Why That Doll In Star Wars: The Bad Batch Is So Incredibly Important: Lula Explained
This article contains spoilers for the first three episodes of "Star Wars: The Bad Batch" season 3: "Confined," "Paths Unknown," and "Shadows of Tantiss."
In Billy Wilder's 1960 Best Picture winner "The Apartment," he was able to imbue a simple, cracked compact mirror with so much meaning that merely the sight of it at the right time told a story. I interviewed Rian Johnson once and we talked about how important it is to have symbols help tell the story. "I think the compact is the best example, and yes, that's solid gold whenever you can find that," said Johnson. "Whenever you can have a major emotional impact come from something that seems incidental when you first introduce it, that's the gold in the hills that you're digging for."
It's something that's very much on the mind of every writer, and the writers of "Star Wars: The Bad Batch" are no different. They've been sowing seeds of these symbols throughout the first two seasons, and in the third season premiere, they pay one off beautifully — and it all revolves around a doll.
Lula
In the first season of "The Bad Batch," we were introduced to Lula. Lula is an adorable little Tuka doll with a clone helmet face painted on it. She was obviously very important to Wrecker and he clearly went into a panic when she was briefly lost. It meant a lot to him when Omega found Lula and gave it back to him. It meant even more when the Bad Batch built Omega her own room on the Marauder and Wrecker placed Lula inside of it for her. Wrecker, in many ways, is a sort of a child himself, and the gesture did not go unnoticed.
Lula was an important symbol that continued to occasionally pop up throughout the first two seasons of "The Bad Batch," reminding the audience that, at the end of the day, Omega is still a kid in the middle of a war. It also helped to strengthen the ties of her relationship with Wrecker in a visual way.
However, the third season has now amplified the doll's significance something fierce to deliver one hell of an emotional punch.
Echoes of Lula
At the end of the second season of "The Bad Batch," Omega had been captured by the Empire and taken to a secret Imperial science facility on Mount Tantiss (where Crosshair is also being kept). Time has passed and the first episode of season 3 shows us how well Omega is adjusting to her captivity. She's not a prisoner the way Crosshair is and has a little bit more latitude. Her Imperial captors let her feed some lurca hounds, including one that she named Batcher, to remind her of home.
However, Omega comes across as very grown-up during her interactions with the adults around her, including another female clone of Jango Fett named Emerie Karr. During a surprise inspection of her quarters, the Empire finds a small, handcrafted doll, clearly made by Omega herself. It looks a lot like Lula. Emerie confiscates the doll, trying to symbolically take a piece of Omega's hope and yearning to be reunited with the rest of the Bad Batch. By the end of the episode, Emerie relents and returns that hope in the form of the homemade Lula back to Omega. One of the last shots of the episode is even a closeup of the doll lying on its side. It's a poignant reminder of Omega's loyalties and longings.
Lula returned
If that wasn't enough, the second episode of season 3 catches us up with Hunter and Wrecker. They're searching the galaxy for Omega and leaving no stone unturned, no lead not shaken down, and no planet unvisited if it means getting their sister back. As we come to the end of the episode, we're treated to a mirrored shot of the real Lula that matches the final shots of the first episode. It's resting in the little room the other clones built for Omega at the back of the Marauder.
This might only be a single shot of the doll, yet it packs an emotional punch that ties both stories together with that one single frame of animation. It also tells us everything we need to know about the emotional conditions of the characters, the stakes between them, and the longing they all share. All in all, it's a really beautiful, elegant bit of storytelling between the episodes and I would be surprised if this is the last time the show uses Lula in such a way across its final season.
New episodes of the final season of "Star Wars: The Bad Batch" premiere on Wednesdays on Disney+.