#Battlebots Season 6 Episode 2 Review (TV Series, 2022)
Editorial note: these reviews will feature spoilers.
We’re back for another fun episode of robot combat. I had so much fun writing about the season 6 premiere last week. I’m especially excited since episode 2 features so many of the returning rookies from last year that I was rooting for.
Up first, we have Yeti vs. Mad Catter. Both of these robots have powerful hybrid weapons giving them a mix of control and destructive power. Yeti has a drum spinner and a pair of lifting forks, while Mad Catter has a modular vertical spinner and a single lifting arm. Mad Catter has been getting better with every season, really showing off what it does well in the inaugural Bounty Hunters season. Yeti took last season off, but has been very consistent in its approach.
This fight is a lot of fun. Mad Catter dominates until a knockout, but both robots are extremely aggressive and get good hits in. The big difference is Mad Catter’s front wedglets win the low ground game over Yeti’s moving forks. Yeti’s team even pulls the lifting fork back and just starts attack with the drum spinner when Mad Catter starts to catch them with its spinning wheel. Yeti is going to be a threat in this season still, but Mad Catter has really fine tuned their design after Bounty Hunters.
Next up is the first rookie of the episode. Defender is a new robot from Team Fast Electronics, the same team behind Whiplash. Jason Vasquez is taking the lead on Defender while Matt Vasquez takes the lead on Whiplash. Defender is a grappler bot, designed to latch onto its opponent and take control of the fight. It has a powerful lifting arm and a flamethrower for good measure. The Vasquez family knows how to build a tough bot, so it’ll be interesting to see them handle the strategic challenge of a control bot versus a more aggressive lifter/vertical spinner.
Defender goes up against Ribbot, the beloved frog-themed modular robot. Ribbot can be a vertical spinner, a horizontal spinner, or a bar spinner defending on its configuration. It’s as cute as it is deadly and the team installed the vertical spinner for the occasion.
Ribbot easily wins this fight in a KO. They picked the right weapon to go against Defender. That vertical disc stopped Defender from having an easy grab on the frame. Defender wins the ground game and has more torque to push Ribbot around, but Ribbot only needs a few quick hits to knock Defender out. Defender has such a powerful drive train. I just wish we got to see how strong the grappling arm is in their first fight.
Next is HiJinx vs Mammoth. HiJinx is the largest horizontal bar spinner in Battlebots and one of my favorite competitors from last season. This neon owl design is deadly. Mammoth is another brilliant design, a 5’6” tall vertical spinning lifter/flipper with a flexible frame that fights like a wobbly catapult. Mammoth is so hard to go up against because of its size, reach, and flexibility.
This battle broke my heart. There are some great impacts at the start of the fight. Mammoth corrals HiJinx into the corner by the Upper Deck. After one flip into the Screws, HiJinx loses a tire. It’s one of those unlikely hits that just popped the wheel off, knocking the otherwise fully functioning robot out.
This is not to discredit what Mammoth did in the battle. They were winning the control game and knew to trap HiJinx away from the center of the arena. It feels like a fight that should have gone three minutes but got cut short by chance. The HiJinx team is not going to let that happen twice.
Next up is Kraken, the lantern-fish themed crusher bot with a flamethrower, against Rotator, the sleek horizontal spinner that permanently runs a one spinner configuration now. Rotator got its name from its original design featuring a symmetrical, two spinner design, but runs one spinner now for better control. Meanwhile, Kraken keeps finding ways to make their crusher more powerful every season. They have 100,000 pounds of crushing force now. Kraken could crush any opponent’s armor if it gets the chance.
This is the first fight this episode to last three minutes and go to the judges. Kraken gets a great grab on Rotator, but the impact sets its flamethrower on fire. We actually get to see an unstick happen for the first time on the Battlebots show. If two robots become entangled and cannot free themselves, the match is paused to manually separate the bots. This happens pretty often in the tournaments, but has never made the air before. After the unstick, Rotator is able to take control and do a lot of damage.
Ultimately, Rotator wins a unanimous judge’s decision. I agree. That big shot after the robots separated ripped out the top half of Kraken’s weapon, preventing it from crushing again. Then Rotator ripped off a tire and pieces of the armor with every hit. It’s quite impressive that Kraken could still drive at all by the end, but it never recovered from the unstick.
Up next is the second rookie of the night. Blip is a deadly flywheel flipper. The bot essentially stores up a lot of potential energy in a rotating internal mechanism, then releases it all at once like a trebuchet that can be rewound again and again. Blip comes from Seems Reasonable Robotics, the team behind Tantrum.
Blip gets to test its power against the most beloved robot to hit Battlebots since the heyday of Tentoumushi on Comedy Central (you remember, young Lisa Winter’s grappler bot that was a children’s ladybug sandbox on a moving arm?). Rusty is a junkyard bot, a down on his luck scrapper with a heart of gold. The literal dental drill weapon from last season is replaced with a mechanical sledgehammer this time around.
It’s at this point that I realized almost all of the anthropomorphized robots of Season 6 are competing tonight. Blip also has a precious little face that makes you want to squeeze its cheeks. HiJinx, Mammoth, Ribbot, Kraken, and Tantrum also all have faces. We’re just missing Huge, Duck, and Hydra to have a complete night of robots who look like they feel pain. Makes me miss Nelly the Ellybot all over again.
I digress. The cutest fight of the night has a quick and deadly ending. Blip knocks out Rusty in four flips. Rusty goes flying on the first flip and never really recovers. Meanwhile, Blip is our second contender in the race to make an opponent hit the ceiling. Between Blip, Hydra, Lucky, and SubZero, we very well may see a flipper launch their opponent into the lights this season. That’s assuming one of the vertical spinners or drum spinners doesn’t touch the ceiling first.
Next up is Tantrum vs Malice. Tantrum is another marvel of engineering from Seems Reasonable Robotics, featuring a punching drum spinner and a pair of lifting arms. The drum spinner quickly moves down an angled bracket to cause massive damage to its opponents. Malice is one of my favorite returning rookies from last season. Bunny Sauriel leads one of the strongest disc spinners in the game. That massive weapon has the momentum and power to potentially knockout any opponent in a single hit. Tantrum made it all the way to the semifinals on season five, while Malice made it to the top 32 and did well on Bounty Hunters. Don’t worry. Malice has a tail now, so it can’t do the thing for a third time.
This is an explosive fight. Tantrum and Malice are aggressive robots that consistently make it to the judges’ decision. Tantrum wins the box rush, sending Malice flying and breaking its new bar spinner configuration. Malice keeps its weapon facing Tantrum’s wedge, stopping it from consistently launching its punching drum spinner and eventually breaking it before the end of the fight.
Ultimately, Tantrum does win a unanimous judges’ decision. I agree. Both robots held up great in the fight, but Malice lost its weapon in the first impact. Tantrum’s weapon didn’t break until after several successful hits. I think this is another fight where both robots are threats to the rest of the tournament. They’re durable, they’re aggressive, and they have phenomenal drivers.
The Main Event of episode two is Bloodsport, a horizontal spinner, against Whiplash, a hybrid lifter/vertical spinner from Team Fast Electronics. It’s like we discussed last week. Horizontals fighting verticals are going to be explosive fights because of the strength of the opposing forces.
This is our first look at a knockout by Upper Deck. Whiplash spends the entire battle trying to flip Bloodsport upside down on the Upper Deck using the screws. Bloodsport gets some great hits in, but Whiplash wins the low ground game and finally gets just the right angle to KO Whiplash on the Upper Deck. Bloodsport just doesn’t have enough space to use its self righting arm and gets counted out with less than 10 seconds on the clock.
This week’s YouTube exclusive fight is SubZero vs Shatter! It’s available now to paid members of the Battlebots Facebook group and will be available on YouTube Sunday, 16 January.
Battlebots premieres new episodes at 8PM EST on Thursdays Nights on Discovery Channel. Discovery+ releases the episodes earlier in the day.
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