Recap / Star Wars: The Bad Batch S2E12 "The Outpost"

"We're good soldiers. We followed orders. And for what?"

— Mayday

Crosshair is assigned to guard cargo on a remote outpost, where he learns what the Empire really thinks of those like him.

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Tropes:

• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Crosshair, while literally on his hands and knees (due, admittedly, more to exhaustion than genuflecting), begs Lieutenant Nolan for a medic to treat the critically wounded Mayday.
• All for Nothing:
  • Clone Commander Mayday and his squad died for new gear for the TK troopers, gear that could have saved their lives had they known it was there.
  • Crosshair saving Mayday also counts. While Crosshair saved him from the avalanche and he survived initially, Mayday’s injuries end up killing him anyway.
  • A long-term one for Crosshair. He stuck with the Empire because he believed that the new regime would have need of him and the clones for the coming future, and they wouldn't be abandoned. Come this episode, he comes to realize just what the Empire really thinks of clones.
• Animal Motifs: Crosshair gets compared to the Circling Vultures that have been hanging around the base waiting for people to die, with Mayday referring to them as vicious creatures but admirable for their ability to survive in such a harsh climate. Later, seeing the shadow of one crossing overhead is what pushes Crosshair to kill Nolan.
• Arc Words: Mayday references "Good soldiers follow orders" when he finds out that all his men have died over equipment that will never benefit the clones. He says that they were good soldiers, they followed orders, and their loyal service was All for Nothing.
• Armor-Piercing Question: When Nolan demands Mayday and the remaining clones he has with him to do a better job of protecting the cargo from insurgents, Mayday asks Nolan if he ever fought in the Clone Wars, causing the Lieutenant to genuinely struggle to come up with an answer.
• Asshole Victim: Given all his callous treatment of clones, one shouldn't feel too bad about Nolan getting fragged by Crosshair.
• Bad Boss: Lieutenant Nolan is far worse than Admiral Rampart, and makes it clear that he doesn't give a damn about the welfare of the clone troopers under his command. He orders Crosshair and Mayday out on a suicide mission to recover two stolen crates from raiders, then denies them medical attention when they return, resulting in Mayday's death. He’s dismissive of his TK-troops as well, and we even see two of them hesitate before getting back to work.
• Big Brother Instinct: Crosshair develops this towards Mayday, to the point where he willingly carries him and cares for him while going through a snowstorm to get back to base. Lieutenant Nolan coldly denying him medical attention and letting him die drives Crosshair to shoot the lieutenant dead.
• Birds of a Feather: Crosshair and Mayday are both tired old snarkers becoming increasingly disenchanted by the Empire. Naturally they strike up a brief yet strong friendship.
• Break the Haughty: Downplayed. Crosshair was already showing some reservations about his current lot in life after returning to the Empire, but the events of this episode completely break him down to the point where he begs Nolan to get medical treatment for Mayday. And he not only watches Mayday die despite his best efforts, he gets a vicious "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Nolan that truly spells out the terrible life he's chosen for himself by staying with the Empire.
• Bullying a Dragon: Nolan lets Mayday die and taunts Crosshair about it, believing that the clones are so far below him that they pose no threat. Unfortunately for him, Crosshair — a specially-modified clone with Improbable Aiming Skills — is alive, angry, and still armed. Cue Crosshair putting a blaster bolt in Nolan.
• Buried Alive: Crosshair and Mayday get buried by an avalanche. They both survive initially, but Mayday eventually succumbs to his injuries.
• The Bus Came Back: Captain Bragg returns after being absent since Season 1's "Common Ground".
• Circling Vultures: A large bird-of-prey called an ice vulture circles overhead for most of the episode. Mayday implies it's a scavenger, even though it's never seen in action. It comes into play symbolically when its shadow circles Crosshair and the now-deceased Mayday.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Crosshair and Mayday make short work of the raiders. The most the raiders manage to do is corner and flank the two clones for a brief time before the fight is decisively finished.
• Deadpan Snarker: Mayday, jaded by the loss of his troops and his dismal assignment, has nothing but sarcasm for Lieutenant Nolan and Crosshair.
• The Dog Bites Back: Lieutenant Nolan's mistreatment of CTs, coupled with denying Mayday medical attention and callous attitude toward Crosshair, proved to be the last straw for the latter.
• Downer Ending: After his and Crosshair's lengthy journey across Barton-4's frigid landscape, Mayday dies of his wounds. Crosshair, upon realizing that he made the wrong choice by staying with the Empire, shoots Lieutenant Nolan and, instead of being executed, is handed over to Dr. Hemlock's scientists to be used as a lab rat.
• Dwindling Party: This happened to Mayday's clone platoon over the year they spent guarding the supply base, from a combination of raider attacks, the elements, and hostile wildlife. When Crosshair and Nolan show up, there are only three troopers left alive, and by the end of the episode, all of them are dead.
• Ensign Newbie: It's heavily implied that this was Nolan's first real assignment, as he's caught speechless when Mayday questions his experience. It also ends up being his only assignment, as Crosshair decides to well, relieve him of duty.
• Establishing Character Moment: The first thing Lieutenant Nolan says to Crosshair is a rebuke for being "out of uniform" (for not having his helmet on), which, coupled with addressing Crosshair by his CT number and expressing dismay at working with more Clones, calling them "used equipment", makes it clear how utterly little the service and well-being of clone troopers is worth to him.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Crosshair is genuinely angered by Lieutenant Nolan's horrible and callous treatment of the clones and kills him for it at the end of the episode.
  • Even the TK troopers seem taken aback and confused when Lieutenant Nolan orders them to go back to their work and ignore the seriously injured Crosshair and Mayday. That said, they hardly spare a thought to the lieutenant after his death.
• Evil Is Petty: Even without his belief that the clones are expendable, Nolan heavily implies that he let Mayday die because Mayday was rude to him earlier.
• Exact Words:
  • When Mayday asks Crosshair what happened to the rest of his unit, Crosshair replies that they're "gone", implying they were killed, rather than admitting that they defected.
  • Lieutenant Nolan tells Crosshair that if he speaks to him with such disrespect, he will see to it that Crosshair meets the same fate as Mayday. This ended up being the last order of his Crosshair followed to the letter; the sniper addresses him by rank, but Nolan didn’t say the former couldn’t shoot him.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Lieutenant Nolan is nothing but rude and derisive towards the Clones under his command and describes them as "used equipment" at the beginning of the episode.
  • While the TK troopers stop what they're doing to witness Mayday and Crosshair's return to the outpost, when Nolan orders them to return to loading the cargo, they simply do so without bothering to help the two clone troopers^note though some are visibly reluctant in doing so.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Crosshair finds the corpse of the raider he wounded during the outpost attack, the body is clearly adorned with stormtrooper-esque armor. Since it was shown that the surviving clones retrieved the armors of the ones who were killed in the previous fights, that's a hint about the content of the boxes.
  • When Crosshair notes there's no use carrying dead weight, Mayday says, "Remind me not to die on your watch.".
• From Bad to Worse: After shooting Nolan dead, a detachment of troops arrive to detain Crosshair. Instead of executing him for fragging his commanding officer, Crosshair finds himself being used as a lab rat.
• Good Is Not Dumb: Mayday helps to keep a pressure mine from blowing up Crosshair, but distances himself first before telling him to ease off it in case it blows up anyway. After all, they can't finish their mission if they're both dead.
• Gory Discretion Shot: When Crosshair kills Nolan, the latter is facing away from the camera so that the audience can’t see the shot go through his chest.
• Guns Akimbo: Mayday briefly uses two DC-15 blaster carbines while fighting the raiders before Crosshair saves him.
• Hair-Trigger Avalanche: Averted; the avalanche that wounds Mayday and Crosshair isn't triggered by the blaster fire they exchange with the raiders, and even when the explosion Crosshair sets off to end the fight does cause the avalanche, it takes some time before it gets going.
• Hate Sink: Lieutenant Nolan is an even bigger asshole than Crosshair and has no redeeming qualities, whereas Crosshair actually becomes less of an asshole after seeing the mistreatment of the clones on full display now that they're fully expendable.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Lieutenant Nolan has light blue eyes and is a callous and ruthless jackass.
• Ironic Echo: Since the start of the series, and post-Order 66, Crosshair is always insistent that "Good soldiers follow orders", even as the clones' relevance fades during the Empire's rise to power. Mayday says "We're good soldiers. We followed orders." He then mournfully adds that it amounted to nothing. All his men are dead over new uniforms for their replacements. This actually gets to Crosshair, who for the first time really sees that he's just another grunt to the Empire.
• Irony:
  • Crosshair once accused Hunter of not being able to see the bigger picture. Here, he sees the bigger picture in a way he hadn't before.
  • From the same quote as above, it's pretty clear that Crosshair was the one who failed to see the bigger picture-the Empire doesn't care about the clones and that Hunter and the others were the smarter ones to get out while they still could.
  • Nolan views himself as more important to the Empire than Crosshair. When Crosshair frags him, Crosshair is important enough to the Empire to be appropriated by Mount Tantiss as opposed to being directly punished.
  • Among the other insults he levels at the clones, he dismisses Crosshair as being outdated by the TK Troopers. As time would later show, the TK Troopers' successors could only dream of having Crosshair's aiming skills.
  • Shouting in Crosshair’s face about clones being expendable, Nolan doesn’t realize that applies to himself as well, and no one will miss him once he’s killed.
  • The cargo Mayday's clones had been fighting raiders and occasionally freezing to death to guard? Snow trooper armor, which is designed to protect against the cold.
• It's Personal: Though Crosshair could’ve just shot Nolan In the Back, Mayday’s death affected him so greatly that he wanted Nolan to see his own death coming.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: When he's buried, Mayday tells Crosshair to leave him as he's doomed anyway. Crosshair, despite earlier dismissing a raider left behind as "dead weight", refuses to do so. They do make it all the way to base, only for Nolan to deny Mayday medical attention out of spite. Ironically, having Mayday to huddle with is probably the only reason Crosshair survived at all.
• Jerkass: Lieutenant Nolan is such a haughty and disrespectful scumbag that he makes Crosshair and Admiral Rampart look like good guys in comparison. However, he goes way past jerk territory when he lets Mayday die of life threatening injuries.
• Karmic Death: It's strongly implied that Crosshair called out to Lieutenant Nolan so he could shoot him in the chest, so Nolan would know in his last moments that he was killed by the very clone he belittled like the others.
• Land Mine Goes "Click!": Crosshair steps on a pressure mine whilst he and Mayday are exploring the caves. Lacking the proper disarming equipment, Mayday has to improvise by hammering three metal brackets into the ground around it to hold the pressure pad down.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Crosshair shoots and kills Lieutenant Nolan after putting up with his haughtiness and mistreatment.
• More Despicable Minion: Higher ranking Imperials in this series like Rampart have some level of decency, but Lieutenant Nolan is on the lowest end of the officer food chain, and he's such a horrible human being that not only does he treat his own soldiers like slaves, he coldly commits Murder by Inaction on a clone trooper under his command.
• Moral Myopia: Lieutenant Nolan gets outraged when Mayday and Crosshair can't speak to him with respect. Nolan can't even listen to himself being so blatantly and hypocritically disrespectful to the clones and telling them they're expendable.
• Murder by Inaction: Lieutenant Nolan denies a critically wounded Mayday of medical treatment. It’s very clear the lieutenant wanted him to die.
• Mythology Gag: This won't be the last time an Imperial officer has his loyalty to the Empire shaken while stranded on an icy planet. Whether it sticks for Crosshair the way it stuck for Kallus (or whether it'll be given the chance to stick) remains to be seen.
• The Neidermeyer: Lieutenant Nolan is an arrogant and prejudiced man who expects unconditional respect despite treating his soldiers like dirt, sends two men on a suicide mission for a little gear, and practices You Have Failed Me with extreme prejudice. Unsurprisingly, Crosshair frags him at the end of the episode.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Crosshair shoots a pile of mines to take out the raiders. He also succeeds in causing an avalanche that's ultimately responsible for Mayday's death. That said, the raiders had Crosshair and Mayday pinned down and could well have finished them off otherwise.
• Oh, Crap!: Nolan has this look when he sees Crosshair pointing a blaster at him, fully planning on killing him.
• Out of Focus: Crosshair’s former teammates, The Bad Batch, don’t appear in this episode.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Crosshair immediately goes to save Mayday after they both get buried by an avalanche and Crosshair manages to dig himself back up. He even begs Lieutenant Nolan to get a medic and save him, but his request is cruelly denied and Mayday dies afterwards.
  • Downplayed; after calling him by his CT number, Emerie Karr asks if Crosshair prefers his nickname. It isn't much, but given previous Imperials' refusal to even acknowledge Crosshair as anything but a number, it's more respect for his individuality than he's been shown for some time.
• Rage Breaking Point: After months of seeing how the Empire treats his fellow Clones, Crosshair finally reaches his limit when Lieutenant Nolan cruelly denies medical attention for the badly injured Mayday, gunning the officer down in full view of witnesses.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Crosshair is redeployed to a remote Imperial storage facility on the icy Barton-4. The troopers there have been on station for over a year without resupply or relief, and most of them are dead or MIA.
• Redemption Equals Death: Subverted. Crosshair kills his commanding officer Nolan under the likely assumption it will be his last act, but he ends up diverted to Mount Tantiss for unknown, seemingly not good, reasons.
• Silence Is Golden: Crosshair and Mayday don't speak a word during their long trek back to the Outpost.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat:
  • Mayday is just as sarcastic and cynical as Crosshair and thus their dialogue lapses into this on occasion. It seems to give Crosshair more respect for him.
    Mayday: I'll wait around the bend. If I don't hear a boom, then I'll know it worked.
    Crosshair: Glad you're confident in your work.
    Mayday: Oh, I'm confident. I'm just not stupid.
  • He also snarks with Nolan, but the exchange is far more mean-spirited, with Nolan responding to Mayday's criticism of his arrogance by accusing him of getting his squad killed.
• The Sociopath: Nolan, full stop. He is a cruel, selfish, and sadistic Imperial officer who treats all soldiers like slaves, treats clones with disdain and has no respect for anyone's well-being. The one act that seals him as a repugnant monster? Denying a critically wounded Mayday medical aid for not only failing the mission, but just for existing, and he goes out to threaten Crosshair with death just for speaking to him disrespectfully.
• Sole Survivor: Crosshair is the only surviving named member from the mission on Barton IV.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: After passing out, Crosshair wakes up at Mount Tantiss, where Dr. Karr appears and makes clear Crosshair has been "volunteered" for something, advising him to cooperate and he might survive.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Crosshair using thermal vision to track a raider through a snowstorm bites him in the ass when an explosion goes off and the sheer quantity of heat temporarily blinds him.
• Sympathetic Villain, Despicable Villain: Crosshair is a ruthless Clone soldier who serves the Empire and committed various war crimes. But, he serves the Empire because he felt like he had a purpose, and formed friendships with Regs like Mayday. Lieutenant Nolan however, is a sociopathic Imperial officer who holds nothing but contempt and disgust for clones, going as far as to spitefully and indirectly murder Mayday for failing to complete his mission.
• Taking You with Me: If Nolan treats all clones horribly that he would send them to their deaths, Crosshair figures he might as well discard him first before that inevitable fate.
• Tempting Fate: Lt. Nolan demands Crosshair address him by his proper rank and show him respect after he callously lets Mayday die right in front of him. Crosshair obliges, addressing him as "Lieutenant" before shooting him dead.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Downplayed as he's still a bit of a jerk, but after Crosshair sees how the Empire mistreats the clones despite them eradicating the Jedi and the Separatists who caused the Clone Wars and sees them as disposable, he starts showing more compassion and is less apathetic to the other clones, and even tries to save Mayday, one of the clones he was working with, after they got buried by an avalanche. In contrast to how coldly he brushes off other clone deaths, Crosshair is genuinely distressed by Mayday's death and shoots Lieutenant Nolan for denying him medical attention.
• Tragic Keepsake: Mayday displays the helmets of all the teammates he's lost in memoriam of their sacrifice.
• Tranquil Fury: Too exhausted to summon much energy or emotion, Crosshair simply calls for Nolan's attention before shooting him dead.
• Unfriendly Fire: While Crosshair has done this several times, he frags Nolan for purposely letting Mayday die of his injuries.
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • Crosshair completely defies this. He goes through a snowstorm and gives all his energy to carry Mayday to base after Mayday saved him from a landmine and pushed him to a safe spot when an avalanche hit them. It's his death that makes Crosshair realize just how little the Empire truly thinks of him and the clones.
  • Nolan plays it straight; he dismisses the losses that Mayday and his squad have suffered, and when Crosshair and Mayday barely return alive from their mission, all Nolan can do is gripe that they didn't recover the stolen equipment (currently buried after an avalanche), and denies the critically injured Mayday medical attention despite his service. For what it was worth, the Lieutenant didn’t deserve to have that equipment back for his cruelty towards the clones.
• Villain Episode: Crosshair is the focus of the episode, though the degree to which he still counts as a villain by the end of the episode is up in the air.
• Villain of the Week: Lieutenant Nolan serves as the main Imperial antagonist of the episode due to his cruel treatment of the clones, culminating in Crosshair shooting him dead for denying Mayday medical aid.
• Wham Shot: The final scene has Crosshair being treated by the female doctor, Emerie Karr, on Mount Tantiss, who suggests that Hemlock is the one who had him transferred.
• You Have Failed Me: Nolan refuses to call a medic for Mayday because he and Crosshair failed their mission to retrieve the cargo, and threatens him with execution if he fails again. Crosshair decides he’s the one who needs to be executed.
• You Monster!: A subdued one, but the way Crosshair decries Lieutenant Nolan for deliberately refusing medical aid to Mayday makes it clear he's telling him what a cruel monster he is for his treatment of them.

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