Serial Consumer celebrates and interrogates Evan’s relationship to franchised media and his addiction to purchasing its licensed products.

None of my feelings about the third season of The Bad Batch have changed in the last few weeks: it’s still a weirdly aimless show that features a cast of characters who never meaningfully grow or change, floating between much more interesting guest stars who are living in shows I would rather be watching.

These last two episodes are particularly guilty of that format, though.

On paper, The Bad Batch follows the structure I’m always begging for from serialized adventure storytelling — done-in-one adventures that build to a larger story, with lots of flexibility from episode to episode. The second season was probably the best the show has ever been. We had horror episodes, military episodes, lighthearted adventures and big blockbuster spectacles. The third season has been more muted in this regard, in part due to the fact that they needed four episodes to tell Omega and Crosshair’s return to the fold. Still, it’s following the week-to-week format I usually like.

What’s wrong with it? I think the issue just comes back to the fact that none of the main characters have any real relationships or personalities to grow every 20 minutes. It feels like Hunter and Wrecker have been truly sidelined this season. Even when they’re the headliners for an episode like Bad Territory, they don’t seem to learn anything and just get led around by Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen), who treats them like dopes.

I don’t see how a show exists for this long without ever developing the main characters in an interesting way. I should really stop watching it, but we’re so close to the end …

Anyway, this week feels like the pinnacle of how badly written this show happens to be, not only on a character level but also as a piece of the larger Star Wars universe, which is one of the great multilayered, cross-format fictional canons in the history of popular fiction.

To briefly catch you up: Now that the Batch has bumbled around and ruined Commander Rex’s Clone rescue operation, it’s time for them to sit around and consider taking an active role in protecting Omega from the Empire. They’re ostensibly trying to learn why the Empire wants her and what an “M-Count” is. Never mind that every single character tells them it’s not important to know why the Empire wants her when they could be proactively protecting her rather than sitting around where they’re easy to find.

In Bad Territory, Hunter and Wrecker seek out Shand to ask her why the Empire is hiring bounty hunters to track down targets with high M-Counts. She enlists them on a bounty and then leaves without giving them any information, which elicits a shrug from the two worthless Clones. In The Harbinger, they have returned home and resumed sitting around, waiting to see if Shand actually contacts them with new information. Lo and behold, Asajj Ventress appears, having easily located them. She’s Shand’s contact, and her goal is to assess whether Omega has any aptitude with the Force.

Here’s the thing: The appearance of Ventress was a major selling point for this season. The reason for that is because her canonical status depends on your level of engagement with the broader Star Wars Universe. If you’re a fan of The Clone Wars, you last saw her alive in that show, albeit betrayed and cast down by her former master, Count Dooku. If you went further and read the 2016 book Dark Disciple (adapted from unproduced episodes of The Clone Wars), you witnessed Ventress’s post-Sith life as a conflicted bounty hunter who ultimately turns to the light to rescue her lover, Jedi Master Quinlan Vos, during their failed scheme to assassinate Dooku.

What I’m saying here is that regardless of your last experience with Ventress, her appearance here, with little explanation, makes little sense. And the show’s writers have repeatedly said in interviews that all our questions will be answered …. in another, as-yet-unannounced story.

I’m a fan of the previous show and the book, and I have no issues Ventress’s return. (I’m pretty disappointed her yellow-bladed lightsaber has her old Sith hilts rather than the hilt designed for the show, however, because I own a replica of the latter.) I do have an issue with the way they used her reappearance here as a major marketing element of this blighted season of television despite the fact she’s clearly just showing up for this episode as a way for them to deliver exposition on Omega’s Force aptitude that they’ve teased audiences with for three years.

Clearly there’s a much more interesting story about Ventress to be told during the early Empire. Maybe she’s one of the survivors of Order 66 who helped start the Path, which we saw during the Obi-Wan Kenobi series? That show hinted at Quinlan Vos playing a role in the organization. As a fan of Dark Disciple, I’d really love to see the two reunite with purpose. (Hell, I still wish they’d do an extra season of The Clone Wars to make that story canon, among other plotlines we’ve heard.)

Given how bad The Bad Batch has been … I hate to say it, but I don’t have high hopes they’d ever actually do something that interesting again with their animated division. I’d love to be wrong.

Ventress also fills the thankless role of being the latest guest star to plead with the Batch to do something, anything. Given their track record, though, I’m betting next week’s two-parter will probably feature them sitting around, doing nothing and then running with fear when the peaceful island they call home is decimated by Imperial bombardment.

Consumer Report

A few weeks ago, I wrote that I was winding down my collecting, and Nick said I was a liar. I think I did a good job being clear that I was still grabbing stuff at sale prices! And I did: I finally got an Endor Rebel Commando for a decent price. I’m hoping to find another at an even cheaper price in the next few years (the Hoth Rebel Trooper, which released in 2020, is now consistently going for somewhere in the range of $15). I also found the newest version of the Mandalorian, circa his appearance in The Book of Boba Fett. For that one, I did pay retail price because I was with my son at Target and we both found toys we wanted. Sue me, Rogers.

What I’d Buy

I’d love a bounty hunter Ventress figure but only because she would represent Dark Disciple on my shelf. The only problem is, once again, the lightsaber: I would prefer the figure to wield the version I own, and not just the yellow-bladed version of her curved assassin hilts. But I guess I’d make do. I suppose I’d shelve her with my Bad Batch figures because there’s more space on that shelf than my Clone Wars era. If they release a Quinlan Vos, however, I’d put them together wherever it makes the most sense.