Bad Batch: A great villain deserves a great death

Anyone who knows me knows that I love a good villain. Star Wars has no shortage of them, covering a wide range of evil. There are goofball lackeys like Aresko and Grint in Star Wars Rebels. The scum and villainy like Cad Bane. Scallywags that are (sometimes) heroes like Hondo Ohnaka. The mystical beings like Sith Lords Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader. The realistically terrifying baddies like Grand Moff Tarkin and Andor's Dedra Meero. And all the villains in between.

The Bad Batch introduced its own share of bad guys from the scoundrel Cid to the surprisingly delightful in Season 3, Vice Admiral Rampart. However, by far, the best villain of this series has been Doctor Royce Hemlock.

This Nazi-inspired scientist made his mark immediately upon his arrival in Season 2, chillingly voiced by Jimmi Simpson. Hemlock feels like an Andor villain stepping into animation as The Bad Batch hasn't pulled any punches with him despite being targeted for a more all-ages audience. For real, I bet Hemlock and Doctor Gorst from Andor, who tortures Bix with the sound of dying children, are probably good buddies and get coffee all the time together to swap evil stories. These characters work so well because they show a lack of humanity.

The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, and The Bad Batch have spent over a decade defining the stories of the clones, humanizing these men from their first appearance in Attack of the Clones. These stories gave us more personalities than the faceless beings that performed Order 66 in Revenge of the Sith to kill the heroic Jedi. These series painstakingly made the clones human to show they were just as much the victims of Order 66 as the Jedi were. The clones are now some of the most fan-favorite characters and deeply beloved in the franchise.

Enter Hemlock, who treats these beloved characters like subhumans. He doesn't see the clones as people. They are specimens, no different than lab rats, for him to tinker on. They might as well be inanimate objects, just things. This immediately sets up his story of how ruthless he could be. Hemlock also showcases the lowest and most disgusting depths the Empire would go to against their fellow beings.

Hemlock has been one of the best villains we've gotten in a long time in Star Wars. As someone who adores a great villain, I've savored all of this time with the baddie. And just like the best villains in media, Hemlock deserves a great death. It would be great to see someone in Clone Force 99 take him out, like a clone revenge on the man who has been torturing and killing them. However, there is one clone that would give Hemlock the most epic death of all:

THE ZILLO BEAST!

Let the Zillo Beast eat Doctor Hemlock. I want to hear his Rampart-style shrieks of horror as those big ol' monster jaws swoop down and gobble up that man and his hubris.

Regardless how The Bad Batch ends, Hemlock has been an awesome villain for the ages to join the ranks of fantastic baddies in a galaxy far, far away.