Unfinished Business (The Clone Wars - S07E04) - Animated Series

Trust placed in another is trust earned

The final battle for Anaxes begins

Unfinished Business concludes the Bad Batch arc. After the successful escape from Skako Minor with Echo, the Jedi and Rex debate a battle plan back on Anaxes. Things are not looking good. This is when Echo comes up with a plan of his own. He and the Bad Batch will infiltrate the command ship of the Separatists and Echo will feed Admiral Trench false tactics that will make sure Mace Windu, Obi-Wan and their clone troopers can turn the tide of battle and retake the shipyards on the planet. And even though the Bad Batch has some misgivings about Echo's loyalties, the plan is agreed upon. Echo, the Bad Batch, Captain Rex and Anakin Skywalker make their way to the command ship and Mace Windu, Obi-Wan and the clone troopers move on the shipyards.

En route to the dreadnought the Bad Batch are sill somewhat suspicious of Echo, who was a prisoner of the Separatists for years, but Echo successfully manages to change the id of their ship so the droids on the dreadnought believe it's one of theirs and let them pass.

The team successfully infiltrates the command dreadnought so Echo can begin to feed false information

The team infiltrates the dreadnought and Echo can begin to feed false tactics to Admiral Trench. Meanwhile Mace and Obi-Wan launch their attack on the shipyards.

The droids can choose, they choose poorly

In a somewhat comedic scene Mace offers the droids a choice, surrender and get reprogrammed, or resist and be killed. Mace has destroyed 100,000 battle droids so far, it's apparent he no longer enjoys it. It's been a long war and people get weary. But battle droids are still dumb of course and so they choose death. Echo meanwhile successfully feeds false tactics to Admiral Trench who sends in even more troops. But Echo has a way of disabling them when they are all in one place. The plan succeeds, but then a bomb is discovered in the shipyards. And it's protected by a ray shield. Echo tries to decipher the code to disable the shield and manages to get the first digits, but before he can decipher the last digit he is taken out by a surge of electricity. There is not much time left, Obi-Wan and the clones retreat and only Mace stays behind, waiting for the final digit so the ray shield is disabled and he can defuse the bomb.

Anakin's patience is wearing pretty thin

Anakin makes his way to the bridge to get the code from Admiral Trench. And in this scene we can see that Anakin is flirting more and more with the dark side, he's angry, he's impatient, he's in no mood for games anymore. And when Admiral Trench says he's more afraid of Dooku than Anakin, because Anakin is a Jedi and won't kill him, Anakin cuts off three of the Admirals's arms. That convinces Trench to give up the final digit, but it doesn't save his life. Anakin murders him in cold blood.

It's Wrecker's happiest day of his life!

The Bad Batch, Rex, Echo and Anakin make their escape from the dreadnought after a few intense and quite original firefights with the droids. Anakin also snatched the self destruct remote from the bridge and offers it to Wrecker, whose greatest joy is to blow things up. And so he does. He blows up the command ship and the debris and shockwave also take out another two dreadnoughts. The battle for Anaxes is over! The Republic has won!

The Bad Batch with one new team member

Back on the ground Echo makes a decision. He's no longer a normal clone, too much has changed. And so he decides to join the Bad Batch, who are happy to take him on as a new member.

So that was the Bad Batch arc. All in all the arc was par for the course. The arc was entertaining, however, the story was a bit light on character development and very heavy on the action. In the end the four episodes offered standard fare. Also, the Bad Batch was somewhat too clichéd and stereotypical to be taken entirely seriously. That being said, the set pieces were pretty, the animation was smooth, the action was well choreographed. But too many episodes were about infiltrating and exfiltrating from command posts or command ships. Actually, all four episodes were about infiltrating and exfiltrating, so the arc lacked a bit of diversity in the story department. Episode 4 was the best one, because it gave us some insight into the psyche of the heroes. While Mace seems to be tired and weary, and no longer in the mood for useless fights that will only end in destruction, Anakin is shown to be on edge, he has zero patience, he is very angry and he doesn't shy away from murder. He's already no longer on the Jedi path, that much is clear. War has changed him for the worse. His long distance relationship with Padme is also another factor. The longer the war rages on, the longer Anakin and Padme will be apart. So things need to be resolved quickly if Anakin wants to be reunited with Padme sooner than later.

And again, it has to be pointed out how pretty everything looks. While The Clone Wars is still stylized, the artwork is beautiful, in comparison to the other two animated shows, Rebels and Resistance, you can tell that The Clone Wars is on another level, even if the story was not all that great in the first arc. The next arc will be about Ahsoka. We can all hope that her episodes will give us a little bit more story.

If you don't care for spoilers you can read Mike's old review of the entire Bad Batch arc, based on the animatics released in 2015.

This week there will be no link to the old animatic. Since Lucasfilm copyright claimed the old animatics on YouTube the video with the old footage is no longer available.