Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 3 of Star Wars: The Bad Batch.

In Season 2, Episode 3, The Bad Batch stepped away from the rest of Clone Force 99 to check in on estranged member Crosshair (Dee Bradley Baker), who is still working for the Empire. Crosshair’s latest mission teamed him with Commander Cody (also Baker), a fan-favorite clone who has appeared in Star Wars films and the Clone Wars series The Bad Batch spun off from. But while seeing Cody again was a treat for fans, his new storyline undermines one of the Star Wars franchise’s most important plot points.

In “The Solitary Clone,” Vice Admiral Rampart (Noshir Dalal) sends Crosshair to join Cody and his team on a mission to Desix, a planet that was part of the Separatist alliance during the Clone Wars. Remaining Separatist forces led by Tawni Ames (Tasi Valenza) have captured the local Imperial governor, Grotton (Max Mittelman), and are demanding the Empire recognize Desix’s independence in exchange for his life. The clones are charged with rescuing Grotton.

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An Unjust Mission

The Bad Batch-Commander Cody with Crosshair
Image via Disney+

After dispatching the Separatist droids in a battle that recalls their service in the Clone Wars, Crosshair and Cody reach the governor, but Ames threatens to kill him. Cody successfully talks her down by reminding her that they’ve both survived one war and don’t want to start another. After being released Grotton demands the clones execute Ames. Cody is taken aback by the cruel and immoral request, but Crosshair quickly shoots Ames dead. After returning from the mission, Cody briefly reflects on the morality of the Empire and talks to Crosshair about the rest of the Bad Batch and the other clones who have deserted since the transition from the Republic, but Crosshair remains adamant that this is treason. When being briefed for his next mission, Crosshair asks Rampart why he is being assigned to a different commander, with Rampart replying that Cody has gone missing and is presumed to have deserted.

Diluting Order 66

The Bad Batch Season 2 Commander Cody and Crosshair

While Cody making the moral choice to abandon the Empire is a nice note of optimism to end a rather bleak episode on, it is a bad storytelling decision in the long run. Just as more and more Jedi are being revealed to have survived the devastating betrayal of Order 66 across Star Wars media, the animated series is revealing more and more clones rejected the Empire, either during its rise or shortly after. Clone Wars’ most popular clone, Captain Rex, did so, as did The Bad Batch themselves and several others. It also seems all but inevitable that Crosshair will eventually redeem himself, at least partially, as The Bad Batch is making it a point to show that while he continues to be a stickler for following orders, he is becoming less comfortable in the Empire given his isolation from the other clones and his tense relationship with Rampart. He also lied about the fate of the rest of the Bad Batch at the end of Season 1. Cody was one of the last major clones who hadn’t changed sides and having him do so takes away from the dramatic impact of the clones’ role in the Empire’s creation. The fact that he and Crosshair don’t begin to question orders until after they’ve already done horrible things in the name of the Empire means they are still more morally ambiguous characters than their peers but the amount of clones breaking away from the Empire still reduces the horrific weight of Revenge of the Sith.

The tragedy of the clones was that, despite their individual personalities and the bonds they developed with their Jedi leaders, they were still unable to resist the command to turn on them during Order 66 because of the inhibitor chips inside their bodies. Effectively, they served the same role as the battle droids they spent their whole lives fighting against. Both groups were really just tools Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious used to engineer the war and take power. Additionally, most of the clones who resisted the order were only able to do so for very specific reasons. Rex had knowledge about a possible conspiracy manipulating the clones from Fives, and he was still only able to resist his chip for a few seconds before Ahsoka Tano removed it from his body. The Bad Batch’s chips didn’t function properly because of the mutations that set them apart from regular clones. While it’s possible the chips don’t do anything else to Cody or the others, now that the uprising is complete this seems like a pretty major oversight in Palpatine’s design. It’s not out of character for the Emperor to ignore the possibility of a handful of unexpected deserters like Rex and the Bad Batch, as he wouldn’t see them as significant threats to his plans, but the potential for all the regular clones to abandon the Empire after Order 66 is something he would have accounted for.

In the old canon of pre-Disney Star Wars Expanded Universe stories now dubbed Legends, Cody remained a faithful servant of the Empire and The Bad Batch would have been better off keeping this future intact for him. He could have still played an important role in Crosshair’s story; the details would simply need to be adjusted. Perhaps if Cody had killed Ames this could have frightened Crosshair into reconsidering his convictions, given how much he obviously respects the commander. In this case, Cody would serve as an example of what Crosshair eventually decides not to become, rather than an inspiration for his possible future defection, as the series seems to be setting him up to be. Whatever the case, the new canon’s approach to the clones’ post-war existence is retroactively lessening the importance of their previous stories.