Conversely, exploring where the rift specifically came from would get rid of one of the core fantasies of the episode: camaraderie. It’s a joy to watch the Bad Batch clones smoothly throw a tool to one another, knowing the other clone will be there to catch it. Now that they’ve gone through so much as a group, the team works well together. Anakin Force-lifts one of them in a reverse trust fall.
Anakin Skywalker is complicated, but I’ve never found him particularly compelling: his fall to the dark side is inevitable, his declarations in the Prequel Trilogy so bitter and stilted. He’s a teenager who wants to use authoritarianism to soothe his feelings of helplessness. For some reason, in season seven of The Clone Wars, it’s easier to see why the people around him trust him. After last week’s masterful lying, this week he’s mostly all military business. The exception comes when he checks in on Rex and Echo. The script makes it clear that when he addresses them he’s no longer going by military protocol. He honestly cares about his friends, and especially about the prospect of finding someone who essentially came back from the dead.
As with “A Distant Echo,” it’s hard not to compare this episode to Revenge of the Sith and Attack of the Clones. Rex unties Echo just as Anakin untied his mother. But instead of dying in his arms, Echo gets up and survives. Anakin is learning hope from the clones—hope that will be dashed in a matter of months when Anakin tries to save Padmé. Either the dramatic irony of the show has gotten more pointed in the last six years, or I’m just noticing it now.
Echo himself is one of the best things about the episode. He isn’t really the focus, smoothly integrating into the group and providing some emotional stakes for Anakin and especially for Rex. Echo’s cyborg implants are effectively creepy, as is the difficulty the clones have in detaching him from the machine. The pneumatic hissing of cords as they are removed is sharp and overwhelming. Paired with Echo’s scrabbling, spasms, and eventual collapse, the episode takes a dive directly into the horror genre. The snappy dialogue brings the episode’s tone back into action-adventure smoothly.
The episode is mostly action, and I can’t complain about how well it keeps the momentum going, especially in the fast-paced second half. A fight on a narrow pipe an untold distance above the ground is breathless. The music skirls into graceful notes that match the movements of the characters. The middle-act action scene is too short — I wanted more time to watch the planet’s dragon-like creatures and the new battle droids, which fly on rainbow wings. Even if they are in the episode’s title, the keeradaks have a relatively small part.