Star Wars the Bad Batch Season 1 Episode 3, Replacements has finally released on disney+,
and with it we were given a deep look into how the Empire begun to transition away from
the Clone Troopers, moving into a hybrid of Clone and natural born squads, before they
are eventually phased out for good.
The episode was packed full of connections to the star wars films, books, comics and
games, including an absolutely massive tie in to Rogue one, so let's break them all down.
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So the story begins on board the Bad Batch’s ship, the Havoc Marauder, where Echo notes
that ever since escaping saleucami, several of their ship systems have been glitching
because of the ship guard system there…
Echo wants to begin repairing the ship, but tech tells him that figuring the true effectiveness
of their inhibitor chips has to take priority.
Moments after this, their conversation is quickly cut off, as their ship is pulled right
out of hyperspace, sending them hurling towards a nearby moon.
This understandably terrified Omega, as she straps in, and Wrecker doesn’t make the
situation any better…
He’s definitely not used to having a kid around.
Eventually, they do manage to safely touch down, but one of their capacitors has blown,
meaning they won’t be able to take off without replacing it…
Trying to be helpful to the group, Omega goes rummaging through their items and eventually
pulls out Crosshair’s weapon kit, which leads the group into a massive debate over
whether or not his actions were influenced by the chip, which we of course know thanks
to Fives and the Clone Conspiracy arc… that the chip is almost completely fault, but of
course there is still a little of Crosshair still in there.
Following this, we cut back to Kamino where the Empire are conducting more experiments
on crosshair.
Thankfully, we also discover that AZ survived his little encounter with the Clone Trooper
from not too long ago, and seems to have made a full recovery, possibly having his programmed
slightly changed to follow orders better.
The Clone’s blaster was set to stun, but with droids, you never know what can go wrong
with their circuits.
After completing a scan on Crosshair’s head, Vice Admiral Rampart, who was of course the
man we saw in the hologram on Saleucami enters the room, and is commended by Tarkin for his
rapid implementation of the chaincode system…
The chaincode were of course a major piece on the Mandalorian, and we even got a look
at Boba Fett’s, which canonized a lot of old backstory, including Jaster Mereel and
being a foundling.
Following this, Tarkin asks Rampart about the status of Project War Mantle, which is
actually one of the projects that was being stored in the imperial Vault on Scarif, and
one that Jyn Erso listed off while searching for the Death Star plans in the movie.
And just to give you a refresher, the other top secret imperial projects stored at scariff,
they included project Stardust, which contained the death star plans, then stellar sphere,
mark omega..
Which I must say is now very suspiciously named, having this new context with the bad
batch, then pax aurora, cluster prism and finally, black saber, which will probably
be very relevant now with the Mandalorian season 3 coming soon, and might explain how
Gideon got the saber.
This is a major connection to Rogue one, and squarely points to the fact that project war-mantle
is related to the creation of Deathtroopers, which we’ll get more into a second.
Following this, Rampart introduces the first ever group of Enlisted Imperial Elite troopers,
who will serve under Crosshair.
Rampart believes that instead of going for a fully cloned army or a fully enlisted army,
in order to keep the Empire strong, there should be a combination of the two.
Just looking at their armor, it’s becoming more and more clear these guys will be the
first generation of Proto-death troopers, and will probably involve into the death troopers
we see later on down the line in Rebels and Rogue one.
Back on the moon with Clone Force 99, Tech and Echo begin repairing the ship, but are
quickly pulled away from the ship when they notice a large amount of eggs, and even some
very deep scratch marks on the ship…
Very unsettling.
Now this creature that they are hunting is called the Ordo Moon Dragon…
This is probably a reference to the homeworld of the Mandalorian Clan Ordo, from the Knights
of the Old republic game.
We have actually had Ordo show up in Canon before, with Dryden Vos stealing an ancient
mandalorian Rally master lance for his collection, which you can see in Solo: A Star Wars story.
Following this, Hunter gathers the bad batch to go and fix this little problem, and Omega
badly wants to join Hunter in catching the fierce beast…
Understandably, the group are hesitant to let her go into such a dangerous situation,
but she insists and they take her with them…
Omega is incredibly excited to join the boys in hunting the creature.
Very concerningly, Wrecker also seems to be having a lot of pain in his head.
This comes as a result of the crash landing that we saw when they arrived at the moon,
but it is very worrying because this is in the exact same spot where the Clone inhibitor
chips are placed.
The amount of time they spent on this scene, with Hunter continually asking Wrecker if
he’s is pointing towards something bad happening in the next few episodes….
That device that tech was working on at the start of the episode will surely come into
play here and might help save Wrecker if his chip does end up activating because of the
crash…
Lets just hope he stays away from Omega if the chip activates .
Back on Kamino, we cut back to the new imperial recruits who begin talking about how there
is no war left to fight, wondering why they are here…
But one of them speaks up and tells the rest that the Empire pay him and feed him well,
more than the Republic ever did.
And this really shows you that the Republic certainly weren’t the good guys to everyone…
The Republic had a deep problem with corruption and not looking after the regular citizens…
thats the whole reason the separatists tried to break away in the first place.
The enlisted troopers, led by crosshair is then sent off, back to Onderon to finally
wipe out Saw Gerrera and his partisans, where Clone Force 99 failed.
While the debate between enlisted troopers and clone troopers goes on between Tarkin
and Rampart, Lama Su is outraged that the empire is turning their backs on them and
is clearly beginning to plan something for their own protection… we all know that this
resulted in the Clone Rebellion in legends, where anti-clone troopers were bred to fight
the Empire, so I think we’re heading down this very dark path already.
Back on the moon, hunter is using his tracking skills through his enhancement to hunt down
the beast from earlier, and Omega is extremely fascinated, picking up the grainy first, just
like she did on Saleucami.
Omega then asks Hunter if she can learn to track like him, but Hunter tells her that
it is his enhanced skill, which leads him to list the other member’s enhancement’s,
leaving out crosshair.
Omega tells Hunter not to brush crosshair off, and not blame him for flipping since
he can’t control it.
Moving to Onderon, one of the enlisted troopers begins to taunt crosshair for being a clone,
and tells him that all clones will soon be phased out, which of course does not make
the sniper happy.
They then arrive on Onderon, alerting Saw’s Rebels and leading to an all out firefight,
where many die.
Following this, Crosshair does something completely shocking, executing a civilian for refusing
to talk, before putting his finger on the trigger to execute four more.
The enlisted troopers are shocked and disgusted at crosshair, tell him that they signed up
to be soldiers, not executioners…
The modifications they must have made to his chip are absolutely horrendous.
After this, crosshair goes a step further, executing one of his men in cold blood for
failing to follow orders, before ordering the others to execute the civilians… which
at this point… they have no choice but to comply.
We can be sure that this is the inhibitor chip causing these actions since crosshair
recites “ good soldiers follow orders” before executing his own man.
There were many war crimes committed on Onderon by the empire here, which is nothing new,
but to see the orders directly coming from crosshair, really shows you just how much
the inhibitor chips can alter a clone troopers mind.
His actions are also very much in line with the Tarkin Doctrine, which basically states
that to rule effectively you must rule by fear…
Of course the Tarkin doctrine wasn’t official until 5 years after the creation of the Empire,
but we know that Tarkin has been thinking this way for almost his entire life.
Chilling to see it passed down to crosshair.
Back on Kamino, Tarkin is impressed with Crosshair’s squad, and has high hopes for Project War
mantle in the future.
The kaminoans on the other hand are becoming increasingly nervous that their operation
will soon cease to exist, and for this reason, they want to immediately move away from the
Jango Fett genome, to one of an enhanced clone trooper, like those of Clone force 99 or Omega.
This ties into the Kamino Rebellion and Kamino uprising, which is looking more and more likely
every episode.
It also could mean that the SCAR Squadron, also known as task Force 99, are actually
the enhanced Clones of Clone Force 99.
If you just look at them, they each have a counterpart to the members of the Bad Batch,
and even a possible counterpart to Omega, so we’ll see what they do with Task force
99.
Following this, Crosshair takes the remaining members of his squad back to their barracks,
which happens to be the same barracks that he and his brothers from Clone Force 99 were
previously using.
And to end the story, we go back to the Havoc Marauder, where Wrecker has a surprise for
Omega, telling her to close her eyes.
As she walks to the back of the ship, she sees that the wrecker has created a room for
Omega on the ship, something she never had before on Kamino.
Now she is officially a member of clone force 99.
So that was my full breakdown of The Bad Batch Season 1 episode 3, Replacements.
Thanks so much for watching, really hope you enjoyed the video.
Cheers guys, hope to see you in the next one!