Summary
Another fun standalone episode might have some interesting implications for Star Wars lore, but then again it might just be a fun little adventure.
This recap of Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2 Episode 5, “Entombed”, contains spoilers.
The Bad Batch goes all Indiana Jones this week, delivering another mostly standalone adventure – though admittedly with some worldbuilding implications – involving the whole team this time and serving as something of a showcase for new-ish character Phee Genoa, a treasure-hunting pirate who is naturally optimistic, dangerously naïve, or just an outright fantasist.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2 Episode 5 Recap
These aren’t qualities you’d necessarily want in a friend, but they have a good way of thrusting Omega and Clone Force 99 into dangerous and entertaining situations. This one involves the hunt for a mysterious treasure in an uncharted system and goes from “bad” to “worse” to “much, much worse” in just about record time.
What is the treasure?
The Kaldar Trinary system, and the Treasure of Skara Nal that can apparently be found there, are both new to Star Wars lore, but the idea of treasure pre-dating the Republic hints in the direction of Disney’s current canon storytelling project, The High Republic. Perhaps older than even that? Well, that would be fun, wouldn’t it?
There are some tremendous visuals in “Entombed”, especially once the gang realizes that the “tomb” they’re exploring is really a gargantuan bipedal death machine and that the treasure Phee is looking for controls it. Removing the Heart of the Mountain brings the machine to life, and it immediately resumes razing the planet with the team inside. The tension is whether they can stop it before it turns their ship to scrap and leaves them stranded in a system that doesn’t appear on any maps.
The ending
The tension before that comes from navigating the various traps inside as well as the very disparate personalities, especially since Phee’s optimism and self-serving recklessness are anathema to someone like Tech, or even Hunter, whose primary motivation is keeping Omega and the others safe. The Bad Batch like a haul, but not at the expense of their own personal ethics, and certainly not if it involves leaving behind a superweapon that could potentially fall into very wrong hands. Luckily the thing ends up wrecked by the end of the episode, so they don’t have to worry about that, but will the history of this mysterious civilization become more integral as the season progresses?
I enjoyed Season 2 Episode 4, and I enjoyed this one just the same – it even gets some additional points for potentially being crucial to Star Wars storytelling in some way that we perhaps haven’t perceived yet. Of course, it might not be, but even in that case, it made for a fun outing all the same.
You can stream Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2 Episode 5, “Entombed” exclusively on Disney+.
