The Ringer-Verse - 'What If...?' Premiere and 'The Bad Batch' Finale Analysis

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

Mallory Rubin is joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer to talk about the season premiere of Marvel's 'What If...?' They discuss what they think of the concept of the show as a whole (04:38) before talking about the debut episode and the introduction of Captain Carter into the MCU (36:15). Then they share their thoughts on the season finale of 'The Bad Batch' (69:52) along with personally grading key aspects of the show's first season (101:12). Host: Mallory Rubin Guests: Ben Lindberg Producer: Steve Ahlman Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal and TD St. Matthew-Daniel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I have to. I can end this. You owe me a dance lesson. Yes. Saturday night. And welcome into the Ringerverse here on the Ringer podcast network. I'm Mallory Rubin,

co-host of Binge mode, head of editorial here at the Ringer. It is my absolute pleasure to invite you not only to Camino visit while you can, but to join us on the Ringer's nexus podcast feed for all things fandom.

Before we begin today, a few reminders. Midnight Boys, Van Lathen and Charles Holmes, Poo-Pew, have their instant reaction pod up for you on the what if premiere. Check that out if you haven't already. They will of course be back with you next Wednesday with their instant reaction to episode two of what if and I will be back with you next Friday. Follow all of that action by following the ringerverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. And of course by following us across our social channels. The ringer versus on Twitter, the ringer versus on Instagram, the ringer

versus on Facebook. And of course, one more reminder. Bear in mind our friendly neighborhood spoiler warning. This is a dual spoiler warning today. This episode will contain spoilers from the what if premiere and the entire MCU run to date, as well as spoilers from the Bad Batch finale, the entire first season of the Bad Batch and across Star Wars canon. So proceed with caution, okay?

Proceed with more caution than the Red Skull did when summoning his champion. Tough look for our guy, the Red Skull, right there. Joining me today to chat about both of these animated gems, now that he's accessed his reserve power and guided us to the surface of all of this content, it's Ringer staff writer Ben Lindberg. Ben, welcome back into the Ringerverse, buddy. Now, somewhere in the multiverse, there is a world where Disney sent us screeners for the bad patch. And I got some amount of sleep prior to this podcast, but this is not that world.

So I might be a bit loopy today. But maybe that's the right vibe for our entrance into the multiverse. Was the plan where we got the finale screeners plan seven? Because I learned that plan seven has nothing to do with this situation whatsoever, ultimately. You know what, Ben? I'm not going on a lot of sleep either. I'm going to be honest with you. So we're in this one together, but guess what?

Two pals, two longtime colleagues chatting about things we love. I'm so excited to be with you here today to talk about, of course, Bad Bad Batch and Star Wars. We both adore Star Wars. I always have such fun chatting with you about Star Wars. But we have our first Marvel animated show, and we happen to get the What If Premiere and the Bad Batch finale on the same week. And so what better time?

for you to make your triumphant ringer verse return. And to talk about the Disney Plus animated era, we're going to start today by talking about the what if premiere. We're going to talk about the Bad Batch finale, but also the Bad Batch season as a whole. We're going to do some season grades run through what we loved most about the season and thought worked most effectively compare it to some of the other installments in the Philoonyverse, etc.

We're also going to talk a little bit about what these properties may or may not have in common what Marvel can learn from the Star Wars animated universe, how they inform each other, or maybe how they don't. So we've got a lot to cover today. And I think we should just dive probably right in to talking about the What If Premiere. Are you ready? We can do this in our sleep, and we might have to. Oh, God. Great stuff. Good one, buddy. Let's go. What if? What if Marvel's new animated Disney Plus show, the MCU's first foray into animation. First episode of what will be

ultimately a nine episode first season. We know that season two is coming. We got the first episode this week. A little bit of background, some quick big picture primer info before we talk more about the episode itself. What if as a premise, as a concept, of course,

stems from the Marvel comics, the what-if storyline debuted in the 70s, 1977. It was designed to broadly provide glimpses into how Marvel characters or storylines or realities, worlds, dimensions, might have been different if something had changed, if a key moment, a key decision had gone differently.

Like, for example, if we just look at the very first issue, the origin of it all, Spider-Man joining the Fantastic Four. Great stuff. The Watcher is the original narrator present in the early comics runs as well, and of course is our guide, Jeffrey Wright, playing The Watcher here in the television show as well.

Swear's not to interfere. We hear that here too. Just going to put this out there, Ben. I feel like at some point, much as there is history in the comics of The Watcher, talking a lot about not interfering and then interfering, Yes, it's hard to resist when you're almost all-powerful. Yeah, I know you're supposed to refrain from flashing your powers,

but when you can do almost anything, it's tough to resist that temptation. It would be like watching all of these Marvel and Star Wars shows and never talking about them. Exactly. You know? How long can you just observe? So you're an animation buff, and I was curious to start by asking you, how excited were you just in the big picture sense that the MCU was was dipping into animated storytelling? I'm very excited about this. Actually, I would guess more so than the average Marvel fan. And we'll talk about this. But I'm a serious Star Wars scholar. But I'm more of a casual Marvel consumer.

I'm self-deprecating too when it comes to Marvel. I haven't done all of the reading. I haven't done all of the homework. And so in that sense, I am very excited for this, and we'll talk a little bit about maybe the lower barrier to entry of this series than some other entries in the MCU. But also, this feels a little bit like a throwback to me to the days when not everything was connected to everything. And I know that that's a little deceptive because, of course, these things are going to pop up elsewhere in the MCU. And we're going to get spinoffs and we're going to get connections. And so even though this is slightly less serialized, it's not actually un-serialized. And yet, still, I think it kind of brings me back, really, to early days of caring about comics, which were not as formative for me as Star Wars, for instance.

But when I got into comics, the whole thing for me was, what if. I mean, that's the appeal. The MCU itself is a what-if, right? I mean, hey, what if there were superpowers? So I can see how someone might see this as overkill or. chaos, right? And it's completely chaotic. But I welcome the chaos. And this I think- Chaos is a ladder to new stories. That's the little finger quote, right? Chaos is a ladder than new stories. Some people all off the ladder. It doesn't work out for everyone. But that's part of the

appeal. I think when you get into these worlds and you think, what if this person crossed over with that person? What if this person fought that person? What if these people teamed up with those people? And I think it's great that MCU is actually exploring. that here. And really, I'm envious as a Star Wars fan, frankly, that something like this exists because there's no perfect analog for this in the Star Wars universe. So I say, have fun with it, indulge it, go crazy. When you say you're envious as a Star Wars fan, in what respect specifically? So I think in Star Wars, canon and continuity are much more rigid. And there are pros and cons to that, right? I mean, if someone dies, you can feel pretty sure that they died and there are actual

stakes to that, whereas you can kind of lose that in comic books at times. I mean, if there's an infinite number of universes. Tell that to mall, Ben. Right. Mall can come back from anything. But if there's an infinite number of universes and every outcome happens somewhere, then why should we pay particular attention to any one of them, right? Why should we care? So I think there's some danger there of lowering the stakes, but also in Star Wars, with some few exceptions, there's very little time travel, there's almost no equivalent to the multiverse. And so I kind of envy just the plasticity of it, that you can go anywhere, that you can do anything. And again, there's danger. I mean, that way lies madness, the multiverse of madness, right? But I think there's a lot of power

and potential in that idea that you can just indulge your wildest and strangest ideas. And so I'm looking forward to what happens here. And also, I think for me, this is kind of the perfect pallet cleanser after something like Loki, which obviously set up this series and leads directly into it, but requires more knowledge, right? And so when I was watching Loki, I was looking things up. I was thinking, what does this mean? what does this signify? What are the implications here? Whereas watching the first three episodes

of the first foray into animated multiverse here and we'll only be discussing the first today in detail, but it felt a little lower stakes to me. It felt a little more relaxed. It felt like I could just kind of go with the flow a little more than having to be prepared, having to study, having to watch a million movies and read a bunch of comic books. I don't mean to say that that's unpleasant. But I'm just saying with this show, with what if, you can kind of come in cold. If you've seen the big movies, then that's enough. You know, you can wade into this, I think, and enjoy it right away.

Whereas there's some preparation required when it comes to really everything else we've seen on Disney Plus this far. Yeah. Boy, you just made so many interesting points that I want to follow up on. We'll take it in three buckets. The comics corollary, Loki as a predecessor to the show, and just hype in general. I'm glad you mentioned thinking back to just, like, consuming comics as a kid, because in many ways, obviously one of them is just this is an animated story. something if you take like Peggy's, the battle montage in the premiere, for example. Like it is overtly a comics aesthetic, the style of the splash page is so present in a way that

is really gripping and fun and immerses you in that sense of just thumbing through the latest issue of something that you were excited to explore. I love that about it. Check out if anybody listening has not. Check out Daniel Chin's ringer.com, what a great website article. on comic storytelling coming to the MCU in full. Now, that might seem like a strange thing to say because, of course, Marvel is comics, right?

And the MCU has always been anchored in comics history and characters who have been with viewers and readers for decades, quite a long time. But with what if, there is something in what you just identified, Ben, that feels very specific, and very, very palpable here, which is, like, yes, of course, the concept and in many ways,

the proposition is oriented in what has already unfolded and what is already established, right? Well, in order for a what if to unfold, for something to be different, something has to have happened already, right? Right. There has to be a baseline to operate against.

Of course. The comics comp that I find interesting is that you can choose when to, like, on board for your part of the adventure. You don't have to have experienced everything to be able to enjoy it. There will be a richness and a level of layering of references of connections that are there for viewers to enjoy in in myriad respects. But one of the cool things about comics, different comic lines, different comic arcs, resets is that there are these different moments.

This is something that Jason used to talk about on Binge a lot that I always sound so interesting. you can pick the moment where you want to start your journey. And for a lot of people out there, maybe what if actually can be that, I think that's really cool. Loki, broadly, of course, we knew what what if was going to be. All right? Because of what the comics were,

because of what the inherent premise tells us, I do think that there was this moment at the end of Loki, particularly given the Loki finale and this vast unspooling of the multiverse, the fracturing of the time. timeline where there was this shift, maybe a subtle one, but a shift from Marvel fans and mass thinking that what if was going to be like a pure alt history in the mold of the comics into like this is central alt timeline fractured. The sacred timeline doesn't exist. All of these

timelines are now timelines in the center of the MCU and all of these variants are real characters who are living lives and we've seen what happens when those variants get pruned. Like, we're not going to want to say goodbye to these people once we get attached to them. That's a pretty big distinction, right, in how we think about it. I think that one of the things that was interesting about consuming the premiere is that despite all that being true and heightening the stakes in that way for where we are in phase four of the MCU, it still really had that original what if energy in a way that like, it's what you were talking about a little bit earlier about, you know, the stakes.

We're going to talk a little later today about what season two might bring what we might see from Captain Carter in the future. All of these things are connected. I don't think there's a world where what we see and what if does not become a meaningful part of the canon. We've heard the director, screenwriter, producer, everybody involved with the project has been talking about this consistently, right, during the press junket tour. Like this is central can. What are we going to see in spinoffs? What are we going to see continuing in the future? All of that, even the anticipatory elements that connected specifically to the Loki finale,

which was obviously just a few weeks ago, all of that led to my hype for this being very high, as did how much I love the Star Wars animated shows. Yes. Rebels and Clone Wars are two of my favorite things literally, like ever, period, full stop. and I've really enjoyed Bad Patch as we will talk about later today at length. And so the prospect of tapping into Marvel's version of that was so exciting to me.

I love alt histories as well. I love the idea of exploring these tweaks and these twists. I love seeing, I don't know if you've ever heard me say this before, Ben, but I love thinking about, you know, choice, choice and destiny, free will. How does that factor in these stories? That's what this is about. That's like the cornerstone of this entire series. Like what is eternal?

What is fixed? What is moving? What varies? What is nature? What is the product of choice? And what is some sort of moment where somebody feels like a puppet in a puppet act where destiny or fate or some other driving force is determining the course of things? And then even maybe absent that kind of like nefarious framing of a He Who Remain style. controlling hand, I always find it interesting to think about moments when the endpoint can be the same

or similar. Or if the endpoint is different, the framework can be the same or similar, even if the specific moments along the way differ. Like, it makes me think just in a broad sense of one of my favorite quotes from a little book called A Game of Thrones, ever heard of it? When John says the aria, different roads sometimes lead to the same cast. Who knows? Like, that's the appeal of what if. Yeah. Yeah, we can and are about to testify to how much animation has meant to Star Wars,

or at least to some Star Wars fans. I understand that animation is not for everyone. Or if I don't understand it, I at least accept it. I'll go that far. And I think there are things you can do in animation that are tough to do in live action because of the budget, because it's easier to draw something than it is. to portray that thing in real life, or maybe because you have more time to do those things, right? We're going to talk about Bad Bad Bad Bad and Rebels and Clone Wars.

There is so much more of those shows than there is of all of the Star Wars films put together. And so there's potential to really dive into these nooks and crannies of the universe and to give characters they're due who would just fade into the background, who would be mostly invisible to people who are only watching the movies. There's this whole hidden world there, and you can explore all of the depths of that universe. And that's a really exciting thing, I think. And as you alluded to, this is canon. And this sort of sounds like a stoner thought, but it kind of calls into question what the concept of canon is.

Like, what is the point of canon? What's the purpose of canon? Because really, the point is to keep your story straight, right? to be able to distinguish between your real fictional stories and your fake fictional stories. These are the ones that we're paying attention to. These are the ones that are somehow primary. These are the ones that count. And, you know, I'm someone who still mourns the pre-Disney Star Wars Expanded Universe.

You're a legend's canon head. And I always will be. But it's not canon. Whereas Marvel here is saying, well, maybe that can be canon too. Maybe they're both canon. Maybe those things both happened in all of these worlds. And that's kind of an intoxicating idea. I mean, it's limitless potential, which is exciting and also daunting because sometimes

storytelling thrives with limits. Sometimes you need those creative constraints and you need those stakes. That's what Arjuna and Steve say to me every time they tell me to record a podcast that's shorter than two hours, you know? They're probably already thinking that about this segment. But there is a lot of potential. there. And there are so many ways that this could be weaved in to the MCU we know. And I think there's still a lot of uncertainty about how exactly that will happen and how, what if we'll tie into those

larger properties and whether we will see spinoffs. That's another thing is that the Star Wars animated universe has been a breeding ground. Now it has started to seed the live action universe and these things cross over, right? So for a while, these worlds were kind of cloistered. You had your animated Star Wars. You had your live-action Star Wars and never the tween would meet. Now they're meeting more and more. And in fact, that large library of animated Star Wars that you have that people can pull from now and cast Rosario Dawson to play Asoka in Asoka's own live-action series, there's a lot of potential there too. And so not that Marvel was running short on content, running out of ideas.

It's not as if they really needed this shot in the arm, but I think there's potential there where if something clicks, if someone really falls in love with one of these storylines, one of these characters on what if, then you can spin that out. That can be its own series. That can cross over into live action. There are just so many ways that one could go with this.

Okay. I have two follow-up questions for you off of that. Okay. Is there any distinction, any germane distinction or notable upshot in your mind between Marvel and Star Wars in terms of like the order of events,

the sequencing, right? Like, not just when it comes to how we compare the movies to the shows because that comp is cleaner. But on the one hand, and I should note, like we'll speak specifically when we're talking about MCU shows right now

about this MCU, like Kevin Feige Marvel Cinematic Universe Disney Plus era of TV shows. Obviously there have been many Marvel television shows.

I can feel, you know, Jomey just typing something right now into the Zoom chat about Agents of Shield and we're going to talk I'm sure today

a little bit about Agent Carter and, you know, there are all of the Netflix shows shouts to my guy, Matt Murdoch, now and always. but inside of the MCU.

There we go, Jomey. Shield forever. I love it. We started with live action, right? Wanda, Falcon, Loki, and now the first animated foray. Star Wars, there were years and years and years. And as you noted, hundreds of episodes of animated TV storytelling. With an interesting timeline, you know, variable there in terms of when the Disney

Disney-Canon era began, but for Clone Wars rebels, eventually resistance, before we got to the moment of Star Wars live-action TV being like the most central and meaningful thing, this side of Game of Thrones in mass pop culture with the Mandalorian. Is that notable? Is there anything to glean from that in any respect? And then I wanted to ask you in terms of what you were saying about what's the role of canon is, which I think is a really interesting thing to think about. And not something I had maybe thought about in exactly the way you put it, though you were of course completely right. How then do we account for the, you know, 2021 element of like the IP machines, right? Because isn't that and this is like a little bit more of a, um,

This is a less romantic read on it, right? Then, you know, keeping our stories clean and understanding what the parameters of the universes are. What does each studio own? What is a part of each studio's machine? What can they keep returning to and how can they build connections that ultimately spawn, whether it's animated or live action, more shows, more movies. Now, I want to be clear, I love the Marvel machine. Like, I love the Star Wars machine.

I'm glad we're getting more and more and more of these things, but I think it is important to at least acknowledge when we talk about what is Ken today. That element is like inextricable, right? What studios are ultimately looking to as the thing that they own and can continue to turn into new properties. Right. Eventually Disney will own everything, which will solve that problem. It'll just be all under one umbrella and it will all mix together. I think for your first, first question. Yeah, I think there is something to that where maybe the bar was a little lower. The expectations were a little lower when the Clone Wars came around just because there wasn't that history of live action Star Wars on TV, whereas Marvel has already established that it can do

that and it can do that well and it can command culture's attention from week to week, whether with Wanda or Balkan or more recently with Loki. And so if people are expecting exactly the same experience from what if. I guess there is some potential to be put off or disappointed in some way, whereas Clone Wars was coming in and saying, this is it right now. So you can either have this or you can have nothing. I mean, you can read the books, you can read the comics, you can imagine your own what if in your head. But it wasn't really competing at that point with a new trilogy, with just an ever extending universe like the MCU.

I mean, Star Wars has gone through some lean years, some periods where nothing was going on. Not much has been going on with Star Wars this year, but compared to some previous eras, this is a busy time. This is a boom time. So I think in that sense, animation for Star Wars was a proof of concept, right? Whereas with Marvel, the concept is already proven. It's already been massively successful. And so now, I guess this is another proof of concept.

This is a proof of concept of animation and proving that people will watch this and will find this as engaging and engrossing. And, of course, there are already plans to make multiple animated shows that will come in the wake of what if. So this is planting a flag sort of like the Mandalorian planted the live action flag for Star Wars finally and was done so well and was so successful that suddenly. Suddenly, it spawned several spinoffs, and now you have endless arrays of Star Wars heading to Disney Plus. So I think in that sense, you're right. Just because Star Wars started with movies, and Marvel existed on the page prior to breaking out in that way. So there's something to be said for that, I think. And you're right, as companies acquire each other and all of the massive.

media conglomerates just devour each other gradually and pay fortunes for each other, then what is actually in your stable at any given time can change. But I guess if you establish that something like what if can exist, then you can retroactively bring in something that was not previously under your umbrella. That can now be part of what you've done. And we've seen that, obviously, with, you know, Disney acquiring Fox and certain properties migrating over to the MCU. So there's some precedent for that, too.

It's just all malleable, right? There are no rules right now, which is sort of exciting and also sort of scary. Yeah, you know, it's interesting to like to think about what if and Marvel animated shows can unlock for Marvel, both like through that Star Wars lens, on the heels of Loki and in this multiverse moment. And I, you know, I mentioned this already, but I'm fascinated by, but not surprised by how the people who are involved with what if are talking about the future of not only what if, but of what we have seen already. So, like, for example, producer Brad Winterbaum told comicbook.com's Adam Barnhart that Captain Carter, who is the focus of this premiere, will be back in season two and beyond.

Here's the quote. We realized as we started developing the second season, that Captain Carter was going to be the character, who we would revisit in every season and continue that adventure. Obviously, we're telling a story on a giant multiversal canvas, so you never really know who's going to pop up where and when. It's very much an anthology, but there's always opportunity for fun connections to be made. Great. You know, seeing at the end of this episode, and I promise we will get to what happened in the episode in just a couple of minutes. But at the end of the episode, when Peggy goes through the portal, she arrives in front our guy, McPyrie, off guy in the present or, you know, probably more accurately, like Avengers

era present day. The stage is quite clearly set for how that adventure could continue in the next season of what if. And after watching this episode, I want that adventure to continue. I want to see more of Peggy as Captain Carter. But what's so interesting is that that's not, that's not, it's not only not the only place we can get it. It's not close to the only place we can get it. And how will the various ways and places

that we can see more of Captain Carter connect to each other? Like this is very, it's apples and oranges. Oh, apples, much like the apple, he who remains was eating, but also kind of of a piece with he who remains in the Loki finale. And again, we said there will be spoilers on the MCU at large, just one more warning right here. We knew that Jonathan Majors

had been cast as Kang for the Ant Man movie. There's so much Marvel coming between the end of Loki and that movie and based on what happened, like, you know, Mahoney and I talked about this for like literally three hours after the Loki finale.

It's difficult not to imagine that we're going to see Kang variants in like dozens of Marvel stories. So are we going to see Captain Carter not only in season two of What If, as that quote, indicates that we will and primes us for, but in a movie, perhaps. Well, let me share another quote with you, Benjamin. Here is a snippet from an interview that A.C. Bradley, the what-if writer and Brian Andrews, what-if director conducted with the Hollywood reporter's Brian Davids. Andrews, quote, I know AC and I feel totally the same in this while we don't know if this is necessarily going to happen.

and it would be amazing if they would just do a Captain Carter movie, just get Haley-Aughtwell in the suit, give her her her own franchise and just have her blow doors like hells to the yeah. Bradley says, I always joke that Haley-Aat-Wall could be Ben Graham and be amazing. She'd be an awesome thing. Like, this is incredible. How many different places in Marvel are we going to see what happens in what if unfold? And that's one of the things that I find enjoyable about it.

It's not just about reassessing what we've already seen. It's about considering what might unfold in the future. And it's almost a return to old school TV where you could actually be responsive to ratings to fan feedback. You could adjust in the writing room, whereas now things are so tightly choreographed, planned so far in advance. You know what's in phase four. You know what's in phase five. And sometimes a pandemic happens and things change. Sometimes Scarlett Johansons sues you.

And, you know, you can't predict these things. But if you find that you're following a thread and you like where it leads and it seems like your audience likes where it leads, then I think there's some freedom to follow this just because it's animation, because it's not quite as tightly planned as, say, a miniseries where you know, okay, we have six episodes, we have eight episodes and we have to slot that in after this show because we have an assembly line of three other shows right behind that. and this has to go before that because we have to introduce this character so that that character can appear in this movie, maybe it can be a little more free-flowing than that, potentially. I mean, there are billions of dollars riding on all of these decisions, and so I'm sure they won't be winging it, but I think there might be a little more freedom when it comes to figuring out where they want to take this. And speaking of that freedom, if I can read you a quote, and this is from. from headwriter AC Bradley, who said, I was kind of notorious for trying to get a Star Wars character involved in what if. We did try at what point, but it's kind of like play with the sandbox that you were given.

We gave you the entire MCU run with that, which is reasonable. But Bradley went on to say, I was like, okay, but still, Luke Skywalker would be an amazing adventure. Maybe that's too far for some people. But Daniel Chin and I just actually wrote about this for the ringer.com. What a great website a few weeks ago. We considered whether a Star Wars MCU crossover could happen or should happen. And judging by our Twitter mentions, no one wants this. You say that now, but put Grogu in the MCU and get back to me.

Right. Disney's shareholders want this, I think. But other than that, I'm not sure. Arjuna says phase seven. Yeah, that feels right. It's coming. I'm pretty sure we're coming. And you just made the Grogu joke, but that was something that Bradley said too.

You know, season 20, maybe Baby Groot meets Grogu. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. That's probably too much for people right now. Yeah. I mean, the entire MCU is a pretty big sandbox, especially when you have no constraints on timelines and continuity and canon. So I'm not saying that that needs to happen now, but that's the kind of thing that, could come into play at some point down the road.

I love it. Let me just say this. On the one hand, that is just a terrifying prospect that kind of crossover. On the other hand, I can't lie to you. I can't lie to the listeners. And I can't lie to myself. If Grogu wound up on my screen in an MCU property one day, I would just like shout and scream and wail and just devolve it to like a puddle of

joy because he's great and I love him. We would watch. We would watch. And there are ways that you could do something like that that would probably be some kind of cash in that would not treat either license with the respect it deserves. But there are so many storytellers now who are working in both of these worlds, whether writers or directors who have worked on Star Wars movies or shows or MCU properties. So there are people who have a lot of love and affection and knowledge about both of these things. And I don't doubt if Kevin Feigey is producing a Star Wars movie, then how large a leap is it? If we are doing a crossover Star Wars MCU podcast right now, then how can we cast aspersions on Disney doing the same thing?

Look, our guy, Michael Waldron, friend of the pod, Loki head writer, right in the next Dr. Strange movie, make it a Star Wars movie. Michael, let's put BB8 down in the workshop with Tony and have him make sure Tony puts some respect on dear dummies name. That would be great. I would love that. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business. It keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, 24-7 U.S.-based support, millions of business owners

already trust Spectrum Business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. We could just talk about IP and spinoffs for four hours. Let's actually spend a couple minutes

talking about episode one and what we saw in it. Episode one, what if... Dad, da, da, da. Captain Carter were the first Avenger. Peggy at the center of this. I doubt anybody needs this refresher, but just in case, Peggy and Steve,

of course, one of the central pairing, central relationships, seminal relationships in the MCU. I mean, their long-awaited dance ends up building toward what is literally the final shot of Avengers endgame, hard to overstate how important their bond in their love ultimately is. Peggy was not just in the MCU films, though. Of course, she's in the 2013 one shot. And then had her own ABC show. Agent Carter. Haley-at-Well started that. That was a Marcus and McPhilly vehicle. It was on ABC from 2015 to 2016. Only two seasons.

Too short-lived. I loved that show. I thought it was wonderful. I wish we had gotten more of it. need to revisit that because it's been it's been a little while since I've seen it, but it was just absolutely fabulous. There were a lot of things that were great about it, but the single best thing about it was that it starred Peggy Carter, who's an awesome character. And I loved getting to see Peggy in the spotlight at the center at the beginning of this journey. Of course, she's been on MCU fans' mind recently because of Sharon Carter's role as Powerbroker in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. want to talk about our overall impressions of the premiere, which again was written by A.C. Bradley, directed by Brian Andrews. What do you think about the choice, though, to start with Peggy to kick off our what-if

journey with Captain Carter? So I think there are two ways you could look at it. One is that this doesn't diverge as dramatically from the story that we know as some potential lead-off hitters that they could have chosen here and maybe as some of the ones that we've seen that people will see. soon. I think that could be a bad thing. That could be a good thing. If you come into this wanting this to be as wild as possible, if you want it to be a huge departure from what we know, if you think that's the point of what if why bother doing this, if you are going to hit some of the same beats, then I could see why it might be a bit disappointing that even though you're trading the stars and stripes for the union jack here, you're still getting a lot of the same.

Dope Shield. Love seeing Peggy with the Shield. Incredible stuff. It sort of ends up in a similar place, at least to some extent. You know, and if you think, well, if you change this one thing, then you're going to get the butterfly effect and everything changes. That doesn't really happen here. On the other hand, I could see this being a nice introduction to the concept, just to ease

people into it. What if you change one thing and not everything changes? Don't all run away. This is not totally different from the story. You know, we're just changing one little thing, and we'll see how that plays out. And we'll get you acclimated to this concept of a hypothetical where we're picking one point where one decision is different and things flow differently from there. And then that could be a nice little lead in to maybe changing things more significantly, whether it's the actual events or maybe changing things tonally a little bit because you have such a wide range in MCU movies where you have the sort of straight up ones. you have the weird ones, you have the funny ones, you have the serious ones.

A lot of genre and tonal variance across the MCU. Exactly. And I think they've kind of spread their wings over time, right? Marvel's gotten stranger and funnier, and I think that's been for the best. So maybe now you go back and revisit some of the earlier ones that played it a little bit straighter and you change some things up. So I think that's kind of the pro and con push and pull here. I mean, it worked for me, and I would encourage anyone who it doesn't. doesn't work for to stick with this, just because without spoiling anything, it only gets better from here. But I think from that perspective, it's not a bad introduction to this concept, which

could be kind of off-putting for some people who are not used to animation or who think, why is this different from the movie I saw and loved 10 years ago? Yeah, to me, the choice to start with Peggy makes a lot of sense. And, you know, I do want to circle. back to what you just said about the similarities to the first Avenger movie in terms of like the plot beats. I want to circle back to that in a second, but just in terms of Peggy,

it felt like to me sinking right into like a bath where the water was like exactly the right temperature. You know, because there's a real comfort and familiarity to the character set in this episode, not only Peggy, but

Steve, Howard, But the shift is that we get to spend more time focusing on the character who we didn't get as much time with in the MC movies, Peggy. I want to ask you another like a big picture question, though, before we get back to the first Avenger plot point similarities. Animation style and voice acting mix. How did the animation style work for you overall in this episode? and I'm curious for your thoughts on the voice acting mix, and this is another area where I think we can make an interesting comp to the Star Wars animated shows

where the characters are drawn to resemble directly the actors who played those characters in the films and are often voiced by different people, and there's something like a little uncanny when you see an animated version of a person you know, and then that's not the voice you hear. Now, this will be a thing across the entire season of What If? In this episode, actually most of the actors who played these characters in the MCU reprised their roles here.

Like, Haley Atwell is Peggy Carter, Sebastian Stan is Bucky, Dominic Cooper, is Howard Stark, etc, etc. There's a notable exception, though, and that is that Chris Evans does not voice Steve Rogers. Josh Keaton does. I think he did, I think Josh Keaton did a great job. that's, I mean, hard to do, right? Tough act to follow, Chris Evans as Steve. Generally, do you think that's going to be something that takes you or takes other viewers out of it? Or is that just a matter of kind of acclimating to something that will eventually feel completely normal inside of the what if universe?

I think it's pretty important for the first one. I don't know that they need to have all of these people reprise their roles in every subsequent Marvel animated property. But I think for this one, just to send the signal that, hey, this matters just as much as the stories you know, this is canon. This is real. Even though it's different, it's on the same level. We're taking this seriously.

And we got the same people to play these characters. I think that that removes one potential point of objection for people who watch this and think, okay, already this doesn't look like what I'm used to. at least it sounds like what I'm used to. And so there's some continuity there. Whereas, you know, when you watch a Star Wars animated show, there's always that moment of, okay, is this real Frank Oz or is this fake Frankos, right? And no one quite gets it perfectly.

I mean, I don't want to denigrate any of the fine voice impersonators out there who do an excellent job. But there's always that moment, that uncanny value of audio where you think, is that the person or not. And at this point, I'm used to it. And that doesn't bother me at all, you know, unless it's so distractingly different that it takes me out of it. You know, if it's reasonably close, I'm fine with it. It's not something I'll even notice. And at some cases, it can become a delight, right? Like, Matt Lancer is Anakin for, I think us and for a lot of Star Wars fans.

Yeah, sorry, Hayden. But, yeah, you have someone who puts their own spin on the character. And as we were saying before, there's just so much more clone wars than there is attack of the clones, for instance, that the replacement gets associated with that character. I'm glad there's not that much more attack of the clones, frankly. But I think it is pretty important for this first one just to set that precedent and to say this is something important. This is something you should pay attention to. And as for the animation style, it seems as if it's been somewhat divisive. I've seen people be very pro.

I've been people be very con. To me, I liked it. It felt a little bit retro to me. I could see how maybe you feel like the faces aren't expressive enough. There's some slight stiffness or woodenness there, but it's fluid. It's bright. It's colorful. It has kind of a classic look.

And I'd be interested in the look changing just as much as the content and the tone eventually. You know, if it morphs into something like Star Wars visions coming next month where you have different animators, different artists who are taking their own approach to something, that can be great, I think. And so if it's, you know, each season of what if has a different look or down the road, each episode has a different look. And people can put their stamp on it. I think that would be great, too. But again, I'm trying to lower any barriers to entry here. You know, anything that might scare someone off who is used to just go into the multiplex and seeing the people who look like people on the giant screen. People who look like people.

I want to make it easy for everyone. So for me, at least, this work. And I thought it harkened back to, you know, some classic animated superhero stories of my youth maybe. So what did you make of it? Yeah, I agree. I liked the style again. it felt like it tapped into that aspect of we are really living in a comic book story that I enjoyed.

I think I'm just, in terms of the, again, like kind of uncanny nature of how similar the renderings look to the actors and then those moments where they're doing something different or sound different than what you expect, I think I've just used to that from watching so many Star Wars animated shows that it honestly, it didn't faze me at all. I do like what you're saying about how eventually introducing really notably distinct animation styles and approaches, depending on what the focus of each episode is, could be a really cool thing in future seasons. But overall, I enjoyed the style. And it was cool to hear many of our friends surprising their roles and then to welcome some new ones. I liked the episode.

Ben, I think that in terms of going back to what you were saying, and this has been a discussion point, you know, at large. And in the wake of the episode, Charles Van talked about this for a while on Midnight Boys. So again, check that out if you haven't. In terms of the, like, pros and cons of the story beat similarities to First Avenger, I definitely get why that didn't work for some people and why it felt like maybe not, especially as an opening note for this experience, just like, not as fresh as what people wanted. And also how condensing something that we are used to consuming over the length of a movie into this shorter form. It was almost like disorienting in a way because you're not just focusing on what you're seeing. You're focusing on what was absent that you know should be there. For that reason, I found it a more enjoyable episode to watch

when I returned to it a second time and just watched it, as opposed to, like, thinking very actively, oh, here's one we're with Zola, here's one with Red Skull, you know, here's the 107th, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Am I going to see a glass of milk? Is someone going to jump on a grenade? Like, that was how my mind was working the first time.

The second time I just watched it, and I was like, this was a lot of fun. I've mentioned Dark on recent podcasts because I finally watched it a few weeks ago and just thought it was spectacular. I will not spoil the particulars of Dark, but I will make a comparison here, so if you don't want to hear this fast for 30 seconds.

Could you? Is it possible to? I'm not sure it is. It, both this episode and again, I think, what if as a vehicle where we will return to the familiar, but in a new way, made me think of dark because, and specifically the aspect of dark where there are moments in dark, and again, I won't say exactly what they are,

where you were revisiting. events, in essence in full, right? Sometimes when the story beats were recurring and I was watching that in dark, I would feel like, oh, man, I want to see something new. I want to see something I haven't seen before. I want to learn something about what's next. But ultimately, where I landed almost every time without exception, was feeling like that choice to revisit something through a new lens, the slight recalibration, unlocked my

understanding of who the characters are, of the impact of the decisions that they make. And ultimately, I think that when you see these beats recur and you note what the distinctions are and what the commonalities are, what changes is just as important as what doesn't change, right? That amplifies the thematic residence and the thematic takeaways from me. And so that's something I really enjoy. And I think we can run from there into just hitting like a few of the highlights of what those, you know, First Avenger comps. divergences were in this episode.

We obviously are inside of Project Rebirth with a twist. And the key moment comes when Peggy is asked if she'd be more comfortable in the booth. And this time she says, no, I prefer to stay. And so when Kruger, this fucking guy, when he ignites the bomb before the procedure this time, Jason and I end while just watching the First Avenger at home, Adam and I have spent so much time over the years arguing about whether it makes sense in First Avengers that Kruger waits for them to turn Steve Rogers into his super soldier.

I'm always like, why wouldn't he have stopped it? And the argument is, well, he's got to see if the serum works first. But I was personally delighted to see him spring into action before they made Steve a super soldier. And not because I don't want Steve to be a super soldier to be clear, because I think that's what Kroger always should have done. And I've never understood why he did things differently. Anyway, not only does he activate the bomb and disrupt the procedure before Steve

becomes Captain America, he shoots Steve Rogers. And in the absolute frenzy that unfolds when Howard's like, guys, it's now never. We've got to move. Howard doesn't want to go in. He pushes buttons, Ben, and brags about dalliances later in the episode with Hetty Lamar. Quite a flex from Howard. Wasn't teaching you German. Peggy goes into the Viter Ray cocoon. This was a fascinating episode in terms of bringing the sexism and bias that Peggy Carter faced in the SSR, in this moment in history, to the four. Flynn. real piece of garbage, Peggy aptly dubs him a weapons grade moron, which I enjoyed, is the face of so much of that. He says, I was promised an army. I was promised peace and salvation. Instead, I get a girl. He says, this is a recurring line across the episode that Peggy will

eventually throw back in his face. Be grateful you're in the room. He says, women aren't soldiers are they sure as hell don't fight on the front lines. They might break a nail. And then naturally, later as the complete piece of shit that he is takes full credit for Captain Carter and the Hydra Stomper went on the phone with the president. We see one of the soldiers who Peggy is fighting out in the field call her fragile. We hear Peggy say to Steve in one of their conversations at the bar, the way people view me has changed. I'm no longer screaming to be heard, to be seen to be in the room. This is one of the things that I enjoyed most about the episode. And I think that the fact that it was, you know, powerful and able to explore and examine key issues and themes in such a short span of

time while also establishing with the concept of what if at large was going to be was impressive to me. And I really am, you know, for many reasons, but that among them, excited to see more of Peggy as as Captain Carter in the future. It's awesome to see her out there completely kicking ass. She's, she's dope. Right. Yeah. And personally, I would think that if someone were bleeding out on the floor, maybe giving them the Super Soldier serum might be the best treatment. I don't know how Super Super Super. They just kind of let Steve hang out. Yeah. Like you would think it's like he wouldn't have survived the procedure. And you waste the serum. But maybe you save his life. I don't know. It seems like one possible treatment. But,

but yeah. And then, you know, it sort of proceeds along similar lines where she's sidelined initially, not because of the U.S.O. Tour, which is alluded to. Yes, we get it with the eventual costume handover that that was supposed to be for the U.S.O. Bonn Tour. I love that little connection. So she's on the sidelines, but just because of sexism instead of the U.S.O. Tour. But the effect is ultimately the same until she goes after the Tesseract and some things kind of play out a similar way. You know, you get Bucky and you have the rescue. And, you know, then things maybe diverge a little bit at the end, which we could also.

discuss. But that's sort of what you were talking about, where, yeah, I think because it hues closely to some of those plot points at least, and because you're rushing to get them in, there's a little bit of pressure that you wouldn't face if you just said, we're tearing up the script and we're going to go in a completely different direction, which we know will happen and will happen soon, so stay tuned. But for this one, it did kind of map onto the movie more closely. And so I think there were, as you were saying, there are some kind of interesting contrast there where because some of the same things happen, but they happen for different reasons, maybe that illuminates something about the difference in these characters or the way these characters

are perceived. Yeah, like, I think the Peggy and Steve relationship of dynamic is an interesting one to assess through that lens because the fact that they still fall in love and are so drawn toward each other, despite these vast differences in what unfolds. It was like, I just thought so lovely. You know, it really helped reinforce and add even more weight to their connection. Like, again, it's just, it's such a key bond and pairing across the MCU. I really enjoyed seeing how they would find their way to each other, again, despite the circumstances being different.

We, of course, get the dance as a three. line once again, you know, from the maybe you haven't found the right partner line to you owe me the dance to the attempt to replicate the, yes, Saturday night, you owe me a dance lesson, farewell that is, you know, flips their roles and converts their roles from Steve taking the Valky down into the ice in the First Avenger. I don't think you can really match the emotional impact of the end of First Avenger. I mean, that conversation with Peggy and Cap is just heart-wrenching. It's just a heart-wrenching.

It's tough to match that, but I did, I viewed this as almost more of like a nod to that and a recognition of how meaningful that is to fans, which I liked. But I also really, really liked that this was a reminder and a reinforcement of something that we already knew, which is that Peggy loved Steve Rogers before he became, Captain America, like before he got the serum, before he got swole, you know, when when Steve and Tony go to Camp Lehigh on the time heist and end game, because they need a test track, they need more pin particles, and Steve makes his way into Peggy's office, you know, realizes he's in Peggy's office. I love that part of Endgame so much. So heart-enching. What does he see on her desk? It's not just,

it's not just any picture of him. It's a picture of him when he was skinny and small. It's a picture of him from before he got the serum. What's on the inside. Yes, the essence of who he is is the thing that she loved. And, you know, I think that that was also one of the things that was effective ultimately about the episode. The relationship and connection deepens

because we see how the serum worked for Peggy too. Like we should not lose sight of what we know, what we understand canonically, about how the serum works. at that stage of the serum, right, Erskine serum, how it works. Why did Red Skull become Red Skull? Why did Steve Rogers become Captain America? Why did Peggy Carter become Captain Carter?

Because it amplifies what's inside of you. It's the this is why you were chosen speech from Erskine about compassion. And Peggy and Steve are united by their hearts, by their compassion. And also by the fact that they share a desire to help and to control. tribute and to be on the front lines, but always had to contend with the fact that other people didn't believe that they could or think that they should. And so if you take a moment like Peggy apologizing to Steve for him not getting to end the war like he was supposed to and him saying, now you will, I thought that was really moving and cool. Love conquers all, except possibly a

70-year time jump. We'll see. quickly, before we move on, I want to hit on a few of the other character dynamics in the episode, Steve Rogers becoming hydr-stopper because Howard Stark, Tony's father, makes him what is in essence now the first Iron Man suit,

then I loved this. I loved this. In some ways, because Steve wearing the suit first would really piss off Tony. You know, they are, of course, teammates and friends, but also but heads a lot throughout the MCU.

Don't always see I-die. For more on that, check out the excellent film, Captain America's Civil War. Think back to Cap saying to Tony in Avengers, big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you? I love that that's like inverted now. Steve is the one in the suit of armor. But also thinking about something like Tony saying to Peter in Homecoming,

if you're nothing without this suit, then you shouldn't have it. And the way that he's thinking about the suit, the tech, the power, the might at hand evolved over the course of the MCU. Like, I found myself thinking about that moment during Peggy and Steve's exchange at the bar where he says, must be nice. I'm still that skinny kid for Brooklyn, now just in a big metal suit. And she says, you're more than the suit. The suit is nothing without the man inside. Like Tony wasn't in this episode, but we thought of him very consistently.

of course, the connection between Tony and Howard is one of the many ways, but that's one of the things that the episode did and afforded us that I thought was cool. Think about the fact that when Tony discovers new element, that's thanks to Howard's Testeract research. This is a great bridge when we see Howard literally take the Testeract and use it to power the Hydra Stompers suit. And even something like Peggy saying, who needs a plan, I have a shield made me think of Tony saying I have a plan. I have a play on attack. So Tony was very present in the episode, even though he wasn't there. And I enjoyed that. Yeah.

And it was kind of an interesting thought experiment in what would the Iron Man suit look like in the 1940s. It turns out it would look like Iron Giant, I guess, which is kind of cool. I kind of questioned whether Peggy needed the help. It seemed like she had things in hand. But I guess from a narrative sense and to deepen their relationship, it makes the most sense for them to be fighting side by side. I'm just saying it looked like Peggy had it handled. Yeah, she was handling Hydra just fine on her own. Rapid fire to wrap our what if talk here. We're going to go through The Watcher, Bucky, and Hydra. The Watcher. Jeffrey writes The Watcher

opens the episode, our guide in the world. We get this stage and scene setting opening voiceover. We get the key episode primer button, another unit. a single choice created a whole new hero. How did the watcher work for you as like a structural technique for bookending the episode, but also just as our guide through this new experience? Yeah, I know that's a framing device borrowed from the comics. And I like it for a few reasons. I mean, one is that I was always sort of fascinated with the watcher. I don't know that I expected the watcher to sound like Jeffrey Wright necessarily, but he's got a great voice. So I'm fine with it. But I was kind of always drawn to the watcher, I guess, for a couple reasons.

One is that one thing you always do when you get into comics is you try to figure out who's the most powerful, right? And you make your ranking of who could beat up everyone else. And with the watcher, maybe it's all a bit academic because the whole point of the watcher is that it's not supposed to use those powers. But if the watcher did, then we'd be pretty close to the top of the heap. So that was one draw for me. And also I just kind of identify with that character on a personal level. Like the watcher is pretty much me at parties. Just like stand to the side, observe from afar, document it all, don't necessarily chip in, participate.

So I like that. And, you know, because you're going to be skipping around in the timeline and featuring different characters in every episode, I think it makes sense to have some kind of connective tissue, right? Even if it's just Jeffrey Wright showing up for 30 seconds to say, yeah, the multiverse. is fractured and I'm kind of a creeper and I'm stalking and I'm watching everyone at all times. It's a consistent lead in. Leave the creeping, stalking, watching everyone at all times to Hindahl. Okay? That's his thing.

So I like having that as just the consistent lead in to each episode and then it can go in a completely different direction from there. Bucky, let me just say this. He looked great. He looked great. Great, Ben, rocketing up my personal power rankings of hottest animated renderings,

obviously, number one now and always, Clone Wars, Obi-1. One of my greatest loves, but Bucky is definitely on the list now. That was special. I thought it was fascinating that he did not become

the Winter Soldier in this episode. He's in the same. with the Howling Commandos not being experimented on when the 107 rescue takes place. We get a nod and a wink to, oh, you know, maybe you just don't like trains and a comment about losing an arm. But he doesn't actually fall off the train. The train incident lands Steve temporarily in Hydra Control, not Bucky. I found myself particularly, like, surprised and interested in this on the heels, of course, of the Falcon and the Winter Soldier,

where we just got to spend so much time watching Bucky reflect on what not just his time as the Winter Soldier meant, but how to move beyond it. It was like sort of cathartic and soothing to see a version of this where he did not be calm. Hydra's brainwashed pawn. And we've seen a lot of Sebastian Stan lately,

and apparently you prefer seeing animated Bucky than the real thing. No, I love, I love. I love them both. Okay. Well, it's okay that he maybe takes a backseat here. And so maybe you can reflect on how this relates to the live action version that we were just watching. But that's pretty fresh in our minds. So might as well spend some time with some others.

And you need some points of divergence, as we were saying here, so that you're not going beat by beat because that would defeat the purpose of what if. So I think you have to have some points of departure. And this was one that made sense. Another point of departure, and we can conclude our what if talk here, was what we saw unfold with Hydra. Honestly, just iconic stuff from Zola and Red Skull. I was waiting for animated Zola to shriek. I'm Swiss at some point, but alas,

Red Skull summons his champion, the champion of Hydra. It does not go well for him then. Not a speculation. Banna-Charles talked about this on the Midnight Boys on Wednesday. Was the tentacled monster, the would-be champion who used the test track to draw through this portal, Schumegovath? Is this the old great one? One of the old great ones.

Coming into the MCU is this a hint of what is to come in other multiverse stories in the MCU? I do not know the answer to any of the. those questions, but that is a vastly powerful comics character who is deeply connected to multiverse storytelling, cross-dimensional power. So seems plausible. I guess my question to you, to conclude before we move on to Bad Batch is, does it matter? If that's a character who we end up seeing again and this was a taste, a stage setter, does that enhance things for you in any way? If we never see this character again, does that detract from the impact? Or is it, is it, is it, Is it great no matter what?

Sometimes Marvel screws with us, right? They want us to have this conversation. Sometimes we screw with ourselves and we overthink things. And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes the fly is not Mephisto, right? And so it's possible that you could have multiple Lovecraftian horrors who are appearing here. But if you are going to bring in one who is so well known and recognizable, I mean, And if it has stickers like an octopus and it comes through the portal to another dimension,

then you would think that it would be kind of misleading, kind of confusing for it not to be the one everyone knows and expects it to be. But maybe they're messing with us. And again, like, that's part of the potential of this format, I think, is that, yes, you could play with it and you could bring in someone and just give us a taste and not even acknowledge it, not even say, yes, this is who it is, but just cause speculation. Or you could give us that taste and fan your fan base into a frenzy and then never return to it and just have a little bit of fun with people. And it doesn't necessarily need to connect to the next episode, right, because we're going in a completely different direction.

So people will just, you know, have their appetites wet it. And if it was who people think it might have been, then it wasn't the most auspicious debut. It didn't go so well, frankly. I guess it went better than it went for red skull. But this is just an example of... Well, Peggy paired a sword with her shield, you know? Yes. She served Kalamari for everyone.

But I don't know, frankly. But in a way, it doesn't matter because there are so many possibilities here that I don't think we need to hang on every possibility the way that we do with some of the live-action series where it's, oh, does this mean that this is coming? I mean, frankly, we are just bombarded by possibilities. possibilities here and possible crossover. So if this one doesn't pan out this time, somewhere down the road in season 37, then that time. 37, my goodness.

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on Paramount Plus. Crosshair has always been severe and unyielding. It is his nature. You cannot change that. He cannot change that. Why are you defending me? I am not.

understanding you does not mean that I agree with you. Whether or not we return to Tenticle Town who can say, we did though, return to Camino. Boy, did we. Yes. It is time to talk about the bad batch finale, two-parter, the bad batch season. We are channeling our inner midnight boy here.

It's instant reaction time because the bad batch. Bad Batch finale just aired. It dropped overnight. We've watched it. You have written about it. Everybody please head to Theringer.com to read Ben's wonderful piece on the finale in the first season. And here we are. Here we are.

We're going to talk about the finale, our instant reactions, our initial thoughts for a few minutes here. And then we're going to talk about the season as a whole, which, spoiler alert, I loved. We're going to go through some categories, hand out some grades. it's going to be a blast. Let's start once again with initial impressions. This was a two-part finale. Return to Camino last week. Camino lost this week.

What'd you think? I wasn't head over heels with the finale, but I was fine with the finale. I was not at all disappointed by the finale. I think you have to recalibrate your expectations a little bit because shows teach you how to watch them, right? Yeah, definitely. Some shows teach you to expect massive finale with major reveals and huge paradigm altering twists.

You know, you watch the first episode of The Mandalorian. You get Baby Yoda at the end. Okay. That's how this show works, right? Still unbelievable. One of the greatest reveals of all time. They did it. They kept Baby Yoda's secret.

It's just the greatest accomplishment of the Disney Star Wars era. But that's the Mandalorian. that's not the bad batch, I don't think. And so if you were going into this finale, expecting it to change everything and to totally reframe our understanding of the lore, if you thought it was going to be like the Mando season finale, even like the Clone Wars series finale, this could be a bit of a letdown, I guess, because this is a character-centric finale, at least the second part, which is not a bad thing in my book. I think characters matter. We care about characters. And There's action here.

There is the intensity of Topoka City plunging to the bottom and really just closing the book on a chapter of Star Wars that started when Obi-Wan stumbled across Camino, low these many years ago. Long hair glistening in the rain. Not animated Obi-Wan, but the next best thing. That's over. We can close the book on Camino, maybe not necessarily. Not the cloning operation, though. Yes. We'll get to that.

But I think that this put the focus on the characters, on their relationships with each other, whether they would help each other, whether they would oppose each other, your boy, Crosshair, maybe had a tough finale, maybe not as tough as the premiere, which we talked about. But we could talk about Mr. Crosshair's motivations in this finale. But there's a lot to like here. There's a lot of emotional moments. And even though the destruction of Camino, or at least the capital of Camino by Vice Admiral Rampart and the imperial bombardment, was not the biggest plot twist that we've ever seen in Star Wars, I think that this looked great, it sounded great, and I think it gave us a lot of moments that fleshed out some pretty important aspects of these characters. And, you know, we can talk about the extent to which it set up season two or paid off season one storylines, but I was entertained. We will talk about all of those things, Benjamin Lindberg. I've got great news for you.

Broadly, I loved the finale. And I particularly loved Part 2, Camino Lost. I have, over the course of the season, really, really adored the, cross-canon connections, like the moments when Badbatch has brought into its fold other characters, other planets,

other key moments and arcs that we are so deeply attached to or maybe just like, hey, oh, I'm interested. We're going to talk about that later. We have a specific category coming on that. And so I'm almost surprised

by how much I loved the finale because to me, those canon connections were one of the highlights of the season. That was not a part of the finale. I was kind of waiting for it. You know, I was slacking with you and Arjuna and Steve over the week.

And I was like, what if we see Grogu? I thought there was a real chance that we were going to see Boba, particularly because, you know, Omega's standing as this high-value target because she is one of two along with Boba, original code name Alpha, pure genetic replications of Django and the pursuit of that genetic material in DNA it was a big part of the season thought there was a real chance

that Boba would show up in the finale but even though I was expecting a connection or a reveal like that and I probably would have like bet money with you guys on the fact that we would get something like that. I wish you had. I would have won that one.

Despite everything. I agree with everything you said about the show teaching you how to watch it. I think that's really astute. I would have guessed that we were going to get something like that. However, I didn't miss it. I thought that this finale was so tight and focused and intentional in that focus. It was about Clone Force 99. It was about their connection with Omega.

It was about the parting of the ways with crosshair. It was about that chapter of Camino history, as you noted. Who these people are, what their dynamics are, how they are assessing what purpose looks like for them in this new era of galactic life was like intimate in a way that I found really. gripping, but it was also kind of grand the episode. Like, it was really, and this is true of the entire season, but I was struck by it in the second part of the finale, Camino Lost. It was so cinematic and so gorgeous to look at. Like, the action and the suspense of it was very intense. I thought it was visually arresting. I fucking loved. Loved. Loved! Loved! The star, role that my guy

AZ played. Incredible stuff. And I thought that Crosshairs arc, I thought a lot of the weight of how the season concluded was going to rest on Crosshairs arc, and I thought that that landed, for me at least. I was happy with the way that his conversations with

Hunter and Omega and the whole group played out across the two-part finale and what we are going to continue to explore about his character. We want to go quickly, before we get to the grades, beat by beat on a couple of the characters in terms of the finale and where we leave them? You want to start with Omega? Sure. Yeah, I was really touched actually by some of the last shots on that landing platform

when she is looking for the last time at Camino, at the smoke, spiraling up from the ruins of her home. And you wouldn't think that she would be homesick for this place, that there would be a nostalgia for this city, for this place where they were raised to be fighters, you know, without families, with Caminoans. And we can talk a little bit about maybe Omega's upbringing on Camino being a little bit different from the rest of the clones. That's something that I hope we find out more about in future seasons. But I think it hits them because this whole series is about characters who are kind of cast adrift. And they're trying to find their new home.

And they're trying to make a home. And they're trying to figure out what their purpose is in a world where they've been rendered redundant, where the size. that they thought they were fighting for, suddenly morphed into something twisted and evil, right? And now they don't know who to fight for, what to fight for, where to go, what to do. And they've created this little family unit of their brothers, of their sisters. They have bonded together and they have created a new home. And yet, as they leave Camino, presumably for the last time, there is still, I think, a sense of finality. of there's no going back to that world.

Maybe that world wasn't perfect, but it's sort of like Omega was saying, in the premiere, this place is not like it used to be. You know, things have changed. We have to leave. Later, she makes Hunter promise that she won't have to come back to Camino.

And she does come back. And so you would think she would be very eager to leave again. And yet there is still some part of her that recognizes there's a before and there's an after and something irrevocable has happened here. And there's that great shot where she is just framed in the background by the rest of the bad batch. And they were all kind of looking over her shoulder as she stares with a real sense of sadness and loss. And there's a sense that they're embarking on a new chapter here.

So that really landed for me. And apart from that, she was her usual altruistic, upbeat self, wanting to help everyone and save everyone and believe. in everyone despite all evidence to the contrary. Yeah, I agree. You know, you and I, when we did our pod off of the Bad Batch premiere and then just in our subsequent slacks and texts and chats about the season, you observed, and we talked a lot about the parallels between Bad Batch and Mando in terms of, you know, precocious youngster paired with unlikely

guardians and how that was going to unfold across various settings and missions. I think that Omega shares commonalities with other key Star Wars figures, but also wound up over the course of this first season feeling so distinct and so instantly established as like elemental to Star Wars. I love Omega. I wound up, I wound up so, I wound up so attached to this character and so invested in learning more about what is ahead because I'm scared. I'm worried and concerned as much as I am with other characters who are not later present in Star Wars stories that we have already consumed. What does it mean? Yes. I loved learning that Omega is older than Hunter and tech and

and wrecker and crosshair. This was so cool and interesting, not only in terms of how- Just like Broku. That's right. The Cubs older than the lone wolves. To quote, to quote Jay, he's 50. She's not 50, but the others might be eight, ten. How old are the bad batch?

Right. I'm worried about that. Well, that's the thing. Exactly. Like, it's so interesting not only in how it makes us think about what her life on Camino and Downen Nala Se's private lab was like in this attachment that she formed to Clone Force 99 before they even knew who she was. But it's so interesting in terms of how it alters what we think about them. I mean, of course we have known established canon, you know, this accelerated aging for the clones.

But how does this reveal in particular influence how we think about the experience and the life that they have lived to this point, how they have gotten to where they are, what it might mean for their ability to adapt in the future? Like there's not as much life lived, right? I'm holding on to that with our guy crosshair. But what's the runway left? You know? Like, how long do we have with these characters? And that's kind of sad.

Now, of course, there are aspects of the Star Wars animated universe where we've seen, you know, we've seen, Rex is, of course, the best example, where we've seen clones across, you know, a pretty wide stretch of time. so who knows how long we'll be with the bad batch. But with Omega specifically, like she's just such a badass.

I found her, her fearlessness. You know, it made me think of that old Game of Thrones idea. You know, can a man be brave if he is afraid? That is the only time a man can be brave idea. Like the way that fear and bravery manifested

in harmony and in tandem so often for her. She just had such heart, such heart, like just never wanted to give up on the people she cared about or the other people who she thought needed help. And like her, her own growth in that respect was such a joy to witness over the course of the season. But it's not just that. That's the, key to me. It's also about the impact that she has on other characters. And so even though she is not a forced user, and you wrote, I thought very smartly, about that distinction specifically in your piece.

Again, check it out on the ringer.com. What a great website. But that duel impact. The character's own arc and evolution paired with how they unlock someone else. It made me think of Asoka because that was the secret sauce there too. You cared so much about Asoka so often because of her fierce individuality, her conviction when it came to forging her own path, not just abiding by the structures of the Jedi Order, but also because of how she helped us better understand Anakin. And Clone Force 99 is not Anakin Skywalker in terms of relevance in the start. Wars universe. Of course. But I just really admire Faloni's ability to like nail that balancing act in particular. It's just supreme. Yeah. Yeah. And you just alluded to it. I think people were

waiting for some other shoe to drop with Omega all season. Is she force sensitive? Is she a clone of Palpatine? That was a popular rumor that was going on early in the season or even before the season started. And no, that's not the case. There wasn't a huge shoe to drop. We found out that she's the pure genetic replica of Django, and we found out that she's actually older than the rest of the batch. But that's about it when it comes to twists. And I admire that about this show, because it would be so easy to fall back on the old trusted and true secret force user, right? And that is sort of the standard. Even Rogue One, which is sort of the exception in terms of. of relying on Jedi has one of the most iconic

lightsaber scenes of all time. And Bad Vetch, apart from the premiere, apart from Order 66, which crushed us, of course. That's it. Devastating. They're on their own. You know, Luke Skywalker is not going to ride in in his X-Wing and save the day here.

I mean, he's like a month old at this point. Well, baby X-wing. Baby Luke. But even if he weren't, this is not the kind of show where that would happen. And I want to know what made Omega that way. That's something that I don't know that the season satisfactorily answered for me. And maybe that's some ground that's left to cover in future seasons.

But why the difference between Omega and Crosshair, the misanthropic loner, who presumably was raised in somewhat similar circumstances? What made Omega so trusting, such a people person, so altruistic? Why does she always want to help everyone and save everyone? Is it because of Nalisei? Was there a special relationship there? And will we find out more about that now that Nalaisa is a captive of the empire? I just want to know exactly what made Omega that way, because you wouldn't think that being raised on Camino by yourself, seemingly for large stretches of time, would make someone like that.

And maybe it's just that she was so deprived of human companionship that now that she has it, she has found her family. She is wholeheartedly embracing them. But she's been among the more capable members of the Bad Vatch from the beginning. I know Hunter is technically the leader here, but. So funny in the finale when Crossair's like, so the kid's calling the shots now. That's been happening all along. And she's gotten better as she's gotten more capable.

She's become a better shot. But she is setting the agenda here. She is coming up with the plans. Yeah. So not only is she sort of the moral center of the bad batch, but she's also quite capable, which perhaps makes sense, given now that we know she's been alive longer than all of the rest of them. So even though she may not have had that specialized training, she's seen some things. She's been around at least more than these other youngans.

Yeah. And I think, you know, to that question. about how she became the person that she is, you know, I think that for Omega, and, you know, you're right, hopefully we'll continue to learn even more about this and see how this manifests in stories to come. It's the loneliness did not make her bitter. It made her long for and really, really place an emphasis and value on connection. And, you know, that's what I think was week to week, whether it was one of the best episodes or one of the lesser episodes of the season, one of the things that consistently translated was this, this, you know, found family element.

The Bad Batch had that already because, and you know, we see this in the cafeteria scene in the premiere and aftermath quite effectively. Like, they're outcasts among their peers. And one of the things that's so interesting about the Clone Wars show and featuring the clones as central characters is always that dynamic. they're supposed to be these, this is like faceless mass, their numbers, right? But what do we see happen ultimately? They give themselves, they give each other names.

They are all individuals. They're people. They have different hairstyles. They make different choices. They want different things. And so, Colon Force 99, because of their genetic mutations and their distinct traits, they are always set a little bit apart from the rest of their brother. in a way that made them so tight-knit,

and Omega, who also feels like she is separate from a group that is defined often by its commonalities in the minds of other people, if not themselves, this connection and longing to be with her brothers. It's, of course, also for those same reasons that Crosshair and his arc are so devastating. So let's talk about that for a couple minutes here. I loved his arc across the season.

I was hoping the entire season that he would repent, that this would be a Star Wars redemption arc, always one of my faves. But I found myself in the finale, glad. Glad that he did not repent. Glad that we got a version of crosshair that felt not only like right and true to the character we'd seen all season, but ultimately more powerful in terms of the themes at the heart of

this story. You know, he says, the empire will control the entire galaxy and I am going to be a part of it. Hunter, you made the wrong choice. Now, this is on the heels of one of the most shocking reveals of the season in part one of the finale, which is when Crosshair reveals that he has had his inhibitor chip removed, the chip is not. Or so he says. I know this is your theory.

Let's get into that in a second. he is not being controlled by the chip the way that Hunter not only thinks but is really hanging onto right that's like the life raft for Hunter and the rest of the bad batch crosshair is not choosing to do this that's what Omega had long said in fact to the point we're in the finale in kind of a mirror scene of them sitting of Crosshair and Omega sitting next to each other on the bench and the premiere we get the book end of that in the finale and she says I wanted to believe that it was the inhibitor chip that made you like this but I was wrong and to me as sad as that is ultimately more impactful because the point is that these characters are not actually just one mass.

They are individuals. They have their own identities, their own desires, their own moral compasses. And Crosshairs maybe is not manifesting in the way that his brothers wanted it to, but he is reinforcing through the decisions that he's making that he is his own person. Also, he looks great. I'm just digging the vibes. The voice has definitely grown on me. I think, I question his choices, if they are, in fact, his choices. Well, I don't want to say I condone his choices. Let me be clear. I just think it's interesting that they stuck with it.

So you think he still has the chip and he's lying? Or you think there's another way that the empire is controlling him? They're clearly pulling his strings in some fashion, and it's hard to see exactly what he sees in the empire at this point because they have not reciprocated his affection. And I hope that they will pick him up from this landing platform and that he will not be stranded there. But I don't know whether we are supposed to believe that he is correct, that he is telling the truth. Maybe he thinks he is telling the truth and he is actually not. That would be interesting. Right. He says that he had the inhibitor chip taken out a long time ago, right? And how long ago

could it have been because we know he had it at some point? Right. And we know that they amplified. Exactly. And so is it possible that part of that amplification? that little Order 66 tune-up that he got is convincing him that he is no longer actually being controlled. Now that he knows too much, he knows about the chip. Maybe part of the reprogramming is convincing him that he no longer has the chip. And so you see him throughout this finale kind of rubbing his head, you know, and I sort of in a way that Wrecker was before his chip kind of activated. True.

Though, to be fair, Rector had rub parallels aside. a lot of like concussive force head injuries in this finale. That's a good point. Also just some stress. You know, sometimes don't you just ever just put your head in your hands when you're, you're having a day? Crossers having a day, man. It's a stressful situation.

It is. But we know that he has sustained some head injury right earlier in the season. I guess it was in reunion, right? He's like inside an engine that activates. And so he seems to have some residue of that there and whether that deactivated the chip, whether that is camouflaging where the chip was removed, it seems as if Hunter is sort of studying him to see, can he tell that it was removed? Although sometimes it can just be deactivated remotely. I guess it doesn't have to be surgically removed.

But it makes a big difference, obviously, to his arc and to how we evaluate his decisions if he's acting under his own free will here. Or he is still following orders like a good soldier, even unbeknownst to him. So to me, you're right. I like the idea that they could just reach different decisions organically because they're different people and that you don't go to the automatic redemption arc that everyone was expecting, at least not yet. But if they're still sort of sending mixed signals here where we can't completely believe him, to me, that detracts a little bit from the weight of the choice because I'm still not quite confident that he's actually making this choice. And, you know, you have to leave something for season two. So maybe that is still one of the storylines to come. But would have been nice if they could have just, I don't know, done a little scan or something

while they had him right there. Yeah, just to make sure, you know, because. Yeah, come on, tech. Before abandoning him again. Right. What is he there for? So there's still a lot of questions in my mind about whether that's a red herring, whether they want us to think that maybe he still has the chip and he actually doesn't.

And then if he doesn't, then what would it take to convince him that actually the empire is evil? That maybe this is not the way to go because, hey, they just abandoned you on the city that they were bombarding. Clearly, they're not interested in your well-being here. Well, he told Hunter not to take everything so personally. That's true. He is living his words. But I kind of wish that we'd spent a little more time with Crossair in the back half of the season. And some of those episodes that maybe were a little less crucial, perhaps,

might have been better spent with Crosshair just because the change of heart, the partial change of heart, was a bit abrupt for me, where he's going from hunting down his brothers to seemingly wanting to give them another shot. And then the way that his relationship with the TK troopers is fraying, which is something we get glimpses of, but we don't really get to see in full. I would have liked to see just a little bit more of that, a little bit more of the imperial side of things, which was something that, you know, when the bad batch defects in episode one, I was a little surprised that that happened so soon because I thought we might get a little bit more of the inside look at how it feels to serve the empire and presumably doesn't feel great. Well, speaking of the empire, let's chat about our old imperial pals for a second here before we get to our grades, which we must do soon because we're, Ben, we're running out. just a tad long.

Empire. Couple of the things that you had cited in our pot off the premiere that you were really interested to see explored over the course of the season, the conscripted soldiers, the emergence of the non-clone troopers, like how the forces evolved in that respect.

And also you had mentioned being really interested in seeing what the galactic response was to the empire. Would there be groups of people and planets who said, hey, Okay, war's over. This doesn't seem so bad. We got lots of different glimpses of occupations where we saw planets and forces already rising up and rebelling against the early days, the nascent empire.

We also, of course, at the very end of this finale, see Nala Seh, brought to an imperial facility. And we hear the line, the empire has big things planned for you. strong, powerful, forceful palpy vibes here. Okay? Now, I can obviously accept it here much more than in Rise of Skywalker because it would almost be weird not to connect this to the Palpatine cloning arc. Much as we're, you know, seeing and unfold across Mando. Is Nalase going to be a bridge to Dr. Pershing and Mando's cloning plot?

I mean, that is obviously many years in the future. It seems like we should expect that Nalesei is. and perhaps even Omega, if this connects back to her, though Nalasei is certainly invested primarily in keeping Omega safe. That seems clear. How will Omega and the genetic material impact the cloning plot moving forward? And what role will Nalisei play in the Palpatine cloning experiments

and the overall empire aspect? Very much like the Mandalorian, right? Another parallel where it's not just the structure of the core characters and some of the episodes, but also these. allusions to palpi trying to prolong his life. Yeah, or to Snoke. Yes, we even saw some apparent attempts at making Snoke or something that could eventually become Snoke. So I didn't like that storyline in Rise of Skywalker, as you were well aware, but now we're just, we're doomed to every subsequent series, I guess, trying to set that up

in some way. And, you know, you saw at the end in the very last scene, when we think it's over and then nope, there's a little bit more a philoni hallmark. We got the glimpse of the officer, the person who's escorting Nalisei inside, seems to be wearing the same insignia that, yeah, that Pershing sports in the Mandalorian. So there's clearly a connection there. Now, I don't know how this could lead to something imminent, which is kind of one of the challenges, I think, for this series as a whole, which is that we know what's coming. And nothing good is happening anytime soon.

And so it's bleak out there. It really is. And so these characters have to find happiness wherever they can. And it's generally with each other more so than in overthrowing the empire. You know, the fate of the galaxy is not really hanging in the balance in this show, which is sort of unusual for Star Wars. But we just, we know what the timeline is. And we are years away. We've seen it in rebels, right?

Which is, what, 14 years or so, 15 years. after this series, and that's when we get the origins of the rebellion. Now, we get maybe the origins of the origins in this series where we see Rex. We see the uprising on Ryloth. Like, these things are building, but we're a long way away. And similarly, we're a long way away from Mando. I mean, we're, what, 25 plus years away from Dr. Pershing. So I don't think that Nalise is about to crack this code, right? Because we know that Paupey, never really gets the clone that actually works for him and that restores him to his prequel era luster.

So that's the issue for me is that, yeah, I'm intrigued, but it's hard for me to see exactly how this leads directly into some deadline, some major, massive storyline-altering event that could be coming in the near future because we just know it's going to take time. It's going to be decades before some of these. major paradigm shifts happen. Okay, I'm going to try to convince you that that's a good thing. And I'm going to do so in our first grade, because it's the perfect segue actually into our season review here,

our season grades. We'll run through these rapid fire-ish. The first one is how successful was season one overall? I'm going to answer this one first because I want to directly respond to what you just said, which I think is perfectly reasonable, but again, let me attempt to sweat you here. maybe it's a good thing that this is set just outside of the center of that frame because my grade for the season is an A

for a couple different reasons, but one of them is that. I love how these Star Wars shows. I love how the Philoonyverse fills in the world and widens the world. You know, what happened just after or just before a time frame,

a moment in the story that we've already seen and know so well. Who lived a life? A meaningful, full life right next to somebody who we've already focused on and already know. The heart of the show is the bond among the characters, the question of how to make a choice and find purpose as the landscape is rapidly shifting around them. It's not Mando. What can be? But it is such a weekly treat in part because it's time with a moment.

characters I am growing attached to in a world I already love. And if it doesn't all build toward a moment that I've already spent so many years of my life thinking about, then maybe I will feel like it was an all, all a richer and more rewarding viewing experience for that reason, because it, it fleshed out and widened an aspect of the, the star map from where we already were. I think that's a good case. I think that was something that made me wary about the series, but also excited about it, which is that it was kind of taking on uncharted territory. And there's a reason, I think, why it was uncharted because there are some of these challenges that come along with this time period. But it's nice to see something different. And you're right, it's almost a relief

not to have to worry about the fate of the galaxy hanging on every action. Sometimes it's just about these characters. And, you know, for me, I gave this a B plus for season one. And I think I might just be a harsher grader than you. I'm the professor. No one wants. You're you're giving out the 4.3 GPAs. I think that's part of this year. We both like this series. I'm the fun TA, you know? Yeah, exactly. I like this series. I don't love it yet. But you're on your way to love, as they say on the Bachelor. I was just going to say, I think I can get there. Yes. We're on the same way. I think I can get there. So the reason why I think I can get there is that I don't love this series now as much as I love. I am.

I'm starting to fall in love for this series. I think that... You just need another one-on-one, you know? I think that it's arguably ahead of the pace of some series that I do love. So while I don't think this compares favorably to peak rebels or peak clone horse, it took time for those series to hit their stride. You go back to season one of those shows, and it was hit or miss. There was a lot to like there, but they had not really found their footing fully.

And so the fact that I like Bad Batch as much as I do already makes me think that if we extrapolate along this path, if it follows the same trajectory, which is not a given, I don't know that it will evolve and mature and improve in the same ways that those earlier series did. But if it does, then I think it's on track. I can get down on one knee at the end of this thing whenever it is. So that's how I'm going to couch my slightly harsher grade. Fair. But there's potential here. I see potential. We could be walking away at the end of this thing.

Neil Lane, you're on standby, okay? Ben might need you. So related to that, like a subcategory, a subgrade here, which episode or arc inside of first season earned your highest grade. What's set out the most for you? I think for me it was aftermath, probably, the premiere, which we have talked about it, like already. So good. And set the bar almost too high because where do you go from Order 66, right? There's almost no way to match that. And it was clear that that was the teaser. That was the first episode. That was our first taste. It wasn't going to be like that every week. And it wasn't. And there's no way for it to be.

And so in a way, I almost feel like it was downhill from there, but only because the hill was really high in that first episode. So I think there were absolutely high points later in the season. And one that I think you agree with is reunion, which was a midseason episode. Basically, I guess the midseason finale you could call it, which was the appearance of our old friend Cadbane, who is currently starring on your t-shirt, which only I can see. Gotta rock my Cadbane merch whenever I can, my dude. That was a highlight for me. Having him come back, having the confrontation with Hunter, having him kidnap Omega, again, very much Mando style, just ratcheting up the stakes. Like this series, I think, excelled in some of the action sequences, and that was one of the best to see him back.

And my question for you is, do we want live action Cadbane? Would he look as cool in the flesh? Oh, my God. What a great question. I'll take live action anyone. You know, it's always exciting to me when we get the animated characters in live action, just as it's exciting to me when the opposite happens. I love seeing the characters I love in as many places as possible.

Sue me, but it is, it would be tough to pull off. You have to nail the look and the kind of like inspector gadget deployment of all of his tech because that's the key to how he is able to not only go toe to toe with, but best the Jedi. Like he is a match for them. He is a tactician and a strategist. Could not fuck that up. That would be devastating.

So I'd love to see it as long as it's perfect. I hope that's not too high of a standard. Okay, I also have two picks for this. I'll go with arcs instead of episodes because I can't narrow it down because I'm incapable of just choosing one thing for any of these exercises ever. First, episodes 11 and 12,

Devil's Deal and Rescue on Ryloth, aka the Hera and Chopra. episodes. Ben? Yeah. When we talked about Aftermath, the Bad Batch Premiere, we talked a lot about the thrill of seeing Caleb, young Canaan, the thrill of seeing Order 66 unfold again from a new perspective. Seeing Hera and Chopper, probably one of the only things that, like, could have matched that. I mean, we have talked, you know, previously, of course, about what it was like to see Asoka and, you know, Bo come to live action.

These are always extraordinary moments when we get them and Faloni handles them. So deftly, this was exceptional. I will admit that it almost got close over these two episodes to like feeling like another show, which I guess could be seen as a demerit.

I think that's how you feel about it maybe. Like, especially in episode 11, our main characters are central Core is like, oh, secondary, really, to what's unfolding on Ryloth. But I'm okay with it simply because I cannot overstate the thrill of being with Hara and Chopper again. And specifically at that moment in their lives, like, this is why it works when Faloni does this.

It's not just playing the hits for the hell of it and returning to something that we've already seen. It's new. It's additive. It helps us better understand a moment in our character's lives that we actually haven't seen before. For example, getting to see Hara with her mother, with Eleni, was incredible, given what we know that relationship and that, and again, we said spoilers for all of Star Wars, that loss, the way that her death fractures the family and hangs over both Cham and Hera, learning more about the path that the members of this family would go down to get to the place where we see them in rebels. Like early in episode 11, Chom says to Gobi,

what was the point of fighting if we cannot accept peace? And it's so shocking to hear that from a character we so fully associate with war. How did he get here? Well, what we see in these episodes is a huge part of the answer to that question. Of course, just always is a thrill to be with my guy Chop. Huge moments for Hara, something like her relationship to the fight, the idea of rebellion and her relationship with her father. He says to her, you remind me myself at your age, but I want more for you.

Hara, fighting, it takes a toll. My hope is that you won't ever have to live a life like mine. Like, that was devastating. Because even though it's incredible to see Hara fight and be as bold and brave and impactful as she is, like, it's heartbreaking to think about all the loss and destruction that awaits. On the flip side, in terms of something that's, like, more uplifting, it was so cool to see Hera think and talk about flight. And like this is, of course, like a through line across not only Star Wars, but fantasy

stories. Like, Hara looking up at the sky as the music, the score is soaring and she's moving her hand across the horizon. It felt like, to me, like a tiny version of Luke looking out at binary sunsets, you know, thinking about the possibility that awaits the way she talks about flying is a feeling, the way she says you're free. I just loved all of that. And then something like, Omega.

showing her. And just their seeing their friendship blossom was so cool. Like, I want to know more about what awaits them as a duo in the future. But something specific, like Omega showing Hera her room on the Marauder. And Herra saying, you get to live in a starship. That's my dream. Like, if you're a fan of rebels, you can't watch that and not think about how this might have been, like, a deeply impactful

moment in terms of what we end up getting with the ghost. Like, that is just so cool. I also really a smaller scale, like, enjoyed Hauser's role in these episodes, you know, seeing another trooper who is making a choice to rebel against the empire, presumably with his chip intact. And we do hear elsewhere over the season about how it's a very small group, but there are some who are immune. Is he immune? Is he just fighting against this? Because it's what he believes is right. He convinces other clones to join him. That felt really big. So I loved those two episodes. Yeah. Seeing Kara take her for his flight, seeing Chop take his first steps toward being a sadistic murder droid, that was all special.

I think. It kind of brings it back to what I was saying earlier about the barriers to entry because this show feels like it was made for us. You know, this was tailored to our interest, to our experience. And I can feel the pain now of people on the other side of the lower awareness spectrum because that's where I am when I watch some Marvel shows where I'm saying, now, wait, who is this? Okay, I got to Google this. I got to listen to the Midnight Boys to figure out what I'm watching here.

And so I can identify with the people who are watching season two of Mandalorian and saying, wait, who is Asoka? Okay, who is this Grand Admiral Thron? Bo Catan? Am I supposed to know who these people are? That was one of the most glorious watching experience of our recent lives. For other people, it was feeling like you were maybe a little outside the club. Like, you've got to catch up. And I think that's what happens here where for us, this was incredibly meaningful for someone who is just jumping on

board and is wondering, okay, wait, what happened to the bad batch? Why are we focusing on this young girl? Who is this? What is the larger significance here? And that's just a choice that this series makes. And it's not one that dissuades us from watching it or hampers our enjoyment in any way. But I think it does kind of restrict the audience to some extent. And there's nothing wrong with that. Not every show has to appeal to every person. But I think that, contributes to why this is a little bit more of a niche show, I think, in the larger firmament of the franchise where, you know, we talked about this show when it started. We're talking about it when it ended. We didn't do week-to-week recaps. I mean, we were watching. We were enjoying, but this didn't feel like appointment TV in the way that Mando does, in the way that some of the

Marvel shows do. And so with what if, you know, you've seen the movie, you can just jump in. with Bad Batch, you can just jump in. I'm not saying you shouldn't, but it is significantly enhanced by having invested weeks of your life in real time of watching those shows. So that's, it's pros and mine. It's pros and cons.

My other pick for favorite arc, it definitely does have the cross-canon connection, as you already mentioned, with Cad Bain, but I think probably functions better just inside the experience of watching Ben, Bad Batch. Episode 7 through 9, Battle Scars Reunion, which you already talked about in Bounty Lost. You know, my chopper adoration aside, this was my favorite stretch of the season. And episode 8 reunion in particular was, I think probably my favorite single episode. I guess you could say

episode six decommissioned, which I did not like as much. It could technically be part of the arc because the Rafa trace interaction, the call to who and the contact, which ends up being Rex at the end is what leads Rex to return to our screens. But I'm going to separate that episode and say it's really 7, 8, and 9. Talk about a cross-canon connection, getting Rex, which we knew we were getting from the trailers, but it was just great. It's great to see him in general. Great to fill in this time in his canon post the Asoka chip removal.

I hope we get to see more of him in the resistance that he's mounting next season. He has some pretty impactful discussions with the Bad Batch. Hunter and Echo talk about this a lot over the course of the season, Hunter, and Crosshair certainly do, you know, what is the role of a soldier? What is their mission? What fight should they be a part of? And what does the fight even look like for them now? What do they want it to look like for them?

And, you know, Rex tries to recruit Hunter to what is, like, left of the Republic. And Hunter says their priorities have shifted. Omega needs us. And I have to do what's best for my squad. And when Rex says, which is what, Hunter says, I'm still figuring that out. And that is, of course, the journey that they're on. The sequence also included the inhibitor chip removal.

Very stressful and intense stuff. You know, touching with Omega's concern about whether she would be left alone if things went wrong for them. That was like heart-wrenching, just the anxiety of the procedure in general. Very sad to see wrecker lose control, my guy wrecker. But overall, I just loved Braca as a setting. You know, they call it a starship graveyard. And they're there to go find the medical bay on the cruiser for the chip removal.

of all. Omega, like, looking out at the wreckage and asking tech what war was like. The entire ion engine chamber sequence, to me, that was an instant classic. Like, their journey through that engine was just astounding to see. It was so cool. It was so vast. It was so empty and haunting and daunting and beautiful and sad. They scale it. Fershadowing the finale in a way with clambering through the deserted tunnels of subterranean Camino. Absolutely. Yeah, and instead of cross-star being with them as he is in the finale, he's waiting for them every end because that's also part of what works so well in that episode

in these arcs. He knows every step they're going to take. Like their enemy, their foe, their foil is the person who knows them best, and that's always just so interesting. But I also thought the visuals of that sequence just made the scale of the war so apparent in a way that was like kind of astounding and really last. And then, of course, as you already talked about, you know, Cadbane arriving and what we end up getting, not only with like him shooting Hunter and then we get to see through Hunter's visor for a little while, that was so cool. And then of course, in episode nine, when everyone is pursuing Omega, the battle between, between Bain and Fenwick, this is like bounty hunter power ranking, altering stuff. You know, Phenic besting Bain is a big fucking deal. And this is 20, what, 28 years before the Fennick. The Fenton. She's a rookie at this point, basically.

No, I mean, there's a lot more we have to learn about Fenwick, but that was very exciting, too, knowing that she's, you know, we're going to get more time with her in future stories. Yeah, I love that cat and mouse between the bad batch and crossair. You saw that in the finale, too, where I think it's tech says, oh, they won't be expecting us to come in this way. They'll expect, you're expecting us to take the main entrance, which doesn't seem like something anyone would expect the bad patch to do at this point. But all right, he's the smart one, I guess. And of course, everyone is waiting with their blasters trained on them because Crosshair can think along with them. So it seems like we've been talking mostly about characters who have come in from elsewhere in the canon. And we do have a category about that.

I guess should we skip ahead to that one since we're on it or should we talk about the new blood? Let's skip ahead since we're on that because we've only got a few minutes left overall. So we might as well hit that. How effective was the bad batch in referencing and tying together existence? to me, this was an A-plus, plus, plus, highest grade I can give. Because I'm a harsh grader, I went with the A-plus here. This was the strong suit of the series, I think. We've named so many already.

I mean, Caleb, Hara, Chopper, Rex, A-Z, Saw, Cat, Phenic, cut. We got cut. Bibfortuna. I mean, Trace and Rafa, Greger, Cham. Deploying Palpi and Tarkin in a controlled fashion might be the most impressive of all of those. If anything, it did this too well that was such a focus of the season that maybe it kind of crowded out some of the new characters. But I'm not complaining because it was nice to see some of these people again. And in most cases, it made perfect sense for them to cross paths with the Bad Batch.

As you said, I know this was created by Filoni and he co-wrote the premiere. He was not writing and directing every episode as he has with some previous shows because he's pretty busy. He's working on Asoka and other things. But it is, as you said, a hallmark. If you're going to tie in existing characters, there has to be a reason for that. It has to expose something about your new character. It has to create some kind of conflict. And that really was the case here, I think, just about in every instance.

And, you know, did we need Bib Fortuna coming in to explain how Java gets his rancors? I mean, not necessarily. It's fun, though. You know, happy to see him, sure. There were some cases where it seemed like maybe, Lucasfilm is sort of using Bad Batch as kind of Backdoor promo for some upcoming series. So you have Fenwick, of course, playing a prominent part here leading into the Book of Boba Fett, where she'll be taking a starring, co-starring role.

You have Saugarerra popping up, of course, and he'll be in Andor, it sounds like. And, you know, Hera, nothing is announced. But now that we know that Sabine is coming to Asoka, it certainly seems realistic. excited. Yeah, not a surprise, but still a welcome development. And one would expect that Hera might be next. So to see her coming in here, maybe there was some ulterior motive there. But again, that's okay, because as long as you're honoring those characters and you're finding something useful to do with them. And you're also, you know, it's fan service, but fan service in the best way, I think, where you're not just kind of throwing in these references for the sake of it, but you're actually

using these characters to make the most of this universe that you have built over the past 15 years almost at this point. Fan service is not a bad thing if it stems from understanding the characters in the story and the world, which is clearly what's happening here. I mean, these attempts to tie together lore can just be such a pitfall in Star Wars at times, and I thought it was really handled consistently an exemplary fashion here. I loved it. One of the absolute highlights of the show to me.

What about the inverse of that, though? Or maybe something that is not the inverse, but related to it. And as you noted, if you're succeeding in one area, maybe you're not succeeding as much in the other, or maybe you're doing both well because you're awesome. How well did season one establish and develop its own world and characters? What's your grade here? And who's your favorite character? Tell me that in the midst of this.

Yeah, I mean, it's got to be Omega, right? I don't know that there's really another choice that would make sense. But I went back to B plus here, and maybe it's unfair to grade a spin-off on how well it establishes its own world and its own characters because, of course, it inherits a lot of that world and those characters from the show that spawned it. So there's a long lineage here that it has to honor. But because we're focusing so much on the bad batch, you know, technically are not new characters in that they're coming from the Clone Wars. and because you're finding so many opportunities to mix and match people from future shows, from past shows, it just doesn't leave a lot of room for kind of supporting characters, people on the periphery, you know, the kind of Cadbane character or the Honda character, you know, these people who would kind of recur, like, you've got Sid. And, you know, there are others in that category, I guess. You know, you've got Hauser, who you mentioned earlier. rampart, rampart doesn't do much for me, at least so far.

You know, he's kind of a cookie cutter, true believer, at least to this point. Cookie cutter piece of garbage. Yeah, maybe he'll pivot at some point, you know, and do the kind of defector agent callous kind of arc at some point. Callis, a personal fame, as you know. Yeah. At this point, not a ton to him. And so, you know, I took some marks off here.

But obviously the relationship between Omega and the badpats. That's the beating heart of the show, and it beats pretty strongly. I mean, I would want to see even more development there because I feel that there are some bad batchers who kind of got short shrift here. You know, what we really learned about tech and tech. Yeah. Echo, of course, he's had his backstory before, but did we get more from him? Not really. And a lot of the template, I think, was in place, whereas like in Mendo, for instance, it kind of develops gradually where, you know, the end of the first.

episode, you have Mendo kind of touching fingertips with Grogues, but it's not clear that they're going to become besties yet. Like, he is still bringing him in for the bounty at that point, whereas by the time you're finished with the first episode of Bad Batch, you know, the structure is there, right? That they're bonded, that their family, that they're going to find a way to work together. And there is some amount of repetition where, you know, there were a few episodes that followed this formula where it's Omega says, no, we have to help them. And Hunter says, no, we can't.

And then Omega says, but we have to. And then Hunter says, okay. And then they go along with it. But Omega, you have to stay here because it's too dangerous for you. And then, of course, the bad batch gets into trouble. And Omega arrives to bail them out because she is better at this than they are in many cases, even though they won't give her any kind of armor or protective equipment, which seems like it would be pretty prudent at this point. So there were some beats like that that sort of resurfaced maybe.

be one or two times too many for my taste, but... I go the other way on the armor. I say, stop wearing the most recognizable armor if you're trying to hide. What are we doing here? Good point. I'm going to go with an A-minus here. I think everything you're saying makes sense. For me, like, I...

The test I run here is, do I care about these characters at the most basic level? And the answer is yes. You know, I have invested in the bad batch, certainly more so than I thought I would, frankly, after their four-episode arc in season seven of Clone Wars. When I was like, okay, I'm interested in this. I'm excited for it. but like, will this be something that I can't wait for every single week? I mean, probably, right?

And it was. But like, I care so much about Omega now. I am so invested in Omega and Hunter's relationship. I definitely agree with you. I wish I had learned more and continued to learn more about Echo. I wish I'd learned more about tech. Rick or two. I mean, we get a very sweet relationship between Rucker and Omega,

but we don't necessarily learn a ton about him beyond that. I'm very invested in Crosshair. You know, I think overall, like, it's a hard balancing act to give us those connections, which I seek and appreciate and also feel like we got to sink into and invest in this group of people and their story. And I think ultimately, in a way that was quite tough to pull off, they pulled it off and that balancing act was struck. So A minus for me.

Yeah, I think we talked about this in our first episode on this show. But because you have these really strong archetypes here where you have the smart one and the strong one, the one who's on steroids and maybe isn't quite so smart, so smart, you know, I think maybe there's a tendency to lean on that a little bit where those are just the defining characteristics and there's not a ton of nuance in all cases where I think Crosshair Hunter, maybe they work a bit better because their salient characteristics aren't quite as obvious, you know, and quite as starkly drawn. So in the Clone Wars, for instance, where everyone looks similar.

I think you had to go to greater lengths to differentiate them. And maybe that's a tattoo. Maybe it's a hairstyle or something, but maybe it's a personality quirk where in this case, I think a lot of it sort of speaks for itself. And you just, you know, this is each person has a part to play. And often you can kind of predict, okay, this is what Wreckers going to say in this situation because he always wants to blow stuff up, right?

So, you know, I don't know how much potential for character growth there is necessarily there. Okay. We have a few more left. We're going to spend like a minute on each of them. How watchable and consistent was season one on a week-to-week basis for you? We've talked about the highs. What about week-to-week?

I went with B-plus here. Again, that seems to be my go-to great. Okay. So we agree for once. And obviously, we really like Star Wars. So unless something is aggressively bad, we're going to watch it. You know, we're going to enjoy it. So it's eminently watchable.

But there's definitely some up and downs. There's some clear high points. some clear, you know, I hate to use the term filler because sometimes that's reserved for an episode where not a ton of action happens, but there are important character developments, the quieter moments, you know, as we saw in Loki, for instance. There were some episodes in Bad Patch where you didn't really get either of those things, where you didn't get the most memorable mission, and maybe you also didn't learn a ton about the characters.

And that's something we saw in Clone Wars and Rebels early on, especially too. And, you know, maybe it's a bit easier to overlook if you have 22 episodes. episodes than if you have 16, but there were definitely some weeks where, you know, I wasn't thinking about the show in between episodes so much. I was entertained while I was watching, but there just wasn't a ton to ponder there. Yeah, same for me. I think the few episodes that fell more fully into the standalone mission of the week executions didn't work quite as well for me. They're still really fun. And inside of them, you still do get other connections like one example would be episode 60, commission. We still get to see Rafa and Trace, who were part of Asoka's

season seven Clone Wars arc, that's fun. That episode overall, the mission specifically, while there is some intriguing motivation, you know, to parse and mind, and it leads us to Rex, and so it works, and it's not actually totally separate from the overall plot because of those reasons. It just feels less essential. You know, episodes 5, 6, 10, and 13, I think are the ones I would cite. And again, like, they're still all interesting. You know, 10, for example, like, it was just cool to be on Raxis. Like, it's a gorgeous planet. It was interesting. to see the way that the batch thought about people who used to be separatists and what it might mean to be their allies in this moment. Like every episode gave us something. But because there were that handful that fell into that more set aside mission of the weak mold, I give it a B plus.

Next, this is a big one, but we still only have a minute to answer it. How does this stack up against the other animated installments in the Faloniverse? Which we've talked about a lot today. So this can be more of a summation, I think. Yeah. B plus? To B plus. Same. I love the B plus. Yeah. And again, it's what I said.

I love those shows. So it's a high bar right. But there's potential for it to stack up eventually. It's just, it's not there yet. But if we're comparing to those shows at the same point in their lifestyle, and I don't know that we'll get seven seasons of Bad Batch or even four seasons of Bad Batch, but if that kind of growth happens, then we're definitely in the, realm of possibility to get back to that point.

Agreed. It's a very strong and maybe even stronger freshman season, as you noted, which I think is a real achievement. It's just, you know, Clone Wars is so elemental to the expansion of that moment in time and the canon and a way that just makes it so essential. And Rebels is, I think, maybe just the best in my favorite Star Wars ever. So it's just a very, very, very high bar to compare to rebels. This is certainly better than resistance, I think.

Oh, yeah. You know, and obviously, like when we talk about the Philoony, I mean, increasingly what we consider a part of the Philoniverse is expanding. I mean, he's obviously involved directly with Mando. That's a Favs vehicle, but he's a huge part of the driving team there. He's, you know, inextricable from Sok on the new shows that are coming, the live action shows that are set in the Mando timeline. I'm with you for all the reasons we've said B plus.

This was great fun. And I think there are a lot of joys and revelations to come, which brings us to our final category of the day. how well did this season set the stage for not only season two, but for these characters' inclusion in other Star Wars properties? Like, how excited are you for the future based on what you got here? I go A minus. So this was, yeah, this was my strictest grade. I went with B here. I guess this was our biggest point of departure. Yeah. So a couple things. I think, first of all, when it comes to these characters

inclusion in other Star Wars properties, not every show needs to do that. I don't think we have plenty of shows that are doing that. So if you have a self-contained series, that's fine, as long as you have, you know, 10 other series on the way. I think this series is more of a taker than a giver when it comes to characters, you know, just in terms of the timeline and some of the stories you can tell with these characters. I mean, look, Omega is not age accelerated, so she could show up at any point in the future, you know. She and Grogo can be chilling, you know, after Rise of Skywalker for all we know. So there's potential there, but I just don't know that I necessarily want to see most of these characters pop up elsewhere. I kind of like other characters coming to them.

And then as for how it set the stage for other shows, we talked a little bit about that. I think it did a good job of getting us excited for Fenwick for Andor for et cetera, et cetera. When it comes to setting the stage for its own second season, that's the part where it falls a little flat for me in that I'm planning to watch. but I don't know exactly where this is headed. I can't point to, okay, this is going to be the arc. This is the thing that they're going to explore. In the first part of the finale, Crosshair says you still can't see the bigger picture, but you will.

That's how I felt. I'm Hunter in this scenario. I can't see the bad batch's bigger picture. Can they just continue to tie up loose ends that are left over from the Clone Wars, from rebels? Sure. You know, we can find out, hey, what happened to Wolf, instead of what happened to Gregor or, you know, we see cut, we see all of these people that maybe

we forgot from Clone War Season 2 and suddenly they're popping up here. So there's still potential for that. But I just don't know yet where this is going to go in terms of the larger arc and how it ties in to the rest of the universe. And also, when this series comes back, we're going to be in a bit of a different environment for Star Wars in streaming because that batch has kind of had Disney Plus to itself. when it comes to Star Wars this year, which is not something that we're going to see again. And that could be a mixed blessing.

By the time it comes back around next year, they're going to be at least four Star Wars shows seemingly on Disney Plus at some point next year. And most of the others, including Mando, are probably going to garner more attention. So does that mean that Bad Batch now is an even lower profile show? Does that mean some of the pressure is taken off? And could that be a good thing? Are we expecting too much because it's carrying the load on its own right now? But, you know, those shows are going to start popping up soon. You're going to have the movies come back with Rogue Squadron in 2023.

In theory, you're going to have more video games at that point when EA's exclusive license expires. So we're going to be inundated again. And Bad Batch, I think, just happened to arrive at this relative lull that we might not see again for the foreseeable future. So it might have to do something different to stand out. But if you're already on board, then maybe that's good because it doesn't have to be the one that breaks the internet every Friday. I am on board.

I'm strapped into my seat on the marauder and I'm ready to take flight again. You know, I can't wait to learn more about what Omega's future is. I can't wait to learn more about and hopefully get more of that character development that you're, you know, outlining hoping for from some of the other members of Clone Force 99. I'm excited to see Boba and more of these connections unfold. And I'm really, I'm curious to see if the Bad Bash will join up with Rex and align with that larger push that is unfolding. But I think the thing that excites me most is actually, you know, what you said, which is that we don't know the answer to that question yet. We don't know what the bigger picture is.

And I'm just excited to see how it comes into focus because the thing that I know after one season of Bad Batches that week to week, I just had a hell of a time spending 26 to 28 minutes with these characters and watching them under my screens. And I can't wait to get to do it again. Maybe they take a time jump. Maybe we see Grogu or Boba or Mall make an appearance next season. Like there's a lot of territory there. And it is sort of exciting that we don't know where this is going to go. But I'm just still sort of waiting to find out. Maybe we'll finally get to the bottom of Crosshair's tortured mind and his motivations. I can't wait. I will be thinking about him a lot between now and then. I hope he's a grandmoth the next time we see him. Oh, boy. I hope it all

happens for him. Ambitious. I love it. He's loyal. What more could you ask of him? He follows orders. He's a good soldier. He sure is. Goodness. All right, friends, what the Empire has planned for Crosshair, we do not know, but the Empire has big things planned for us. And so it is time to wrap today's show. Thank you as always to our trepid producer and cloner, Steve Allman, as well as to the other members of Clone Force RV, Arjuna Ramgapal, and T.D. St. Matthew Daniel, for their production

work on this episode. Thank you to the Lord of the memes Jomi Adeneron for his work on the social for this episode. And thank you to everyone's favorite TK trooper, Ben Lindberg, for signing up to join me today. Remember, follow the Ringervverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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