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heyclickadee · 1 year

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Tech’s Alive, Part Five: I am aware that I am a clown but also! Short Term Possibilities and Long Term Narrative Questions:

So…I’m going to say something that’s probably going to be a bit unpopular. “Killing” Tech off is, or could prove to be, the correct narrative choice—in the short term. And I want to emphasize “in the short term” here. In the long term, or making it permanent, has the potential to break the entire show, and I’ll talk about why in the second half of this post. In the first half, though, I want to talk about how fake-killing Tech could potentially push both the story and the characters forward.

Hunter, Wrecker, and Echo:

From a practical standpoint, they’re going to have to make up for yet another missing skill set in their team after having never actually quite made up for the others. Tech’s the pilot, technician, and analyst, and on paper, those are all things Hunter, Wrecker, and Echo can do. Hunter isn’t as skilled a pilot as Tech, but he’s pretty competent; Wrecker doesn’t have Tech’s focus, but he is a skilled mechanic; and Echo’s excellent with technology (for reasons) as well as a brilliant strategist—a much better strategist than Tech really ever tried to be. On paper, the three of them do have the overlapping skills to make up for Tech’s absence. The thing is, they’re used to Tech being the one to do a lot of that, almost all of the time, and now they’re going to play his role as well as the roles they already have and the role they were already trying to make up for. And on top of that…Tech’s the one with the right combination of levelheadedness and total batshit insanity to get the team out of a tight spot and has, over and over and over again. That’s a thing that Wrecker, Echo, and Hunter don’t really have.

And this isn’t to say that missing Tech is going to be any harder than missing anyone else on the team. We’ve seen clone force 99 struggle for two seasons without Crosshair, and saw them struggle even harder being two men down without Echo. It’d be a struggle without any single one of them. It’s more that they’re going to have to adjust, once again, to not having someone on their team when they could actually really use him, and unlike with Echo, who they expected to get back, or with Crosshair, whose skill set wasn’t made up for by Omega’s presence and her own sharpshooting skills, but who did have someone who began to fill a similar role, Hunter, Wrecker, and Echo are expecting the gap Tech left behind to be permanent. And adjusting is going to be really hard for them.

And then, of course, there’s the way that this is going to push the three of them on a personal level. Echo has lost a lot—a lot—of brothers, so this isn’t necessarily new to him. It’s an old pain that’s just part of the background of his life. But that doesn’t mean it’s not going to hurt. It’s not necessarily going to be like losing Fives, but Tech and Echo were close. Tech was in the room when Rex pulled Echo out of that stasis chamber, Tech helped get Echo unplugged, he carried Echo out, was one of the people there helping Echo adjust after the most difficult time in his life, and for all their bickering, they were still pretty in sync with each other. They understood each other pretty well. It’s still going to be hard for Echo. And then Wrecker and Hunter—they’ve never lost a someone like this, that we know of. Maybe 99, but if they knew 99 personally, I suspect their relationship with him had a little more distance to it than their relationships with each other have. And, yes, they lost Crosshair, but with Crosshair they were missing someone who was very much alive and who (as far as they know) made the choice to leave and had the potential to come back at any time. Losing Tech is a bit more permanent—from their point of view, at least. And it has the potential to bring out a side of them we haven’t really seen before.

Wrecker’s been pretty easy going so far. Apart from the whole “Wrecker’s chip is activating” saga of the first half of season one, he hasn’t exactly had much in the way of character development. Not that there hasn’t been any, but he is probably the character with the least so far, and I think that’s because he hasn’t really had too much of an inner conflict. Oh, the Republic’s the Empire now? Well, sucks about the Jedi, but hey! Look at the armory! Ooooh, we’re going to grab this kid and we’re defecting now? Great! He gets to visit Cut, Suu, and the kids. We’re working as mercenaries for this shady Trandoshan grandma? Cool, let’s be mercenaries. Super secret mission from Rex to find information and blow open an imperial conspiracy? Awesome. Awakening the ancient horrors? All in. Retiring to Pabu? Cool, he’s going to become a pillar of the community, eat sushi, catch fish, and live his best life. This isn’t to say that he’s never bothered, because you just have to check out The Crossing and Retrieval for that. It’s more that he takes things in stride and is probably the best out of all of the boys at adjusting to new situations.

I…don’t think he’s going to adjust to this very well. He’s just lost family. He thinks it’s permanent. And you can’t tell me he’s not going to blame himself. Because, yes, Tech’s the one who shot the connection hinge through, but Wrecker’s going to see himself as the one who couldn’t get Tech up fast enough. He couldn’t hang on to Tech’s side of the rail car. I rewatched the scene (because I hate myself, I guess), and I don’t think Wrecker moves an inch after watching Tech fall. He’s frozen in that moment. You can’t tell me he’s not going to have nightmares about it. And that’s an inner conflict. That misplaced guilt is going to give him something to overcome and it could be really interesting to watch(1).

And then, of course, Hunter’s going to blame himself, too, because blaming himself for every little thing that goes wrong has been part of Hunter’s modus operandi since day one. It’s what he does. More importantly, though, this whole situation is Hunter’s nightmare scenario. They’ve lost every lead to get Crosshair back, Tech’s “dead,” and the most evil man in the galaxy has his daughter. This is everything Hunter’s been afraid of for two solid seasons. This is exactly why he was so hesitant to go back for Crosshair or come into direct conflict with the Empire and help Rex in the first place. And now that that shoe has dropped, I think we might be done seeing Hunter hesitate and take the back seat. And more than that, losing Tech specifically might be something that pushes Hunter into seeing that he and the regs have always been in the same boat, the same way Crosshair’s experience with the Empire did that for him. Now, I don’t think Hunter had quite the same defensive superiority complex about other clones that Crosshair did(2), but I do think he had or has a bit of a chip on his shoulder (probably mostly on his brothers’ behalf), and he doesn’t seem to think of other clones as brothers the same way that, say, Echo and Rex do. There’s a distance there. Losing a brother the way other clones do all the gosh darn time could be something that gets him to empathize more and see himself and his squad as part of them in a way I’m not sure he’s been able to do before(3). Is it a sort of awful way to gain that empathy? Yes, it kind of is. But it is still a way.

But, anyway, you know who else is living their nightmare scenario right now?

Omega and Crosshair:

Omega’s spent two seasons trying to have a family, getting closer to her brothers, and being terrified of ending up an experiment in a tube. And, due to the crazy series of events set off by Tech’s “death”, she’s just been ripped away from her family, lost a brother permanently, and is very much in a situation where there’s only Hemlock’s need to keep Nala Se happy keeping her from becoming an experiment in a tube. She’s dealing with a massive amount of loss and change and the only person she really knows in the whole facility is Nala Se, who I think does care about Omega in her own way, but probably isn’t going to be much help. This poor kid is not going to be okay.

And, frankly, neither is Crosshair. I mean, Crosshair’s whole deal over the course of this entire show is just him waking up thinking that maybe, just maybe, today might not be the worst day of his life, and somehow managing to be wrong every single time. He’s going to wake up again, see Omega next to him, which was exactly the thing he was trying to avoid and just got tortured over. Omega’s probably going to tell him that Tech died while they were on a mission to save him, which is exactly what he didn’t want, and given what we know now about how much Crosshair loves his family I think it’s safe to say this is all going to wreck him.

In a way, though, we have the perfect set up for Omega and Crosshair forming an actual relationship. They think of each other as brother and sister, and they care about each other, but they don’t really know one another. They’ve only interacted a handful of times, and Crosshair was unwillingly trying to kill Omega during two of them. But now they’re stuck in the same place with shared circumstances and a shared grief. Or—here’s some speculation—maybe even some wild shared hope that Tech somehow made it. Omega never had a chance to get past, “He’s not gone, he can’t be!” with Tech, and Crosshair’s going to be hearing about it secondhand; with him having known Tech longer than Omega did, did it’s possible he’d latch onto the idea that Tech could have thought his way out of it, or that it might not feel real to him unless he sees proof. Either way, it gives Omega and Crosshair something besides their current circumstances to bond over, and something they both understand, and which they can help each other through. This is actually one of the reasons why I’m actually kind of hoping that Tech isn’t in Mount Tantiss. Having Omega without the other brothers she already really knows and with just Crosshair gives her a chance to develop an actual relationship with just Crosshair, regardless of whatever shenanigans Emerie is trying to pull. Seeing Omega and Crosshair’s relationship develop is something I’ve been so wanting to see since episode one(4).

Tech:

If this is indeed a fake-out and a way for the writers to put Tech somewhere else for a while, there’s the potential for us to see Tech really struggle in a way we haven’t before. There’s the possibility that he’s going to be physically disabled after this, but whether he is or not, and whatever his circumstances, it’s something he’s going to have to deal with alone. At least, that he might have to do alone. I suspect that we’re going to find out Tech is a live well before any of the other characters do, if we find it out at all, and that they might not have a chance to reunite or even know about it until the end of next season or possibly even later, if there’s more seasons after that. And having Tech alone could be really interesting, because I’m not sure Tech handles “alone” much better than Echo does—though for very different reasons.

Clones weren’t built for solitude. And the other members of Clone Force 99, or most of them, were some of the only consistent presences in Tech’s life. A little like how I suspect Crosshair never really thought of himself as his own person, or even as a person at all for a little while, I’m not sure Tech really thinks of himself as his own man. He’s one piece of a uniquely mismatched set, and after this season, and especially after how badly he handled Echo leaving, I think it’s safe to say that Tech wouldn’t happily leave that set for an extended period of time under pretty much literally any other circumstances than the one in which he found himself in Plan 99. He’s dedicated to this family. Yes, the batchers all have vastly different personalities and strengths, but they’ve always been there, he understands them and knows how to be around them. I suspect that even in the happy version of this season where Crosshair is easily rescued, they all just stay on Pabu forever, and Tech and Phee get space married, Tech probably wouldn’t just run off with Phee and never be involved his siblings’ lives again. He’d still get up to shenanigans with Echo, bicker banter with Wrecker, be giving Omega flying lessons, etc. They’re his people, and he needs them.

Part of Tech’s arc in season two was learning about and exploring the galaxy in ways that weren’t defined by The War, and leaning into parts of himself that aren’t just a soldier(5). A fake-out death leaving Tech on his own for a little while could allow that to continue, but with the training wheels off, because he’s not going to have his people. Would he be trying to get back to his family the whole time? Oh definitely, yes. But it would be a long, hard road of discovery getting there.

So, in summary, a fake-out has the potential to shake up the status quo own push the characters and/or drive them to develop connections we haven’t seen before. Making it permanent, however, has every potential to break the show, and here’s how:

Narrative Questions:

Some of the best writing advice I ever got was to think of a story as an answer to a question. It doesn’t have to be a complicated question, but the story does have to answer it, and answer it in a satisfying way, in order to have a satisfying ending.

So, what are some narrative questions in Star Wars? Well, the narrative questions of the original trilogy seem to be: one, can this farm boy become a jedi; two, can the rebel alliance defeat the evil galactic empire; and three, can the dark side be defeated? And the answer to all three are, “Yes, and here’s how.” Or Rebels, which has pretty similar narrative questions: Can this street rat become a Jedi, how does the Rebel Alliance Form, and can this little family successfully fight the empire? Once again, the answers are a resounding, “Yes, and here’s how”(6).

Okay, so, what about some Star Wars that had a tragic ending? Because a story doesn’t have to have a happy ending to be satisfying. The narrative questions at the heart of both the Prequel Trilogy and The Clone Wars are, “How does Anakin Skywalker become Darth Vader?” And “How does the Galactic Republic become the Galactic Empire?” The three movies and seven seasons of television we got are pretty satisfying answers to those questions. Maybe a little clumsy in the case of the Prequel Trilogy, but it still gets there. Or Rogue One? That’s a movie with a tragic ending if there ever was one. But its narrative question had nothing to do with whether or not Jyn or Cassian or Baze or any one individual character would be okay; it was all about how there could ever be hope in the fight against an evil like the Empire, and what it would cost those people to bring that hope to the galaxy. And, of course, answering the question of how Leia got her hands on the Death Star plans in the first place. (And honestly, there are probably other narrative questions in these movies, but I am three-thousand words into this and it’s getting out of hand, so moving on)

With this in mind, let’s try to look at what questions The Bad Batch is trying to answer. As far as I can tell, there are four of them. And, in order of importance from least to most important, those are:

1. How and why does the empire go from using clone troopers to storm troopers?

2. Can this group of clones ever chose their own purpose, or are they stuck with the purpose with which they were made (can these characters ever choose to live the lives they want and be anything but soldiers/lab experiments made to fight and die)?

3. What does, “We don’t leave our own behind,” mean, and does it mean anything?

4. Can Omega’s family ever be complete?

Now, the first question is one that I think is operating a little bit like “How was the Rebel Alliance formed?” did for Rebels. It’s an important driver of the story, it connects to the larger Star Wars story, it’s a really important subplot, it’s almost definitely leading towards that clone rebellion we keep thinking is about to happen, but in the same way that Rebels was ultimately not about the Rebel Alliance and was instead about a young indigenous boy and his family liberating his home planet from a colonial power, this whole sub-plot in The Bad Batch is super important, but not ultimately the entire point. If it was, we’d be watching a show about Rex and his crew right now. It’s also the only one of these four questions that can have a satisfying answer if the writers leave Tech dead, because you don’t really need him for it. In fact, you don’t need ANY of the bad batch characters alive or otherwise to answer that question in any real way.

The other three, though? You really need Tech alive.

And not just because the answers to the other three would be, “No, they can’t,” “Apparently it doesn’t,” and, “NOPE,” without him. You can answer a narrative question in the negative or have a tragic ending and still have a satisfying answer. It’s just that in order to have a dynamic story you kind of need the apparent answers to those questions to change from the beginning of the story to the end, and the answers to those other three questions have always been negative from the very first moment of the show.

Can these characters every be anything but what they were designed to be? Anything but soldiers and lab rats, designed to fight and die? Can they ever be free? At the beginning of the series, the answer is no. The batchers, as well as the rest of the clones, begin the series as literal enslaved soldiers. They defect, they run, apart from Crosshair, who’s mentally enslaved by the chip at first, and they try to be free, but they spend the entirety of season one still being soldiers—just soldiers without an army or a cause. In season two, they start leaning away from it, and actually have a chance at peace. Crosshair rebels and does everything in the little power he has to put the soldier down for good. Echo’s not letting go of the soldier part, but he’s at least choosing what he wants to fight for, and that matters. Omega has a chance to just be a kid. And then, by the end of the season, Hunter, Wrecker, and Echo are back to the soldier thing and Crosshair and Omega are stuck as lab experiments. The answer is still no. And leaving Tech dead, especially since he would have died as a soldier after almost having the chance to be a bunch of other things, on a mission he pushed for, in a series of events that ultimately drives his family back into the lives they’ve been trying to escape? That means the answer will always be no; or, at least, a lukewarm, “Maybe, if they’re allowed to be.” And that’s as good as a “no” anyway.

What does “We don’t leave our own behind,” mean? Does it mean anything? Again, at the beginning of the series, it’s not clear it is anything but a broken promise. The boys didn’t know about Omega, but she was still left behind. They had to leave Crosshair behind because he was trying to kill them, and they had to leave him behind a second time, because he refused to go. Then Echo left them behind, sort of, because his definition of “our own”(8) is bigger than the batch’s definition, but with every intention of coming back. And then they had to leave Tech behind, because he made the choice for them. And it’s still just a broken promise at the end of season two. If Tech stays dead, after killing him on a mission where he invoked, “We don’t leave our own behind,” during which he forced them to leave him behind, and after which they had to leave Crosshair behind AGAIN after losing their only lead, it would remain a broken promise.

Can Omega’s family every be complete? At the beginning of the series, we find it never has been, not even before Order 66. Omega finds that family picture back in the bad batch’s bachelor pad, and it’s got all five adult batchers, but it’s not a complete family picture because Omega’s not in it. And then in the very brief times we have all six batchers in the same room at the very beginning and end of season one, the family is still very much broken. Then the show is pretty pointed about the absences on both sides in season two—Hunter and crew need Crosshair, Crosshair needs them. Echo leaves, and they fall apart. And by the end of the season? The answer is still no. Emphatically no; Echo’s back, they still don’t have Crosshair, Omega’s gone, Tech’s “dead,” and it looks hopeless. Leave Tech dead, after a mission he pushed for, and which was meant to finally reunite the whole family, and the answer will always be no, even once they get Omega and Crosshair back. They answer will not have changed from the beginning of the show(7).

And the thing is, the show is acutely aware that those last three questions are driving most of the tension, because the tension of whether or not those answers will ever change has been at the heart of the both season finales. And the characters almost succeed at changing one or more of those answers every time! They almost have a full family by the end of season one—but the timing isn’t right, everyone’s too angry and embittered, and they have to leave Crosshair behind and be incomplete again. They’re so close to free at the end of season two! Hunter can almost just be a dad! Wrecker can almost just live his best life! Echo can be a freedom fighter! Tech can be whatever the hell he wants! Omega can just be a kid! Crosshair’s rejected the Empire! They’re going to go get him! They don’t leave their own behind! It’s actually going to happen this time! And then—Plan 99.

Right now, just as at the beginning of the series, the answer to all three of those last questions is negative. Everything and yet nothing has really changed for our characters; they’re still soldiers, still enslaved, in a way, still experiments, still leaving their own behind, and still incomplete. And that’s fine for now—we’re only part of the way through the story. But the very end can’t leave them the same and still be satisfying.

And that’s the other thing—I trust this team of writers to give us a satisfying ending at this point. Just like the end of last season was actually kind of frustrating to watch in real time, but ended up incredible in retrospect because of how it lead into season two, I expect a similar thing to happen here. So, here’s to hoping!

(1): I know we’re all looking forward to Hunter entering his John Wick era, but I think we might be discounting how terrifying Wrecker grieving two brothers (Tech gone for good, Crosshair maybe alive but for how long) and out-of-his-mind desperate to find his baby sister has the potential to be. We only thought Wrecker was scary with a chip. Dude is gonna crack some stormtrooper heads.

(2): Or did he? I actually genuinely wonder about this. I’ve come to the conclusion that Crosshair’s superiority complex was more defensive posturing than anything else—more of a way to keep people at a distance than anything he genuinely thought, something he tried to convince himself of, because his words and his actions absolutely don’t match up. That doesn’t make it okay, just kind of layered and interesting. But it’s worth noting that the worst of what Crosshair says about other clones is framed as part of the galaxy’s worst sales pitch in “Return to Kamino”, and a sales pitch to Hunter more than to anyone else. It’s possible that Crosshair was calibrating his, “We’re not like the regs, we’re superior,” bullshit to appeal to Hunter, specifically. Now, the fact that this absolutely didn’t work on Hunter even a little bit tells us something. But so does the possibility that Crosshair thought this was a reasonable thing to say, and so does, “When did you start caring about regs?” I don’t really think Hunter had a superiority complex, but I do think he had something of a chip on his shoulder that Crosshair maybe blew out of proportion.

(3): Just to clarify: I’m not saying that Hunter’s a terrible person or anything here. I’m just saying that clone force 99 was ostracized and excluded from clone culture for a variety of reasons (resentment due to perceived special treatment, distrust due to perceived “defectiveness”/actual difference in a monoculture because, listen, the clones are by and large good people, but they are still PEOPLE and even good people have blind spots and being different even through no fault of your own in a monoculture even when that monoculture isn’t an extreme example literally made of clones and subject to the whims of a whole other society that actively practices eugenics on it is the social and sometimes literal equivalent of a death sentence), and that Hunter probably had a reaction to that. An understandable reaction, and one a lot less toxic than Crosshair’s, but one he probably still needs to get over.

(4): CROSSDADCROSSDADCROSSDADCROSSDADCROSSDAD

(5): Wacky thought, but here you go: I think Tech’s alive. I think he’s coming back. I think he’s absolutely still going to be himself when he does. I also think that Tech the soldier is what’s going to die on Eriadu. That’s something I don’t think we’re going to see again, not in the same way.

(6): I’ve always found it kind of weird that Rebels has this reputation for having a horribly sad downer ending when, at the end of the day, our rebels in question win. It has a note of bittersweet melancholy to it because Kanan dies and Ezra’s gone, but that’s not the only note there. They liberate Lothal without the help of the Rebel Alliance before the galactic civil war even starts, Ezra jedis so hard he’s a gosh darn Jedi knight by the end I don’t even care no one was there to knight him, and we see glimpses of Zeb and Hera living full, happy lives, and Sabine is off to bring Ezra home. There’s so much triumph and hope in that ending, and it always confuses me when people say it’s just horribly, tragically sad.

(7): The only way I can see the answers to these last two questions working if Tech remains dead is if they whole batch (besides Omega) dies and the series ends with a time skip and a much, much older Omega passing away, with a glimpse of the six of them being reunited in death somehow. And while I personally love the idea of some kind of clone afterlife, I don’t think my heart could take young teenage Omega being left on her own without her family for the entire rest of her life.

(8): I think, or I hope, anyway, that the batch’s definition of “our own” is also going to expand over the course of the rest of the series, and that it might not necessarily just mean “other clones, too.”

#the bad batch #tech bad batch #tech’s alive #yes I’m aware that the panel is in like six hours #anyway have my 4500 word ramble #but also I am totally earnest about this #but also I am SORRY this one is long #should also note that I am willing to change my mind about all of this #if presented with more information

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