More Machine Than Man: Using Character Parallels to Predict Echo’s Journey in The Bad Batch
Echo was one of the first fictional character deaths that genuinely moved me when I was a kid.
Sure, there were a lot of character deaths in my formative Disney movies that made me sad, but no death had ever gotten such an emotional “How dare they!” reaction as Star Wars: The Clone Wars did on Friday, March 4, 2011, when Echo got blown up at the climax of Season 3’s 19th episode.
So when Dave Filoni revealed concept sketches of what the production team had been planning for future seasons at the time of the show’s cancellation, finding out Echo was going to come back - that he was still alive after all - was a tremendous joy for me. Getting the story reels depicting his rescue was a gift enough, but actually getting to see his return as a fully animated episode in all it’s glory when Season 7 finally released on Disney+ last year was a dream come true.
While I wasn’t particularly invested enough in the Bad Batch as a group to be excited when their spinoff was announced, the fact that one of my favorite clones (second only to Rex and Fives) was now a co-star of a spinoff show was enough of a thrill to keep me invested.
And yet, despite being highlighted as one of the main characters, Echo has not gotten as much focus as Hunter, Tech, Omega, Crosshair, or Wrecker since the show began.
A lot of this can of course be put down to the fact that while audiences have already had years to get attached to Echo, the rest of the Bad Batch are still relatively new from an audience perspective. Only four of the eight episodes they were planned to appear in for Clone Wars were ever finished, and they were all presented there as stock action movie archetypes. So in a show where these relatively one-dimensional characters are supposed to be the main protagonists, the writers need to spend a lot of time early on fleshing these characters out, making them more rounded, and giving us a reason to care about them besides looking cool and being connected to Echo.
But just because they haven’t done anything outwardly obvious with Echo yet doesn’t mean the writers aren’t planting seeds now to lay the groundwork for his evolution later on.
And after thinking some more about “Aftermath” - plus a comment somewhere on twitter, tumblr, TVTropes, or Jedi Council Forums that I frustratingly cannot track down again - I think I might have a general idea of what the writers have in store for him.
In the first episode of The Bad Batch, Tech refers to Echo as “more machine than man.”
Now, I’ve seen a lot of people up in arms claiming that The Bad Batch treats Echo like a droid and other arguments, especially after the whole “sold as a droid” scam they pulled in Episode 04. But aside from that one elusive comment I mentioned, I have not seen anyone taking into account that line’s potential as a flag to mark a parallel that could be used to start predicting the direction of Echo’s character arc.
Because while I can’t speak for the novels or comics, but the only other time I have ever seen that specific phrase, “more machine than man” has been in a conversation about none other than Echo’s former General, Anakin Skywalker. Or as he now goes by in the time frame of The Bad Batch, Darth Vader.
It may not be obvious at first glance, but when you look closely at Echo’s designs from Season 7 and his story arc in The Clone Wars as a whole, you’ll find multiple visual and narrative similarities with the story of Darth Vader.
Both are extremely pale after a long period of time without sunlight: Echo was kept in a box for over a year, while after becoming Darth Vader, Anakin spends all his time in his suit and only takes it off to soak in a bacta chamber like the one at his castle on Mustafar in Rogue One.
But suffered severe injuries that resulted in parts of their body - including being replaced with cybernetics: Echo in the explosion of the shuttle at The Citadel, Anakin by the burning lava of Mustafar. Both of them even lost their right arm specifically. Both of these transformations are also visually associated with fire, and their primary color schemes following their transformations are black and red, along with some dark grey thrown into the mix.
Both are manipulated into aiding the enemy of their respective groups - The Separatists experiment on Echo in order to rip Republic military tactics directly from his mind against his will, while despite Palpatine’s grooming him to become a Sith Apprentice, Anakin still consciously chooses to turn to the Dark Side.
In both situations, Echo and Anakin return back to their original allegiance thanks to someone they care about. Rex saves Echo from his imprisonment on Skako Minor, after which he returns to Republic service. Meanwhile Luke’s love for Anakin eventually brings him back from the Dark Side in Return of The Jedi.
And in each case, their return coincides with them bringing about the defeat and death of the person who they had previously been “working” under. Echo is instrumental in securing Trench’s defeat at Anaxes, leading to his death at the hands of Anakin. Decades later, Anakin kills Palpatine in order to save his son, thereby resulting in the deterioration and downfall of the Empire.
As I discussed in my earlier Ventress meta, the major thematic core of Episodes I - VI of the Skywalker Saga is Anakins’ fall to the dark side and his eventual redemption. When a character is that central to the narrative, several other characters typically serve as mirrors that show how differently things could have gone under different circumstances.
Echo was first shown in his new armor in the animatics for the unfinished Kashyyyk arc shown at Celebration Anaheim’s “Untold Clone Wars Stories” panel in 2015. The production codes put this episode as having been near the end of Production Season 6 in between the first half of Dark Disciple and Son of Dathomir. Based on the dates listed for the concept art for those arcs in their respective galleries on Star Wars.com, this means that Echo’s new Bad Batch armor was originally designed between September 2012 and January 2013.
Meaning that these references and allusions to Vader were not something that was conceived recently just for his role in The Bad Batch, but something that has been in the works for years.
So I, for one, cannot wait to see what unfolds because of how many different possibilities there are for the directions that Echo’s character can be taken in with these parallels in mind.
There’s too many different possibilities to speculate on a single route for Echo’s character arc just yet, but I have a feeling that the more this new series goes on, the more similarities to Vader we’ll start to see.
