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Kenobi Trailer & The Bad Batch - S1E4 & E5

Writer's picture: ChristianChristian

It’s finally here! We’re talking about the fresh Kenobi trailer, and ranking The Bad Batch Season 1 Episode 4: Cornered and Episode 5: Rampage. What details did you miss and what expectations should be set for the Obi-Wan Kenobi show? Who would win in a brawl: Fennec Shand or Hunter? How did we manage to squeeze all of this into one recorded episode? Tune in to find out, and learn where the Star Wars ranking team places these two episodes.


“Twitter has been foaming at the mouth, waiting for this moment.” - Amanda


It was Wednesday, the 9th of March, a twitter account by the name of “Obi-Wan Kenobi” tweeted: “Hello there!” From that moment, the Star Wars Twitter bubble was bursting with excitement and speculation that a trailer would be dropped later that day. Sure enough, we got one, and boy was it awesome. We got to hear the Duel of the Fates melded with the Battle of Heros, Vader’s breath, and Obi-Wan’s discouraged spirit. It’s surprising how much was revealed in this trailer, yet we still don’t know much. We’re excited the show spends some time off of Tatooine (or it appears so). However, with great trailers, comes great expectations.


“Let’s have some actual sweet lightsaber duels.” - Christian


Brody did not like the trailer, or shall we say, he did not like what the trailer is setting us up for. He (like many of us) is hesitant to get his hopes high. Though, Disney is asking for it. They’re bringing back Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader, Inquisitors, a young Luke Skywalker, Duel of the Fates, and who knows what else? As hard core fans of the prequels, now that we have Ewan and Hayden back, we’re expecting prequel-era lightsaber action with top notch choreography. The Inquisitors are a great way to usher this into the limited series. It looks like a higher budget tv series. We’re hoping to see Obi-Wan spend some time meditating (perhaps he was talking to Qui-Gon during the trailer), which would be a callback to the Expanded Universe / Legends novel Kenobi by John Jackson Miller. Was the Inquisitor speaking with Commander Cody? Tim’s prediction is that the first episode will be slow, though we’re happy with it if done right. We’re also happy that Vader was not totally revealed, we’re just given his singular breath there at the end. Has the bar already been set too high with everything thrown into this series? With the sequel trilogy and The Book of Boba Fett trailers, can we really trust Disney’s marketing team at this point? There’s only one way to find out.


“There just really wasn’t a whole lot to this episode.” - Brody


Moving on to the content that we must rank: Episode 4 - Cornered was not much of a crowd-pleaser. Other than introducing Fennec Shand to this show, this episode doesn’t do much for the series. However, we do like that she’s a stone cold killer here. Sure, it raises the stakes for the batch; showing them someone is seriously after their heads (or someone’s head). But what else are we getting that pushes the story? No fees now when transferring your Imperial credits? It would’ve been more interesting had they fleshed out Fennec to be more dimensional, but her purpose was to teach the audience about stranger danger. Omega naively follows her, and she’s lucky there weren’t serious consequences. Hunter and Fennec have a brief brawl, Echo was sold as a droid (for 3,000 credits), and there was a cool chase scene. The chase felt like a callback to the one with Zam Wessel from the Attack of the Clones. It’s colorful and fast-paced. It even linger on other motorists’ faces like they did in Attack of the Clones. Tim pointed out that we were introduced to Clink, the LE-series droid. He also mentioned the dogs reminded him of Heimlich from A Bug’s Life, which I can see now. But simply having space dogs doesn’t mean you get high rankings from us.



“Omega gets to see a little bit more of the gray side of the universe.” - Tim


Episode 5: Rampage earned a bit higher of a ranking. One of the reasons being the introduction of Cid. Having previously worked with the Jedi, she has information. She can provide some protection to the batch. Cid is more interesting than Fennec for this reason; she’s not one dimensional. She keeps Hunter on his toes by not easily dolling out her friendship, but by providing mutually beneficial transactions. She’s a resource not to be squandered, and Hunter knows it. However, Brody doesn’t find her character interesting. For that, you’re just going to have to listen to his Italian mobster monologue. He’s still bringing back the spotlight to Omega as he has high hopes for her. What if she gains assassin skills while with the Bad Batch? She’s only ever known Kamino, and now she’s getting introduced to other planets. She’s innocent, not knowing what slavery is. We can’t blame him, we all have high hopes for Omega now that she has an energy bow. She also has the large beast-riding trait like Boba Fett!


Hot Takes:

  • Fennec would beat Hunter in one on one combat.

  • The Bad Batch is either incredibly stupid or they’re poorly written characters.

  • Hunter would beat the crap out of Wrecker.


With the short fight scene that we got, I’ll have to admit it’s a tough choice between Fennec and Hunter. Comparing resumes, Fennec is a long range sharp shooter, and Hunter chooses to walk around with a knife. Though Fennec would play dirty instead of Hunter who would instead fight with honor. It was a well-choreographed fight scene between them, even though it was short. Brody went straight for the jugular, insulting the batch…or the show writers. Was Crosshair the brains of the group or was he just the overwatch intel? With him gone, I think we have to allow some grace for their mishaps, but they do seem clueless or at least not confident sometimes. They’re relying on something that’s not there, and they have to adjust. They’ve displayed in front of Tarkin that they’re an asset. Amanda says they’re written this way in order for Omega to shine. Though, we want a battle of wits for Omega to earn that. When they’re separated at this stage, that’s when things fall apart. Maybe with Omega in training, we can hope to see significant improvement within their teamwork.


“I think they were designed with each other in mind to be this squad, to work with each other.” - Christian


A strength of this episode was the lore it presented. We get Zygerrians and their love of the Empire because they’re benefitting from its control. We see some Brezak dragons (no Boga though). And that energy bow was giving Amanda some Breath of the Wild vibes. We want to see 40 year old Omega as a badass with the energy bow! She can be a sort of strategist Legolas. We’re all excited about this bow if you can’t tell. It’s cool bits of lore like that, which show us that watching Star Wars has always been fun. Some of it’s more fun than others, but we’re going to rank it all for you nonetheless.




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