- Title: Star Wars: The Bad Batch – The Harbinger
- wiki: link
In what feels like an awkward bit of fan service, Star Wars: The Bad Batch brings in the character of Asajj Ventress (Nika Futterman) from the The Clone Wars series as the character to deliver the (rather obvious) news about what the “M count” stands for. While also bringing back one of the most divisive terms in Star Wars canon, the episode suggests that Omega‘s (Michelle Ang) high count allows for the possibility of the Force. While Omega has never shown any Force ability, and Ventress’ “tests” don’t show anything either, the need of a clone to have access to the Force is of course central to the events of The Rise of Skywalker.
The episode is centered around Ventress looking cool and being vague, the clones distrusting her, and then the eventual reveal. How exactly she found them, when the Empire cannot, isn’t explained. Since we know a simple blood test (see Episode I) would confirm this chain of thinking, Ventress’ various tests don’t amount to much other than pissing off the clones and wasting everyone’s time. Ventress lying to the Clones seems to serve no one’s purpose, other than possibly her own – but her distrust of the Empire seems to make turning Omega over to them less likely to be her goal given the opportunities she squanders here.
The episode’s title suggests that that truth Ventress brings will foreshadow trouble for our heroes. While I doubt the show has the balls to have Omega experimented on and killed to get that precious secret of her clone DNA, we know that the Empire does need to eventually get their hands on a sample in order to fit the events of the ninth Star Wars movie into the timeline at work. My guess, the Empire will get a sample but the clones and Omega will make a miraculous escape (per usual).
