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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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hello! loved your tbb meta posts (10/10 analyses of the batch and their respective characterizations), but since it wasn't explicitly mentioned -- did you catch the post-s1 interview with jennifer corbett (head writer) and brad rau (exec producer)? their answers about crosshair's chip being out were Interesting (tm) but fairly definitive-sounding, so I'm wondering what your thoughts on it might've been.

Hey there, anon! Thank you—I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed them :D

I’ve heard this info second-hand and ran into one written interview on the topic (idk if it’s the same one you’re thinking of), but my first response is… arguably a reach lol. Not to start off with a tin hat on, but it’s always possible that the writers are lying. Which yes, yes, we have a knee-jerk reaction against the idea of anyone lying for any reason, but in this case, it would be in service of both the writer’s plans and the audience’s enjoyment. Let’s say for the sake of argument that Crosshair’s chip is definitely still in and the entire point of this setup is a double twist: first the reveal that his chip is gone, then the real reveal that it’s actually still in and Crosshair was lied to (among other possibilities). How can the writers discuss him during hiatus without revealing that twist? By playing the current knowledge straight, despite the fact that they know otherwise. Yup, Crosshair’s chip is out. Yup, he chose this 100% willingly. Nothing else to see here, folks! To do otherwise would be to reveal the twist way too early. Even refusing to answer the question, dodging it, would give it all away. Imagine if during a season finale we’re meant to believe that a character is dead and then during hiatus an interviewer asks how the cast will mourn them. If the writer refuses to answer, every fan will realize that Something Is Up and what’s the main possibility here? That they’re not actually dead! Twist spoiled… unless the writer pretends that what the audience currently knows is definitely the truth here.

Taking my tin hat off now, these interviews are one of the main reasons why I’m worried about the writing moving forward. Because despite the paragraph above, I’m by no means convinced that the writers are skillfully keeping up a lie to avoid spoilers. It’s not outside the realm of possibility, but it’s not necessarily likely either. Which leaves us taking their words at face value and that’s… a problem. Because as so many fans have already pointed out, the writing is setting up a twist that, according to these interviews, doesn’t exist. That doesn’t say good things about their intentions for the show vs. what actually ends up on screen and that kind of disconnect becomes frustrating for viewers very quickly. Take the headaches, for example. I’ve seen a couple of fans explain Crosshair’s away using the engine accident: “His face got burned up, of course his head still hurts. You’re reading too much into this.” But imagine for a moment if I’d tried to do the same thing for Wrecker prior to “Battle Scars”: “He gets thrown around and hits his head nearly every episode, of course it hurts. You’re reading too much into this.” Other fans would have—quite rightfully—explained to me how television works and that this repetitive problem is functioning as foreshadowing of a larger problem. With a side of the fact that this is an action show where the characters consistently shrug off their injuries. We’re not supposed to take Wrecker getting thrown around seriously. He’s the brawn of the group, meant to withstand a lot of damage, with any injuries being presented as either #cool (Wrecker shrugs off Fennec’s hits to go after Omega, yeah!) or #funny (Wrecker treats Crosshair shooting him like a badge of honor lol), not something he’s going to have to grapple with in a serious manner. So the audience recognizes the question, what’s more likely? That Wrecker’s headaches are a deliberate visual cue on the part of the writers to tell us that something important is happening, or that suddenly how the genre treats injuries has drastically changed?

It's precisely the same with Crosshair. He’s not the brawn like Wrecker is, but he’s still the action (anti)hero who shrugs off injuries because this is a show interested in more fun, explosive plot, not a deep dive into recovery. (See also: the story doing nothing with Echo’s trauma.) When Crosshair is injured, he’s immediately fighting to get back into a ship and when we next see him he’s passed the recovery stage entirely. There’s only a scar to show that this happened at all. We don’t watch him getting bacta skin grafts, or worrying about his eyesight, or struggling to eat, etc. The point is that he was injured for the purposes of that episode and now he’s not. So why would we think his headaches are a long-term symptom when the show is otherwise not at all interested in writing long-term symptoms? What’s more likely, that this familiar visual cue is being repeated to tell us that this is the chip, just like it was with Wrecker, or that the story is randomly interested in something it never was interested in before?

The audience is right to think that there’s more going on because the show has been written to say, "Something more is going on." The headaches, Crosshair’s refusal to give concrete information, the group conveniently not using Tech’s scanner, the burn scar hiding where the chip’s scar would be, a lack of motivation for the Empire removing the chip, not seeing its removal when the show did include its power being amplified… all of these are deliberate writing choices to set up another reveal. But, if we take the interview at face value and learn that these weren’t deliberate details… then what? The writers are making mistakes? Throwing in “clues” for the hell of it that they never intend to cache in on? Unless there’s some amazing answer here that allows for both these inconsistencies' explanations and the writers’ hard stance—something I personally can’t think up—then we’re left with is a pretty serious flaw in the show. A flaw that’s going to undermine the audience’s trust in everything we get from here on out. The next time we see something that feels like a cool setup/reveal, half the fandom will be going, “Yes! It totally means that ___ is going to happen!!” while the other half will be going, “… does it? Because we thought things were happening with Crosshair and that went nowhere.” Writers have to tackle the implications of what they’ve put on screen. Otherwise, the story falls apart.

So yeah, I’m aware of those hard “His chip is out and this is his choice” statements and, frankly, they make me nervous for season two. Because what the show needs is to engage with what we actually got in the finale: an ambiguous state of Crosshair’s chip, a number of hints that it might still be in there, and an ethical dilemma that, so far, hasn’t acknowledged how much of an influence the group’s decisions have had on Crosshair’s. I tackled most of this in the first analysis, but something I didn’t unpack there was the “choice” of not leaving with them. I mean yes, by all exact definitions—and if we accept that the chip really isn’t there—then Crosshair absolutely had free will in that moment to do as he pleased. But life is way more complicated than that. Imagine for a moment that I put two candy bars in front of you. “You can have whichever one you’d like,” I say. You reach for the one on the left and I glare, hard. I scoff at you. I mutter about your choices, your personality, your flaws, and your mistakes. So you reach for the one on the right instead and I’m… neutral. Okay then. Right candy bar it is. “They could have chosen the one on the left” someone watching claims. “Nothing was stopping them. No one put a gun to their head!” And yeah, the concept of “stopping them” was never that extreme… but the more compassionate, nuanced look acknowledge that some measure of “stopping them” did exist. Insults. Cruelty. A clear indication that one choice was wrong and the other was right. That’s one hell of an influence, even if it's not as formidable as a gun or a chip.

And that’s what Crosshair is dealing with. Yes, joining the Empire is clearly wrong and yes, a non-chipped Crosshair has free will to walk away from it… but walking towards TBB was never presented as a real option for him. He saw that through their inaction when they never came back for him. Then in Hunter’s refusal to admit that they’d made a mistake in leaving him behind. Wrecker putting all responsibility on his shoulders, despite knowing what the chip does to someone. Tech backing him up and framing this situation as stemming solely from Crosshair’s base personality—“severe and unyielding.” It’s seen in the always-loving Omega walking away from him in the barracks, in Crosshair’s hesitation to follow them to safer ground (and boy oh boy, do I have sad headcanons about that), and most especially, in their reactions to him saving Omega. What Crosshair learns in that moment is that they honestly believe that he, not the Empire's chip, but he would shoot Hunter and that saving their little sister is not a point in his favor. It's met only with glares and a need to disarm himself. They don’t trust him and actions that should produce trust are outright ignored, so… where can they go from here? Nowhere, according to TBB’s actions. They’re not giving Crosshair any wiggle room, any hope that these relationships can be repaired, or any acknowledgement that they had a hand in things getting this bad. So when they offer to let Crosshair come with them—which is very significantly presented as an obligation, not something they want—he knows that offer is BS. Whatever their real feelings might be (because the found family show obviously wants us to believe that everyone loves each other), their actions have said loud and clear that they don’t want him. That yes, he could technically walk onto that ship… but that it would be the “wrong” decision accompanied by more insults, scoffs, and pressure to do otherwise. That once he's there, he'll be treated only as a threat with any good deeds ignored. It's an awful offer outside of it being the morally correct decision when it comes to leaving the Empire... so Crosshair reaches for the right candy bar instead.

That very long tangent out of the way, THIS is what season two has to grapple with, along with all that ambiguity and the existence of these "The chip is still here" hints. But the interviews don’t seem to acknowledge that all of this exists, instead framing things as if we’d ended the finale knowing for sure that the chip is out and had watched a season where Crosshair is 100% responsible for everything that’s happened, no Empire or TBB influence involved. The way the interviews frame things doesn’t match up with the text, so I can only hope this is an example of bad communication, or the writers keeping a spoiler under wraps, because otherwise… season two might be frustrating to watch, with fans continually going, “Why are you ignoring that this happened? Why are you pretending that all of this is simpler than it actually is?”

#TBB #The Bad Batch #Crosshair #Star Wars #SW #mymetas

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