Star Wars: The Bad Batch Just Delivered a Dune Homage in the Best Way

This Star Wars: The Bad Batch article contains spoilers.

The squad’s back together in the latest episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch, suitably titled “The Return.” Well, most of Clone Force 99 is back. While Echo is back with the Batch, and Hunter is begrudgingly letting Crosshair back into the fold, they’ve still lost Tech. There are already plenty of theories out there suggesting Tech’s still out there, but for the moment, his apparent death has left a hole in the fabric of the team. At its best, this Star Wars series is about family and this one’s close to complete but not quite, especially as there are quite a few wounds left to heal between Crosshair and the rest of the squad.

Fortunately, “The Return” kicks off the healing process, from Crosshair helping his brothers locate the Empire’s top-secret Tantiss Base to Wrecker handing his brother his old clone armor to Crosshair and Hunter finally having that heart-to-heart (after a lot of arguing and pointing fingers, of course). Hunter accepts they’ve all made mistakes, a big step forward for this family.

But to get to this point, the squad first has to work together survive an attack from a giant wyrm! It’s a sequence that not only take its the series back to its mission/monster-of-the-week roots but also pays tribute Star Wars‘ older brother, Frank Herbert’s Dune. It’s no secret that George Lucas‘ space fantasy saga owes a lot to Herbert’s far more complex sci-fi epic, down to the boy hero and desert world, and “The Return” is the most direct nod to that legacy yet. The timing of this wyrm-filled episode with the release of Dune: Part Two is likely no accident.

In order to restore the power to the now-abandoned Imperial base on Barton IV, which Crosshair believes holds vital information on the location of Tantiss Base, Omega accidentally turns off the sensor perimeter that keeps the wyrm at bay (yeah, this story is a little bit Jurassic Park, too!). But with the perimeter now deactivated, the wyrm quickly charged toward the base, trapping the Batch and sending Hunter hurtling into one of the wyrm’s tunnels. Getting the power back on and reaching safety is no picnic with the hungry monster at their tail, but the wyrm sequence serves a bigger purpose than as a fun easter egg for the Dune-obsessed masses.

The sequence allows Crosshair and Hunter to speak through their actions when the words simply aren’t helping. When Hunter falls through the ice, Crosshair jumps into action, coalescing around the rest of the team like he never left. We see a level of synchronization from these clones that’s been sorely missed. That it’s Crosshair who risks it all to save Hunter from the wyrm is what finally gets these two talking at the end of the episode. Hunter accepts that people can make huge mistakes but they can also change. It’s certainly a more heartwarming ending than the conclusion of Dune: Part Two…

Star Wars: The Bad Batch streams on Wednesdays on Disney+.

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