WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 1, Episode 13, “Infested,” streaming now on Disney+.
Some time has passed since the last episode of The Bad Batch because when “Infested” opens, Clone Force 99 exits their ship on Ord Mantel, and Echo mentions having completed a mission where their drop zone was full of gundarks. When they arrive back at Cid’s parlor, however, there is trouble. Roland Durand has taken over, and kicked Cid to the curb.
The son of Isa Durand, Roland is an up-and-coming, wannabe crime lord, but he does have money and soldiers at his disposal. Ord Mantel is in a perfect galactic position to run a base of operations, so when he decided that he wanted control there, he took it. Now that the Bad Batch is back, Cid plans to use them to regain her little empire, but her plan nearly makes an enemy out of one of the five major crime syndicates – the Pykes.
Cid knows from her sources that Roland is scheduled to deliver a shipment of spice to the Pykes that night, so she wants to steal the spice in order to put Roland into a bad position with the buyers. When he cannot deliver, the Pykes are sure to terminate their business partnership and probably Roland as well. When that happens, it will leave Cid’s parlor vacant for her to reclaim. It’s a solid scheme, but of course, things never go quite as planned in The Bad Batch.
Cid leads Clone Force 99 down into the city’s mining tunnels and makes them manually use old rail carts to get under her parlor. She does this because, apparently, the tunnels are infested with something. If they stay quiet, all will be fine, but if they make too much noise, there will be trouble. They all make it to Cid’s parlor without a hitch and steal the spice, and although they are pursued and lose the spice in the tunnels, everything seems to have worked. Roland is going to be in trouble with the Pykes.
Then, Cid and the Bad Batch make a rather elementary mistake: they go back to the parlor too soon. The Pykes are still there, and Roland, who is cuffed but not dead, informs his captors that Cid was responsible for taking their spice. No amount of playing dumb will work against such a ruthless criminal organization, and killing the Pykes' representatives will make them a major enemy. So, their only option is to find and return the spice, or else things will go badly for Cid, the Bad Batch and Omega. The Pykes even make Omega stay behind as collateral.
While retrieving the spice, Wrecker and Cid awaken the hive in the tunnels and are swarmed by giant moth-like monsters. Luckily, Tech has thought ahead and prepared a light bomb that scares the monsters away. Back at the parlor, the Pykes forcefully remove one of Roland’s horns for his role in the situation, but surprisingly, since Clone Force 99 returned the spice, the Pykes let them off without any punishment. Crisis was averted this time in The Bad Batch, but the clones came awfully close to having the Pykes chasing them through the galaxy in addition to Crosshair, the Empire and multiple bounty hunters.
Created by Dave Filoni, new episodes of Star Wars: The Bad Batch air Fridays on Disney+.