The following contains spoilers from The Bad Batch Season 2, Episode 1 "Spoils of War" and Episode 2 "Ruins of War," now streaming on Disney+.
Clone Force 99 is back in Season 2 of The Bad Batch, which launched with a two-episode premiere on Disney+. The second season's opening story arc saw the renegade Clone unit being sent to Count Dooku's now-abandoned castle on his home world of Serenno in an attempt to retrieve the old Separatist leader's war chest. The story sets up the Bad Batch's ongoing efforts to combat the Empire and sees this responsibility coming into conflict with their duty of caring for the young Omega. This struggle comes to a head in a scene that perfectly homages another classic Lucasfilm title, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Star Wars has a long history of referencing films and other media that have had a role to play in the franchise's history. The films of Akira Kurosawa were a major influence on George Lucas in creating the galaxy far, far away, and consequently Kurosawa's classic Seven Samurai has been adapted by Star Wars television series on more than one occasion. Hunter, the leader of the Bad Batch, is a clear nod to characters such as Rambo and Predator's Billy Sole. The Bad Batch Season 2 carried on this tradition with a direct reference to the Indiana Jones series, which Lucas also produced.
The Bad Batch Lose Their Own Holy Grail
The moment of similarity between the worlds of Star Wars and Indiana Jones comes in Episode 2 of The Bad Batch's second season, "Ruins of War," and it echoes one of the final scenes in the third Indiana Jones film. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade saw Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones setting out in search of both his estranged father, Henry Jones Sr., and the legendary Holy Grail. Henry had spent his life looking for the Grail, often at the expense of his relationship with his son. In the film's closing moments, Indiana and the Grail are almost swallowed by a chasm opening in the Grail's resting place. Henry grabs hold of his son, but Indy is still trying to grab the just-out-of-reach Grail. Henry tells him to let it go, ultimately choosing to sacrifice the Grail to save his son.
In "Ruins of War," Omega is desperate to prove her worth to the Bad Batch after overhearing Echo telling Hunter that she is holding them back when they should be focusing on fighting the Empire. This leads to her sneaking off to the site of a crashed cargo container to retrieve the contents of the war chest they had set out to recover. However, after Echo follows her into the container, it starts to slip from the cliff edge over which it is dangling. Omega is jostled, and Dooku's treasures fall from her pack onto the crates below. As she attempts to recover them, staring at the gems that now lie just out of reach, Echo tells her to let it go -- echoing the words of Henry Jones to his son in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
An Echo of Indiana Jones in Star Wars: The Bad Batch
The similarity between the staging of these two scenes is so poignant because of the similarity in what the scenes mean for the characters involved. In both The Bad Batch and Indiana Jones, these moments are moments of reconciliation between a protagonist and a father figure, and in both instances that reconciliation sees the father figure sacrifice their original mission. Just as Henry Jones Sr. lets go of his quest for the Holy Grail to save Indiana from falling to his death, Echo chooses Omega over the war chest's spoils to save her from an equally fatal fall. The moment is given all the more weight by Echo repeating Henry Jones' "Let it go."
This isn't the first time a Star Wars TV series has paid homage to another Lucasfilm project. Last year, The Book of Boba Fett introduced the Mods -- a band of street-level crooks operating on Tatooine who rode colorful, customized speeder bikes. While the garish departure from Tatooine's usually drab color scheme proved controversial, the gang served as a nod to Lucas' early film, American Graffiti. Lucas himself has also suggested that the Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode "A Sunny Day in the Void," which saw a band of droids lost in an endless white desert, was inspired by the similar white void seen in his first feature film, THX 1138.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch streams Wednesdays on Disney+.