Star Wars: The Bad Batch Episode 8 is a waste of time

Star Wars: The Bad Batch turns in a disappointing and predictable episode this week, sending Wrecker and Hunter on a video game-style fetch quest that doesn't move the plot forward one bit. Let's talk about "Bad Territory."

The crew continues its snail-paced effort to figure out what M-count means, which many Star Wars fans have known since 1999. It's short for midi-chlorian count. Midi-chlorians are the microorganisms that give people Force powers. It's pretty frustrating dragging this out for years because I feel like it's building to the Clones learning that the Empire is trying to create a force-sensitive Clone. If that ends up being the big reveal of this show, it will be a massive disappointment because everyone already knows freaking knows that.

Everyone except our main characters of course, who track down their old frenemy Fennec Shand to get more intel about the M-count stuff. Apparently the Empire has been hiring bounty hunters to capture people with high M-counts. But not Fennec, so she can't help them. But she promises to tell them the name of a bounty hunter who might know something in exchange for their services with a different bounty. It's all very convoluted and unnecessary in my opinion.

So they do the thing, Hunter disables some bombs, Wrecker wrestles alligators and they walk away with Fennec's target, who is a praying mantis man. Then Fennec just leaves without telling them anything. She promises to give Hunter the intel but pleads for time, which we don't have much of because there are seven episodes left in the show. Seriously, can we pick up the freaking pace a little?

The cliffhanger shows Fennec contacting an unknown bounty hunter with an unclear goal who may or may not be a threat to the Bad Batch. Meanwhile, Crosshair and Omega spend the episode doing yoga to try and fix Crosshair's bum hand, which has been affecting his sharpshooting. He doesn't tell Omega why it's bugging him and he doesn't know how to fix it.

I shouldn't be surprised because this happens every season of The Bad Batch. Each episode of season 3 has been very solid up until this point, but they have to shoe-horn in a time waster. There was no big action, nothing thought-provoking and definitely no progression to the story. This episode just adds more pointless questions without answering any of the old ones. "Why is Crosshair's hand messed up? Who does Fennec contact? Is this person a threat? Why didn't you just show us who it was?" Not everything has to be a huge secret, just move things along.

Episode Grade: D+

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels