The Bad Batch: “Entombed”

Welcome to my weekly review of The Bad Batch, where I will be walking us through each episode and giving my thoughts on the show. My reviews will follow my usual format: an overview of the plot (so be aware, there will be spoilers!), my review of the show, then a few “Moments in canon” – references that link to other media and the galaxy as a whole. Today, we’ll be looking at the fifth episode of season 2: “Entombed”.

Plot Summary

At Cid’s parlor, Phee Genoa is telling Ketch and Bolo stories of her adventures. Tech, who is listening in at the bar with Hunter and Echo, notes that Phee’s stories every time she tells them. Wrecker and Omega arrive back from the scrapyard, where they have salvaged a replacement compressor, while Omega has also brought back some other junk. However Phee takes an interest in one piece and realises it’s a compass with coordinates to the Kaldar Trinary system. Omega is excited by Phee’s talk of the treasure they could find, and together they convince the Bad Batch to come along, on the condition that they get half of any treasure.

The group travels to the system in the Marauder and lands on a world where the ground had been severely scorched, however soon after exiting the ship, the compass activates. Following it’s directions, they come to a dead end, but Phee has Wrecker move some loose boulders, revealing a doorway. The group make their way inside, not noticing a large creature that appears to be stalking them.

The group find themselves in a round room with patterns on the walls, which Phee recognizes as marking the entrance to Skara Nal, a legend that predates the Jedi and is said to hold a treasure known as the Heart of the Mountain inside. Phee has wrecker start turning sections of wall to line up the markings, but this triggers a booby trap that traps them inside and drops a boulder, which they just avoid. Looking through the compass, Omega notices some extra markings and realises that they had aligned the walls wrong. Changing the alignments to go by the new markings opens a door deeper into the mountain.

“Hunter, these etchings are easily a thousand years old.”

“Older. Much older.”

As they make their way through the tunnels, the creature from earlier attacks the group, grabbing Wrecker. Wrecker manages to fight his way free, but at the Bad Batch shoot at the fleeing creature, they cause a cave-in, separating Hunter, Omega and Phee from the rest. Tech reports via comlink that he has found a more expansive network of tunnels that will allow them to circumnavigate the cave-in and rejoin the trio, who push on in the meantime. As Hunter leads the trio through another tunnel, Omega notices that passing light through the compass displays a pattern on the roof of the tunnel, just as the ground gives way under Hunter; he uses his grappling cable to halt his fall and the pair pull him back up into the tunnel. Ahsoka guesses that they need to fin a way to walk on the panels that were lit by the compass. She finds an area of the wall that is the same size and shape as the compass, which causes the tunnel to rotate until the ceiling becomes the floor, allowing the trio to safely walk across the lit panels.

Tech and the rest of the team catch up with the trio as they make their way through a door, revealing a large room with the Heart of the Mountain. As the group makes their way into the room, Phee removes the Heat of the Mountain from the structure it is attached to, which activates the security mechanisms, closing the doors into the room. The “tunnels” continue to activate, and they are revealed to be the insides of a giant machine, which bursts out from the mountain and begins walking over the surface, periodically firing a blast of energy that destroys anything it hits.

Tech proposes that they put the Heart of the Mountain back in place to disable the machine, but they are attacked once again by the creature, which forces its way into the room. While the team fight the creature—eventually throwing it out of a window—the chaos causes Phee to drop the Heart of the Mountain, and she is forced to climb down inside the machine to retrieve it with Hunter’s help. The team put the Heart of the Mountain back in place, but rather than power down the machine, the stone melted and the machine began to self-destruct, though all the team successfully escape and make their way back to the Marauder.

Review

*Sigh* Oh The Bad Batch, you aren’t making things easy for me this season. I love all the main characters and really want to love this show, but it’s going nowhere. 5 episodes into season 2 and we’ve only had 1 that has really done anything to further the story, and that episode only featured Crosshair out of all the Bad Batch. You set a tone for the season with your first handful of episodes, and right now the tone that I am getting is a series of meaningless “adventure of the week” episodes that will see little progression for any of our characters.

And that is a shame, because this was actually quite a fun episode, but due to it coming now when we so desperately needed a meaningful episode just left me sat there disappointed and feeling like I was wasting my time.

So looking into the episode, there were some things to be happy about, and it was really nice to character models of our heroes without their armor on during the early scenes at Cid’s parlor. It’s a tiny thing, but just adds such a degree of realism as it would be strange for them to spend all their time in their armour. It was also nice seeing Omega problem solving so many of the situations, but it brings back the questions from last year as she continues to have an awareness beyond that of everyone else. Was she actually modified, unlike Boba? Or does she have the Force?

This was a generally fun adventure that I’m sure plenty of younger viewers will have enjoyed, but once again I am just left frustrated by how there don’t even appear to be any stakes in this episode. We even lose the droid and Phee just brushes it off by saying that it always happens so she has a back-up of her memory on her ship and will just rebuild her again. Would it have really been so hard to kill off the droid and leave Phee contemplating her actions.

And so right now I’m having to start considering the future of these reviews, as I hate being so negative about Star Wars and don’t want to become one of those people in the community. In March, The Mandalorian season 3 begins airing on the same date as The Bad Batch. My plan had been to prioritise The Mandalorian and then review The Bad Batch the next day. But if the show continues to go nowhere through February or show little sign of improvement, then I will probably stop these weekly reviews for The Bad Batch and just review the rest of the series once it’s over. I will keep you updated though.

“This compass is a rare find. You’ve got a good eye.”

A few final thoughts from the episode:

• Given the similarities to Jedi: Fallen Order (see below), I can’t help wonder if this was timed as a reminder to fans of the first game to pre-order Jedi: Survivor… *cha-ching!*
• It feels like the show missed a chance here to mention the High Republic to start setting fans up for The Acolyte

Moments in Canon

• The machine and some of the markings inside look very similar to the Zeffo, the ancient species from Jedi: Fallen Order

What did you think of the episode?

Thanks for reading. Rebellions are built on hope….

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