It's ok, just power the buck converter directly from battery (vin and gnd connectors of the motor shield) and eliminate that breadboard that is only confusing there. For the next project go with esp development board, you don't need both arduino AND esp. Esp already has everything arduino can offer, why to have two MCUs...
Yes
You could make better use of the breadboard. You could plug the buck converter into it and connect the battery and servo to it there. In general, it's not good to have motors connected via breadboard because of the high currents they draw, but a small servo won't draw a current that's too high, I think.
Absolutely agree. But it will make using your motor shield difficult, so time for a new motor driver also. Next time, choose a motor driver with a more modern, efficient chip than the ancient and inefficient L298/293. Choice of driver depends on the motor, of course, but TB6612 might be suitable, or other other chips that use MOSFETs.
then i would need to solder some male pins to it right?
The buck converter? Yes.
How should i remove it? The ESP needs 2, 3.3v pins or is there something that i'm missing?
How's the Arduino going to get power if the buck converter is hooked up to the batteries. Do you want me to split the wires?
All the wires for 12v you connect to vin and gnd connectors of the motor shield.
If you need two 3v3 for your esp8266, just cut, split and twist tie your cables, solder them together or if it's beyond your skills, cover the twisted joints with hot glue or heat shrink. 
Of course, if you are just prototyping and experimenting , use your breadboard and jumper wires. But it's not practical for any real use cases.
I think I fixed all the problems, except for the battery connections. You have them all connected in parallel but they need to be connected in series
thank man, much appreciated 
So i have coupled the 8x AA batteries in a series and when i try to test it with a multimeter there is no voltage and after like 10 seconds it starts smelling burnt so i plug the batteries out. The batteries also get really hot, but the burnt smell is probably from the thin wires. Please let me know what i'm doing wrong. Btw, all the AA batteries have power.
Make a proper wiring diagram and then post that before connecting things up.
Which means you're shorting the batteries together. Don't.
Is it correct that you're trying to put all 8 cells in series for a 12V output?
What's going on inside this tape knot:
yeah. so i figured out what was happening, the knot you see there was mixing the + and - together which i guess shortened the circuit.
The output wires were to close to each other.
Yeah, I suspected something along those lines.
Does it work now?
don't really have the soldering tools at hand right now 
yep fixed it, thanks for the help @rsmls
When testing who whole setup up now i see that the motor and servo are not getting steady voltage, it keep shifting up and down and it's leading to a very choppy speed. Any ideas why this may be occurring? The multimeter is saying that the batteries are outputting around 9.5 V.
Well, that's a lot less than anticipated. Something's not right.
Can you check all your connections and verify that you don't have one pair of two batteries connected the wrong way?
yep all good, but the batteries are a bit discharged and maybe that's why.