Warning Spoilers for “Unfinished Businesses” are below.

This is it; the end of “The Bad Batch” arc after four episodes, two of which were great, while the third was a little disappointing. How did the folks over at Lucas Film handle the finale? Well to sum it up in “one” word it would have to be anti-climatic. After two episodes of build up and tension, with Echo’s allegiance and the differences between the Bad Batch and Captain Rex, not much comes from these issues and they are resolved in a snap.

”Unfinished Businesses” felt a little well unfinished. The character arc that the writers had put Rex through was well done, but everything towards the end of the episode just seemed to snap into place instead of growing slowly over time. Rex was overcome by emotion when he learned that his brother-in-arms was alive and we saw that conflict in few scenes here and there. Yet by the end of the arc he didn’t seem to grow much and that may be due to a few reasons.

Reason one is that he still has some growing to do, we know that later this season we will get to see “The Siege of Mandalore” which will have Rex teaming up with Ahsoka Tano. It seems that the clones turn on them during Order 66 as well. This may see Rex change to the man that we meet in Star Wars: Rebels later on. Reason two could be that show only has a 25 minute run-time which really constricts on what the writers can include and how deep they can go. I honestly think it is the latter, however I do want to be optimistic and hope it is the former.

The Bad Batch themselves also go through some character development but it doesn’t ever seem to hold. From the moment they were introduced they seemed to have an authority complex, believing they were better than regular clones. This is brought up a few times and though they seem to learn in the second episode that wasn’t the case, they seem to revert back to their normal way of thinking just an episode later.

Now I know you can explain this as “Old habits die hard“ and you would be right, but that doesn’t absolve the writers for the repetition that is expended throughout episode two and three. However, thankfully this episode has a dark great Anakin moment that really compliments his arc in Revenge of the Sith.

Clone Wars was basically created to fix Anakin from the prequels and serve as his slow descent into the dark side of the force. In “Unfinished Business” the clones are trying to defuse a bomb that will destroy the facility the republic are trying to gain control over. To get the final number of the code, Anakin promptly rushes to Admiral Trench to torture him into giving the final sequence before killing him.

Both Obi-Wan and Mace Windu kind of ignore Anakin’s actions and chalk it up to it being “for the good of the galaxy”, but this also plays into how the Emperor himself portrayed the Jedi as power hungry hypocrites who needed to be wiped out. It is the little things like this that save this episode from being just mediocre.

”Unfinished Businesses” somehow felt rushed and a little disappointing. Everything wrapped up a little too quickly and left me feeling a little deflated as the first two episodes started off so strong. My hope is that next week’s arc “Ahsoka’s Journey” continues some of the better story telling in the Star Wars universe.

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Star Wars: The Clone Wars

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Continues Anakin’s Arc Nicely
• Great Action

Cons

• Repetitious
• Rex’s arc feels rushed
• Plotlines are resolved too quickly