#the bad batch season two

[totallylegitlion]

,,,look at this

Look at the framing of the rocks behind Crosshair

Remind you of anything?

[indistinctchatt3r]

"When have we ever followed orders?"

[clonesimpextra]

Gregor babes we ATE TODAY. LOOK AT HIM. HE’S SO BROAD.

[good-shoulders]

Hunter in ‘Tribe’: “You can’t smuggle living beings”

Also hunter in season 1: *sells echo*

[stoat-party]

As we saw in episodes one and two, Hunter is about 80% of the team’s impulse control.

Unfortunately, as we saw in today’s episode, Echo is the other 20%.

[lightwise]

WHY MAYDAY IS A MIRROR OF REX (AND ALL OF CROSSHAIR’S BROTHERS)

AKA How Crosshair predicted his own redemption arc.

There have been many comparisons made between Mayday and Rex/The Bad Batch, but I have kept myself from ranting about The Outpost for too long and I figured I should get this out there before this week’s new episode hits. 

Crosshair is cynical and snarky when we meet him in The Clone Wars (as is the norm for his personality, but there’s a special edge to it in S7 E1). The first words out of his mouth are “we don’t usually work with regs.”

(I am not sure who first posted this image set, so if you know who to credit please reach out).

Now in TBB E12, the episode opens with Crosshair watching regular clones being told about the retirement bill by an imperial officer. His helmet is off and they have no armor on. He’s face to face with them. He seems interested in their conversation but is still removed, separate. He still thinks this doesn't affect him.

Once he ships out to Barton 4, we meet Mayday by hearing his voice before he rounds the corner into our view. The immediate thought that flew into my mind was, “that’s Rex’s voice.” Other than Rex himself, we as the audience and especially Crosshair as a character have not heard that warm, snarky, calm tone that signifies that commanding officer’s “regular clone voice” much this season. Mayday’s voice is a little deeper than Rex’s, but he has the same commanding yet casual tone and demeanor. As weary and frustrated as he is at the lack of support from the Empire, Mayday chooses to express it with a level of snarkiness that would have made Tech, Echo, or Rex himself proud. 

Or as Rex once said, "It's Captain, sir."

"Experience outranks everything."

Mayday and his squad are wrapped in mummified cloth strips, and he states that his men are all “dead. We’re all that’s left.” Three of them, to mimic the three troopers being forced into retirement that Crosshair had seen before arriving. They are dead men walking. And so are the rest of the clones. 

Mayday brings the light to Crosshair. And starts talking to him, man to man, like a friend. Like a brother. He asks him his name. Crosshair’s first encounters with Rex were Rex going after Echo, pulling him free from mindless programming and reminding him what his name really was. 

“What brought you here.” “Just lucky, I guess.” Luck isn’t a word that Crosshair typically uses to describe his experiences. He usually relies on and points out his superiority, his skills, his uniqueness. He knows he hasn’t engineered this meeting, and yet Mayday’s mannerisms are already starting to find the chinks in his metaphorical armor. 

“I’ll give you the lay of the land.” Like Hunter would. “Conditions have degraded our equipment.” Like Tech could have helped with. “I’m not an explosives expert.” Wrecker is. 

Mayday lays out the helmets of his fallen squad in a memorial, the same way Rex and Ahsoka do after order 66. Reverence and respect for the dead, even when it seems meaningless. Crosshair has let himself be deadened by the Empire, yet Mayday treats him with interest and respect, drawing him back out of himself. Mayday even shows the same respect for the raider who had been attacking his base, saying that he was bothered that his men had left him there to die. 

Crosshair is still throwing up his shields, like he did at the end of season 1 when he tried to convince his brothers to join him. “We’re not like the regs, we never have been. We’re superior.” 

And all of a sudden, Crosshair will die if Mayday doesn’t save him. If he doesn’t fully trust him to disarm the pressure mine he has gotten himself into. He has continued to choose to step in places that are a pressure mine waiting to go off, waiting to swallow him whole. And until now he has made enemies of anyone who has tried to help him.

Mayday saves his life, and now they’re working as a team, silently and in unison. They realize that all this effort and loss of life has been for mere equipment (that’s for their replacements, no less). Their lives really are worth even less than the epithet "used equipment" that Nolan spits in Crosshair’s face when they first meet. 

Hunter had tried to tell him on Kamino: “Can’t you see they’re using you? We’re loyal to each other, not some empire.”

Crosshair: “YOU weren’t loyal to me. I was one of you. You may have forgotten, but I haven’t. I’m going to give you what you never gave me–a chance.” Only now, after Mayday gave him that chance, is he willing to admit that Hunter was right.

How many times have those words haunted Crosshair’s thoughts?

Now this was interesting to me. Crosshair incidentally causes an avalanche by targeting a group of explosives in order to end their shootout, cracks fissuring up the mountainside. Once before he was maneuvered into a situation not of his own free will (when his chip is enhanced on Kamino), yet he stubbornly pursued that scenario when he chose to stay on the platform at the end of season 1. Once again, he is put into a situation against his will by being brought to Barton 4, but this time, he ends up creating a scenario where his choices from this moment will now have the opposite effect.

Mayday shoves Crosshair out of the way, saving his life once again. A pile of snow rips Crosshair’s helmet off of his face, and as Mayday is buried, Crosshair re-emerges his true self. 

“We have to move.” Rex’s words throughout almost all of their Clone Wars arc. Rex is selfless, telling Echo to go with the Batch if that was the best place for him. Letting Echo leave him behind, essentially. Mayday begs Crosshair to leave him behind and save himself. They both want what’s best for others. And their examples rub off on the men they save. Echo constantly does what he can to help his brothers escape the Empire. Crosshair’s sheer stubbornness that up until now has kept him tethered to the Empire, refuses to leave Mayday behind. He can’t watch another brother die in front of him. Not anymore. 

"You're still their brother, Crosshair. You're my brother too." Omega's plea to him.

So Crosshair risks his life to carry Mayday back. A REG. He refuses to let go of him the whole journey. He lets him use his sniper rifle as a crutch. All of his defenses are finally down, and he not only cares, but is willing to show he cares, BEGS ON HIS KNEES to his commanding officer for help, to show that he DOES CARE.

Finally, this struck me. We almost never see Crosshair using a hand blaster. He’s a sniper. Yet both in his encounter with his brothers on Kamino in season 1, and his confrontation with Nolan here, Crosshair picks up a regular blaster. He’s not being the sniper, distant and removed, making a kill from afar with his own rifle. This is up close, personal, a messy choice. With a hand blaster, a regular clone’s weapon. 

Crosshair’s conversation with Hunter on Kamino reads back as though he is pleading with himself to not make the same mistake twice, to stop running from his fears, to finally embrace who he is–a clone. To embrace his real purpose–protecting his brothers.  He’s made his choice. He doesn’t expect to survive. The vultures are circling both of them. In season 1 Hunter stuns him and he falls to his knees and then to the floor, passing out. Here, he snarls “Lieutenant,” in a sarcastic tribute to how Mayday had first addressed Nolan, and becomes an Angel of Death. He avenges Mayday and redeems himself, and once again falls forward and passes out with the last of his strength gone.

[jspookywolf]

💛TECH💛

It’s been +24 hours and I’m still in DENIAL that my beloved nerdy boy was killed in the finale— so while trying to cope with it I did this! 🥺 I just hope that he’s not actually dead— and since we didn’t see a body— there’s still hope, right? 😭

[clu-ven]

All I want is for season 3 to begin with the line

“Somehow, Tech returned”

[is-that-sand-in-my-waffles]

Forgone conclusions, my beloathed

[heyclickadee]

Hey so the cloth wrapped around Mayday’s armor is probably practically there to keep out the cold or something, but visually they call to mind burial wrappings or very sloppily done mummy wrappings. Mayday was always a dead man walking. If you need me I’ll be off staring moodily at a wall somewhere.

[echos-girlfriend]

Disney’s official bad batch valentines! I love them all! So cute!

[indistinctchatt3r]

Tech is just pulling an Echo. He's okay. He's fine. He's just copying what his brother did he's totally okay and fine and perfectly healthy he just took a little tumble he's doing great no I'm not in denial, why do you ask?

[clonesimpextra]

The KING that he is. RIP Commander Mayday, you will always be famous 😭 🥃

[mooonjin]

☽ ━━ Tech

⋆ Tech-nically, You’re Not Fine - (fluff) gn!reader tech’s injury on serenno left you in a fit of worry and he needs someone to patch him up.

⋆ Imagination - (nsfw 18+) gn!reader tech has free time to himself, a little too free…

⋆ Imagination Pt. 2 - (nsfw 18+) gn!reader what happens when tech has nothing to do and you’re stuck in his head?

☽ ━━ Echo

⋆ The Past Behind Him - f!reader echo wasn’t fond of a medic being assigned to clone force 99.

⋆ The Past Behind Him Pt. 2 - f!reader your last interaction didn’t go so well, ready to make amends?

⋆ Your Comfort Buddy - (comfort) jedi!gn!reader scarred after order 66 and echo is right there with you.

☽ ━━ Hunter

⋆ Desperate - (nsfw 18+) f!reader implied he’s begging for it because he wants it.

⋆ Earned - (nsfw 18+) f!reader implied a sequel to ‘desperate’ but you actually let hunter finish this time.

⋆ Juggling - (fluff) gn!reader playing the role of older brother was the last thing he expected as a solider.

⋆ Butterfly - f!reader implied new changes are commencing on raxus and you, as a nature lover, stumble across another nature lover.

⋆ Falling For You - masc!f!reader you were eager to retrieve hunter who became separated from the group after a mission for cid’s client.

☽ ━━ Wrecker

⋆ Wrecked His Heart - (kinda angst) gn!reader wrecker has feelings for you but do you reciprocate?

⋆ Stealth Wrecker, Remember? - (fluffy love) gn!reader oh, he’s crushing on you real hard that he’s sneaking off to go visit you.

☽ ━━ Crosshair

⋆ His Nature - (fluff) gn!reader he harbours feelings for you but with his personality, he finds difficult to confess.

⋆ Toothpick - (fluff) crosshair a new face comes around when the batchers lay low from the empire.

⋆ Brothers - (fluff) crosshair and batchers finally, proper food since the empire but crosshair’s stubborn.

last updated: 5/12/23

temporary masterlist but here it is!!

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[moonstrider9904]

The Bad Batch Season 2 CRACK | Memes that fill Hunter's coffee pot

Get it? Because he's a tired dad!! HAHA I am so funny-

I AM BACK (on YouTube) with a loooong overdue Season 2 parody video! This was both really fun and really painful to make - please don't come at me with pitchforks LOL. I hope you guys can laugh and get a kick out of the crappy green screen edits in this video. It ain't much, but it's honest work.

[aintinacage]

Plan 99