I think the inhibitor chips were a very interesting story beat in TCW, and served as a pretty clever way to humanize the clones imo.
It looks to me like The Bad Batch has pretty much backpedaled completely on the idea that the clones really did lose their free will at all- if their brains were literally rewired to make them loyal to the Empire, then why are a bunch of them just waking up to their situation all of the sudden? It seems like the show hasn't really even tried to explain this at all, which leaves me feeling like the writers just don't have the balls to actually turn the clones into villains. I really want to appreciate what they are doing with the story, but so far I am completely unconvinced that there is any reason that the clones would just start to turn against the Empire despite literally being programmed against that by this point in the timeline.
I'm just not buying the idea of, for example, Howzer and Cody disobeying their orders out of a moral epiphany, since my understanding is that the inhibitor chips were made to ensure stuff like that doesn't happen in the first place. Characters like Wilco and Mayday make way more sense to me for that reason.
Is there some context or piece of the story I'm missing that makes it all make sense? Some perspective I haven't thought about?
Edit: Also, the CF99 clones themselves choosing to flee from the Empire makes sense to me since the inhibitor chips aren’t tuned to their exact genetic info. I’m talking regs only.