the edge of our seats to see what comes of his reunion with Hunter and Wrecker, and hopefully Echo as well.
I don't know what fate (a.k.a. Jennifer Corbett) has in store Crosshair or any of these characters as The Bad Batch comes to an end in the coming weeks. I know that Crosshair is not Tam, and I know that The Bad Batch is not Resistance. But I also know that Star Wars is built on common themes and rhyming stories across eras of storytelling.
Could the warm reunions, forgiveness from family and regaining trust in oneself that we see in Tam Ryvora's story be a good sign for Crosshair's future? I have no idea. But I definitely hope so, and if I've learned anything from Star Wars it's that hope is always worth having.
