A Reflection on The Bad Batch

It has now been a year since The Bad Batch ended, I thought it was time to reflect on the show, its characters and its stories a year out.

When we first officially met the Bad Batch in The Clone Wars, I'll admit they didn't particularly excite me. I didn't dislike them (though I know some did), but this first impression of them made me feel like they were cool, but a bit one-note as characters. I really enjoyed their arc in The Clone Wars season 7, but mostly because of other characters like Rex, Echo and Anakin, not necessarily the Batch themselves. So when it was announced that they would be getting their own show, I was as excited as I normally am for more Star Wars (especially animated Star Wars), but had some reservations about how these characters would carry their own series.

I truly did not anticipate how invested I would be in these characters over the course of their show, and could not be happier to be so wrong. Characters that I initially misread as being a bit flat became so much more interesting when allowed to shine in their own series, and showed so much depth and growth over The Bad Batch's three seasons. I found myself falling in love so deeply with each member of the Batch, their new friends and old ones, and becoming incredibly invested in each thing that they did. The Bad Batch showed us some of the most thoughtful character work that we've seen in Star Wars, and never hesitated to make us think twice before thinking we know a character based on one look.

Outside of the show itself, where there is certainly a lot to love, The Bad Batch was also a show where every episode was one I watched with my dad. I can't say that about many of the other Disney+ shows- when the first season of The Mandalorian came out, I was already in college, and wasn't always home to watch them with him. But the airing schedule of The Bad Batch happened where every single episode I was home, and we used to get up at 4:30am to watch new episodes together before leaving for work in the morning.

Every episode except for one- the last one. I got a job in Los Angeles and moved. My flight was the morning of April 24th, and before leaving for the airport my dad and I woke up extra, extra early to watch "Flash Strike." Then I flew to Los Angeles, and on May 1st got together with some very dear friends to watch the finale. So when the epilogue played, and Omega was grown up and moving away from her home, and saying goodbye to Hunter it hit very, very hard. But it also made me so grateful for the show- to truly see myself and my life in the form of these characters I had grown to love over the course of three seasons. Nothing in Star Wars had hit so close to home in a very long time for me, and the pure luck of the timing means it might not happen again. To have these characters and stories resonate so deeply feels so fortunate. They had adventures big and small, met some of my favorite characters in Star Wars, endeared themselves to all of us and expanded what we thought we knew about the galaxy far more than I anticipated from this show.

I'd like to finish this off with a thank you to the all of the incredible, hard-working people who brought this show to life. Thank you to all of the designers, artists and animators who painstakingly crafted every beautiful detail of this show, from breathtaking landscapes to intricate facial expressions. Thank you to the many writers, directors and producers who brought their heads together to make this story and bring it to our screens. Thank you to the Kiners, for writing beautiful music that punctuated the range of joy, sadness, tension and excitement that made up the identity of this show. Thank you to the editors who made sure every second of the show flowed together and worked so well. Thank you to the sound designers who made every sound feel so authentic and helped bring the galaxy far, far away to our ears. Thank you to Dee Bradley Baker, Michelle Ang and the many other talents in the cast who breathed a life into each character and opened our hearts to these characters by portraying nearly every emotion a person could feel through powerful vocal performances.

And thank you to Jennifer Corbett for seeing the potential in these characters that so many dismissed and using your own experiences to create a story and characters that will resonate with so many of us for many more years. I hope we'll see your name in the credits on more Star Wars to come.