Summary
Another wonderful-looking episode feels as if it has a real point to make about the Bad Batch’s current role in the galaxy and how it might be changing.
This recap of Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2 Episode 6, “Tribe”, contains spoilers.
Every piece of Star Wars media, no matter when it’s set, is almost obligated to include a Jedi and a lightsabre at some point, and “Tribe” is very much that episode for Season 2 of The Bad Batch. However, it’d be underselling it to boil it down simply to those terms. For one thing, it’s an interesting inclusion anyway, since at this point in the galactic continuity, the Jedi are supposedly all dead, having been wiped out by Order 66. But more interesting still is the fact that the Jedi in question is one of the younglings from the temple on Coruscant. It offers a fresh perspective on an old angle.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2 Episode 6 Recap
The Jedi is Gungi, who we’ve met before in The Clone Wars. He’s frightened – especially of Clone Force 99, who he understandably finds it difficult to differentiate from the clones who carried out Order 66 – and wants to return to the Wookie homeworld of Kashyyyk, though he can’t remember anything about his time there, having been taken away at a very young age.
You can see immediately that there are all kinds of intriguing angles here. The Bad Batch feel a responsibility for Gungi and a guilt about his predicament despite the fact that a) they didn’t participate in Order 66 themselves and b) it’s kind of the fault of the Jedi Order for wresting children away from their homes in the first place. This isn’t explored as deeply as it could be, but let’s be fair to a half-hour episode midway through a season of an animated show.
And there are also a lot of illuminating details once we return to Kashyyyk, a place defined by its traditions and culture but razed both literally and culturally by Imperial occupation and the atrocities committed by Trandoshans, who hunt the Wookies for sport. Again, it isn’t really delved into, but it’s definitely there, and there’s something quite stark about the senselessness of totalitarianism when it’s presented against the natural-looking backdrop of Kashyyyk, a place seemingly untouched by urbanity.
I’m glad “Tribe” included small scenes of praying to the trees, and even the natural fauna fighting back against the oppressors. The visuals are classic Star Wars stuff, with fantastic action and cinematography, and the whole thing seems to amount to a legitimate point about the Bad Batch having a responsibility to the galaxy, not just to atone for the actions of their own kind – intentional or otherwise – but to fight back against tyranny for the sake of that galaxy’s next generation, like Gungi and, of course, Omega.
You can stream Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2 Episode 6, “Tribe”, exclusively on Disney+.
