On the one hand, Bad Batch was never not going to be about ‘little special girl is constantly under threat by the Empire’.
On the other, I was hoping they’d shed that REALLY fucking quick, pull a fast one and be like, actually she’s a good template clone but otherwise like, that’s it, and clones are over so who cares! I was looking FORWARD to that so much.
And on my third hand which I lost in the war but can still feel sometimes, I recognize this is a wanted plot by many, the guys worrying about Omega.
Just, I prefer to see a narrative grow and change, not be the same thing all the time. We explored the guys struggling with the balancing act of keeping Omega safe while keeping her with them. From trying to leave her with someone else to nearly losing her to reluctantly making her a full-fledged member of the squad with mission objectives, they’ve explored this territory thoroughly and to good effect.
So to have a backtracking arc which retreads that and returns us to ‘oh le nose the Empire is after Omega because special!!!!!!!!’ is a huge disappointment. I hold out faint hope that was a red herring scene and things will go wildly different, that we’ll get a nice fake out. “Nala Se is actually trying to lure the Batch themselves here because <whatever>, knows Omega coming to her means the Batch will, and this results in bad things for all 5 of them because Reasons<tm>.” There see how easy that was???? Please be doing a misdirect, please do not make me re-experience the same 4 episodes *again*.
You know what was refreshing about the end of S1? it was *Hunter* who was in a tight spot, *not* Omega. That was a solid decision and it worked well. At the time I thought that was a sign we were done with OMEGA IS CAPTURED MUST SAVE nonsense.
Now I can only hope I was right.