Review: Crosshair reaches his breaking point on Star Wars: The Bad Batch

Episode 212 of Star Wars: The Bad Batch, “The Outpost,” opens with Crosshair leaning on a shuttle on an Imperial base. He looks on as a group of clones are being forcibly retired by an Imperial officer. A man walks up to him and orders him to put his helmet on. He introduces himself as Lieutenant Nolan, and tells Crosshair that he is his new commanding officer, his third one this season. Nolan says there is high-value cargo on a planet called Barton-4 and that they are going to sec/ure it from insurgents. Nolan then notices the rest of his squad is also comprised of regular clone troopers and expresses annoyance at clones in general.

Crosshair, Nolan and the two other clones arrive at the Barton-4 outpost, which is located on a snowy planet. They find a clone commander named Mayday inside, along with two other clones named Hexx and Veetch. Nolan immediately starts giving Mayday attitude about the outpost being unguarded, but Mayday explains the three of them and some droids are all that’s left. Mayday is unimpressed with Nolan’s posturing and tells him that his respect must be earned. When Nolan insults him about letting his men die, Mayday asks him how many missions he has commanded, to which Nolan has nothing to say.

Mayday orders Hexx and Veetch to get Nolan settled in, leaving Mayday and Crosshair to get to know each other. He shows Crosshair the base’s sensory equipment, which routinely fails. Mayday has asked for new equipment, but has been ignored. He only gets orders to protect the cargo crates. Crosshair asks what’s in the the containers, and Mayday says he doesn’t know. Mayday tells Crosshair not to go far outside the base due to the weather and ice vultures. A group of raiders then suddenly attacks the base.

Crosshair finally realizes how rotten the Empire is in “The Outpost”

Crosshair takes a position in a tower and uses his infrared scope to find the raiders, who are about to blow up the shuttle Crosshair’s crew arrived on. When it explodes, the heat signature on his sight temporarily blinds Crosshair, forcing him to take off his helmet. He successfully hits one of the attackers and then follows the wounded man into the snow. He finds a tunnel that the raiders have been using to sneak onto the base; they successfully stole a few crates of cargo in the attack.

Nolan orders Mayday to recover the stolen crates, but since Hexx and Veetch were killed in the latest raid, he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to conduct missions outside the base without more manpower. Nolan says it is not Mayday’s place to determine what is valuable to the Empire, and orders him and Crosshair to retrieve the cargo alone while he stays at the base with the other two clones.

They take the tunnel that Crosshair found and run into the raider that Crosshair shot earlier; he died in the tunnel. Mayday doesn’t know what’s worse: the fact that he died, or the fact that the other raiders left him behind. Crosshair then coldly says it’s better not to carry dead weight. Crosshair then steps on a landmine which Mayday disarms. He asks Crosshair which unit he served in during the war, and he tells him Clone Force 99. Mayday asks what happened to them, and he says they are gone.

Will Crosshair finally rejoin the Bad Batch?

They eventually find the raider settlement and get in a shootout that Crosshair ends by blowing up a pile of unused mines in the corner. With the raiders gone, they rummage through one of the destroyed containers, which is full of new stormtrooper equipment. Mayday questions everything at this point, and wonders what following all of those orders for years was for if the clones are just going to be set aside any day for the new conscripted military.

An avalanche starts coming down on top of them, and Mayday shoves Crosshair out of the way to save him. Crosshair desperately digs through the snow and finds a wounded Mayday, who tells him to leave him behind. But Crosshair puts his helmet on and carries Mayday through a freezing blizzard all the way back to the base. It takes days.

When they finally make it back, the cargo containers are being offloaded by squads of stormtroopers. Nolan orders the troopers to get back to work and refuses to get a medic for Mayday. Nolan says that Mayday is expendable and that saving him would be a waste of resources. Mayday then dies right there, and Nolan orders Crosshair to get back to work while he is still useful. Crosshair is going through multiple emotions after watching a man he just risked everything to save get treated like a piece of garbage. He then gets Nolan’s attention and shoots him in the chest before collapsing on the ground from exhaustion.

Crosshair wakes up in Hemlock’s facility on Mount Tantis. A doctor tells him to relax and cooperate if he wants to live before knocking him out with a sedative.

Conclusion

Crosshair finally reaches his breaking point with the Empire in this episode. Multiple times this season, Crosshair has been struggling to fit in with the Empire, as all the clones around him keep disappearing or dying. The pattern continues when he meets Mayday and his troopers, as they all end up dying despite his best efforts. He risked his life and carried a wounded man through the snow for days only for Nolan to spit in his face and tell him to get back to work after Mayday dies in his arms. He is understandably broken by these events and gets revenge on Nolan before he passes out. Although it was satisfying to see Crosshair finally realize how horrific the Empire is, shooting Nolan proves to be a fatal mistake as he is now in Hemlock’s possession. The evil doctor is likely looking to learn more about Omega by questioning Crosshair.

Episode Grade: B

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