1x14 War-Mantle

[7.7/10] I hope the people who’ve groused about “filler” episodes are pleased with this one. Obviously some big stuff goes down here, from Hunter’s capture, to the implied assassination of Kaminoan Prime Minister Lama Su, to the formal changeover from Clone Troopers to Storm Troopers. If you wanted plot-relevant developments, “War Mantle” has you covered.

It also has Gregor! Fans of The Clone Wars have been wondering what exactly happened to him after his explosive appearance on that show. This episode doesn’t exactly answer the big questions his appearance in Rebels raised, but it does help fill in a few gaps. Namely, we’re told that Gregor was enlisted as an instructor for the Storm Troopers until he chose to desert and sent out a distress signal to Rex. That call for help, and Rex being otherwise occupied, makes for a good excuse for Clone Force 99 to get involved.

It’s also a great excuse to just let Gregor be Gregor. I really like the fact that after his bout of amnesia, surviving an explosion, and all the other punishment a standard clone takes, Gregor is a little off his rocker. It seems churlish to point it out at this point, but man, Dee Bradley Baker does an incredible job at giving a variety of characters who all have roughly the same voice very different temperaments and personalities. It’s a tour de force vocal performance, and you see that borne out in both the writing and acting for Gregor, who’s a little rougher around the edges and looser in his vibe than even the Bad Batch.

And yet, they’re all cut from the same cloth, one that is being discontinued. The Empire is canceling its contracts with the Kaminoans, resorting to a volunteer army, and scrapping what’s left of the cloning program so that no other galactic government can do what the Republic did. It’s momentous, but also emotional in its way. The thought of Nala Se trying to save her creations and being conscripted into Rampart’s efforts while politicians are disposed of carries an air of desperation. It’s hard to feel too sympathetic to the Kaminoans. We’ve seen them treat the clones like property before, but it’s still a sign of the Empire’s swift brutality.

But it also a sign that the clones increasingly don’t have a place in the Empire’s world. So much of this season has been about The Bad Batch finding their niche after the war ends, and the clone program as a whole shutting down makes that even harder to find. In the proud Clone Wars tradition, this episode provides a plausible explanation for a big point of worldbuilding, as Gregor explains how volunteer soldiers from across the galaxy allow the Empire to take a cheaper, “quantity over quality” approach now that the clones have served their purpose vis-a-vis the Jedi.

Aside from the creeping sense of our heroes as obsolete, and the worldbuilding going on, this episode is just nice to look at. It’s hard not to be in awe at how well a weekly television series is able to make a mountain vista covered with trees look on screen. The animators and designers outdo themselves on Daro, giving the setting a bucolic lived in feel, adding to the tragedy of the Empire setting up shop there. Likewise, the hallway fights and dog fighting rescue sequences are well staged and composed, making the skirmishes exciting and easier to follow. Whatever you think of the storytelling, the visuals of The Bad Batch have been top notch.

At the end of the day, though, my favorite part of this one is how it manages to put the focus on the theme of who the clone troopers will and won’t leave behind. As always, Omega urges her corades to try to help someone, even if it might set them back personally or create personal risks, because it’s the right thing to do. Echo, for the first time in the series, gets to do the same, persuading Hunter to make an attempt to rescue Gregor because he knows what it’s like to need rescuing after the events on Skeko Minor.

But for once, there’s a major cost to all of this. Our heroes do get Gregor out of his Imperial prison by the skin of their teeth, but they lose Hunter in the process. He can’t quite make the jump to the ship, tumbles down below, and gets remanded to the custody of none other than Crosshair. (Man, Hunter’s taken a lot of punishment here.) That turn in the story legitimately surprised me, and I like it. It’s a wake-up call for Omega (and Michelle Ang does a tremendous job of selling her angst here), that diving in to save people, even when it’s right, is not costless. And it gives the rest of The Bad Batch (plus Rex, maybe?) a major objective as the season winds down: rescue their friend, and maybe even his captor.

“War Mantle” has all of this going for it and more. (For example, I loved the comedy of Wrecker’s “So-and-so’s got a point” routine.) The show’s positioning itself well as it heads toward the season’s endgame, and I appreciate how this one visits some familiar faces and ideas, but does so to advance the Bad Batch’s story and themes.