During the Bad Batch’s travels, they were rapidly and violently ripped out of hyperspace,
sending them on a sharp collision course with a nearby moon.
During the Crash, Wrecker took a large blow to the side of the head, which continued to
linger as their mission went on.
Now if this was a regular human, you’d brush it off as a pretty bad head injury, but nothing
more…
With a Clone like wrecker however, this could mean something much darker.
Did wrecker’s blow to the head activate his inhibitor chip?
Lets break it down.
At the beginning of the episode, in the middle of their journey, Tech is ignoring his duties
in keeping the in a good state in order to work on a mysterious new device.
This device looks like it will be a scanner that can help him assess just much much of
a grip the Bad Batch’s inhibitor chips have on them.
We already know that for some reason, possibly during the Cloning Process for these enhanced
Clones, the strength of the chips was not distributed evenly among them.
Crosshairs was powerful enough to make him follow Palpatine’s directive of Order 66
against Caleb Dune, Kanan Jarrus, while wrecker and hunter had absolutely no clue what Order
66 even was.
Echo is also in another camp, since the separatists damaged his chip so that it wasn’t operable
during the order.
Seeing Tech create this device already tells us that it will be returning, and the Bad
Batch will likely be having their chips taken out at some point, probably with the help
of Rex, when they meet up.
We already know they will come together at some point, since we see them together in
the trailer, so there’s no way he doesn’t try to get their chips out when they meet.
Especially since Cut Lawquane recalled Rex frantically going on about behavioural modification,
when he visited Cut on his farmstead, the day before Clone Force 99 arrived there.
But either way, as the ship goes down, the bad are vionelty jolted and rocked until Wrecker
eventually bangs his head on his restraint.
It happens to make contact on the side of his head in a very bad location.
As we can see from the photo on screen now of Wolffe, Rex and Gregor, who all had their
inhibitor chips removed, this is the exact spot where inhibitor chips are usually taken
out, a clear hint to what really happened during the crash.
Once the group safely touches down, Wrecker begins groaning and clutching the same side
of his head with complete agony.
Now you can brush this off and say it was just a concussion and head pain is to be expected
after a hard hit to the head like that, but what can’t be brushed away is how similar
Wrecker’s reaction is is to Tup’s situation from the Clone Conspiracy arc.
And there’s one similarly which is so striking and so chilling that it almost confirms Wrecker
has had his chip activate, which i'll show you a clip of in just a second.
For those of you who don’t know, Tup was a Clone Trooper serving under General Anakin
Skywalker in the late stages of the Clone Wars, during the battle of Ringo Vinda, against
Admiral Trench.
At the Battle of Ringo Vinda, Skywalker’s forces were fighting alongside twin Jedi sisters,
tiplee and tiplar, and Tup was sent with General Tiplar to back her forces up.
As the battle was raging on, Tup began to experience extreme head pain and reported
that he wasn’t feeling like himself anymore.
His good friend Fives quickly noticed this, and tried to hit Tup out of it, but sadly
nothing could be done.
Tup then recited the all too familiar line, ‘good soldiers follow orders”, before
turning his weapon on General Tiplar and pulling the trigger, much to the shock of everyone
at the battle, including Admiral Trench.
Now the one telling sign which is completely unmistakable is the small glitch or tremor
that Tup experienced when his chip malfunctioned and activated by a way other than Palpatine’s
order.
If you look at the screen now, you can see tup tremoring for a slight second, almost
like he has a glitch in his programming, which we know from the Bad Batch that he literally
does, because the inhibitor chips are not just devices that force you to follow an order,
but they literally install behavioural modification programs into the Clone’s brains just like
Rex explained to Cut.
And now looking at the wrecker you can see the exact same tremor happening to him as
he is clutching his head…
This is very eerie.
I unfortunately think that this little nod from the animators is the nail in the coffin
for Wrecker and confirms that he will be executing Order 66 in the next few episodes.
I just hope he’s able to be restrained and have Rex take his chip out, before the rest
of the Batch have to do anything drastic.
There’s always the possibility that the other members of Clone Force 99 are forced
to kill wrecker because he tries to execute Order 66 on Omega, which would be absolutely
heartbreaking…
Especially with all the stuff they’ve setup to bring Omega and Wrecker closer.
And thanks to the new mission directives given to Crosshair by Tarkin, with the elite squad
troopers, we now know that the chips aren’t solely forcing the Clone Troopers to execute
Order 66, but any order that is given to them by their superior figures, whether that be
Palpatine at the very top of the Chain of the Command, or Tarkin, slightly down.
We know this because Crosshair recites that infamous hallmark of the inhibitor chip, Good
soldiers follow orders as he commits his war crimes on Onderon…
Now some people have been saying that the writers only gave Wrecker a headache as an
excuse to have him stay behind on the ship, so that he could build the room for Omega
and build their bond even further.
But for a show with a very short run time like the Bad Batch, they spent quite a long
time on this scene, so I doubt it was for nothing.
Also, combined same tremoring, I just can’t see this going any other way..
But we’ll see what dave filloni gives us in the next few weeks.
As for how a hit to the head could affect an inhibitor chips function, we have actually
seen evidence for this in the head of Commander Grey, now a captain, from the Kanan comics,
the exact same clone from the first episode, who the bad Batch saw executing Order 66.
In the Comic, Grey’s inhibitor chip is seemingly altered after being violently flung into a
wall by Caleb Dume, and has his chip dagaed, severely reducing its effectiveness and even
causing the programming to lose it’s grip on grey.
In the immediate aftermath of Order 66, Grey and his clone brother styles are completely
adamant that they must hunt down and execute Caleb Dume, even travelling across the Kaller
system to catch him.
No signs of any wavering or resistance to the order.
That all changes onces they capture Caleb and bring him aboard their ship, where they
leave him a little too free, causing him to use the force and brutally slam their heads
into the wall of the ship, injuring both pretty badly.
It’s at this point where Grey’s entire personality begins to switch to the exact
state it was before Order 66, the chip’s grip over his mind was quickly fading.
This then causes grey to begin questioning Order 66 and he even came to the realization
that he was under some kind of spell.
It was like something came over him and compelled him to kill Depa Bilaba, like he had no will
of his own.
It’s pretty amazing that he came to this conclusion after hitting his head, something
his brother styles never did, obviously not having damage to his chips.
But after this, things get very heated between Grey and styles, with Grey just becoming disgusted
with his actions under the influence of the chip, leading him to fire on his own ship’s
control panel, killing both himself and styles, knowing that it would allow Caleb dume to
escape.
This whole sequence just goes to show you that inhibitor chips definitely can be altered,
modified or damaged by direct hits to the head and other injuries in that area.
Whether it can go the other way, and have a weakened chip, we obviously don’t know
yet, but looking at what we know, it certainly seems that way.
And for another potential connection, it’s likely that part of the reason that Cut Lawquane
never had his behaviour modified in the aftermath of the inhibitor chips activating, is that
his was likely damaged in the battle of Geonosis, where we know he defected from the clone army.
We know from the Clone Wars that Cut’s transport was attacked and fired upon by a separatist
gunship at the battle of geonosis, the very first battle of the war, and after witnessing
all of the brothers of his squad either die horrifically or be gravely injured, he knew
that life in the war was not a life for him.
And as a result he fled.
Because his ship probably crashed causing all of those injuries, he almost certainly
suffered a head injury on the way down, alongside of all of dead and dying brothers, which is
a pretty good reason for his chip not to modify his behaviour.
The Fact that the desertion even entered Cut’s mind after receiving so much training and
conditioning in the opposite direction is itself a pretty strong sign that he was under
no external influence.
Of course, there’s a chance cut never heard the Order at all since he was off the grid,
and did everything he could to stay off the empire’s radar, but it’s just something
to think about…
Even if he received the order and had no Jedi to execute it on, his behaviour would have
been altered in a way that his wife certainly would have noticed… and she never mentioned
anything like that when clone force 99 came to visit… so It’s safe to say that cut’s
chip is probably damaged, alongside him just never receiving the orderl
But now having laid out everything we know, let me know what you think down below.
I just can’t get past that little tremor, so my final prediction is that yes, he will
execute ORder 66 in the next few episodes.
Thanks so much for watching, really hope you enjoyed the video.
Cheers guys, hope to see you in the next one!