The Bad Batch: “Pabu”

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 thirteenth episode of season 2: “Pabu”.

Plot Summary

The Bad Batch are helping Phee Genoa with the purchase of a rare artifact in a cantina. When the seller tries to double-cross her and kill her, the Bad Batch save her and fight back, and the group make a hasty escape with both the artifact and the credits.

While travelling through hyperspace on the Marauder, they receive a hologram from Cid, and it becomes clear to Phee that they have cut ties with her, leaving Cid unhappy as she has not hear from them for some time and it has cost her jobs. She warns them that she knows their secrets. As the Bad Batch have no plans for what to do next, Phee gives them coordinates.

The coordinates lead them to a planet, where they find an island called Pabu, which Phee describes as a “hidden sanctuary”, explaining that many of the inhabitants are refugees, and the artifacts she collect are remnants of their culture. Upon landing, they are greeted by the Mayor of Pabu, Shep Hazard, and his daughter Lyana. Phee invites the Bad Batch to stay for a feast that night, to which they agree. As Omega and Lyana quickly become friends, Shep and Phee both talk to Hunter about the potential of the Bad Batch staying on Pabu and making a home there. While the adults enjoy the feast, Omega and Lyana go out for a boat ride.

“I spent most of my life surrounded by the ocean, but it didn’t feel like this place.”

The idyllic evening is shattered by a series of tremors. Though they cause minimal damage it makes the waters rough, so Omega and Lyana turn around and begin returning to the island. The island’s warning system comes to life and everyone realises that the tremors are causing a sea surge; the waters are pulling away from the island and will return in a tsunami. While upper Pabu is protected by a wall, the lower city will be destroyed, so the inhabitants begin evacuating everyone to the upper city. Meanwhile, Omega contacts Hunter, as the tides pulling back are pulled them away from the land and forced them to crash on rocks. With the seabed now open between them and the island, Hunter tells them to start running back to the island, while he comes to collect them in the Marauder, just managing to collect them before the wave reaches them. Phee, Tech, Wrecker and Shep successfully evacuate everyone into the upper city just in time as the wave reaches Pabu.

Much of lower Pabu is devastated, leaving many homeless, but Shep is confident that the people are resilient. Hunter and Tech volunteer the Bad Batch’s services in helping rebuild the city, choosing to stay on the island.

Review

Of course it was too much to ask for a great episode following the Bad Batch after an amazing Crosshair episode. 

If I’m being completely honest, this was actually a nice episode… but this is the kind of episode we should have been getting early in the season as it moves on the team’s story by finally getting them away from Cid and sees them actually going through some development by choosing to settle down somewhere. However now we should be in the final act of the season with all the stories coming together. We started to get this with the last 2 weeks, now this has brought everything crashing to a halt again, and it feels like this will be for nothing as well, as the Bad Batch will surely have to spring into action very soon, and this may leave them in a position where Pabu is no longer safe for them. Much like the 2-part premiere, we finally get decent episodes with our team, but they are underwhelming due to being put at times where we needed something more. 

To make things even worse, the Bad Batch’s first real decision of any note this season (leaving Cid) has been made offscreen! This is a decision that they arguably should have made in season 1, and the unnecessary drawing out of their time with her has hurt the show, and yet now the big moment of growth from the team happens between episodes? And then they are jumping from Cid’s employ to immediately trusting someone who has appeared in a whole 2 episodes so far and has given no reason to be trusted. Something has felt very wrong with the writing of pretty much the entire season, and this is just the latest example of this.

Onto the positives though, and Pabu looked lovely, while I also loved the uniqueness of it, while even the threat in this episode was a welcome change in it being nature rather than another boring pirate, while the devastation opens up a spot for the team to help in the rebuild, while also giving them that chance to get used to the island and have it feel like home. This is a place that felt lived in, and you could see the history of the city with the lower city clearly coming in a later time as the population has grown, while the defences showed the dangers of the seas, but their rusting helped show how long it had been since an incident. 

What next though? We have just 3 episodes left, and that is where the finale began last time, so it feels like everything will begin to come together next week. But I just can’t figure out how, as the Bad Batch shouldn’t be able to be traced to Pabu, and all seem content to stay there. Time will tell. I’ll keep my fingers crossed, but I won’t expect much.

“I was thinking. We could stay and help out with things.”

“I had the same idea.”

A few final thoughts from the episode:

• I loved just how accurate everything was in the tremors leading to a tsunami, including the tides pulling back. It’s important to see events like this get shown correctly in popular culture, as it may actually help educate people as to the threat—I always remember hearing stories about the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, where people actually started moving towards the sea when the tide pulled out as they did not understand where the water had suddenly gone
• It was a nice touch for Tech to note that the artifact they had got hold of had very little financial value, only for Phee to show the value of remnants from from lost cultures to those who have been displaced from their homes.

Moments in Canon

• The “sellers” of the artifact attempt to kill Phee using a kouhun, a venomous creature that was also used by Jango Fett and Zam Wessell for an attempted assassination of Padmé Amidala.

What did you think of the episode?

Thanks for reading. Rebellions are built on hope….

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