Editorial: Asajj Ventress - Everything You Need to Know Before The Bad Batch Season 3

Some fans watching the first trailer for the third and final season of The Bad Batch might have been confused by the trailer's big reveal - Asajj Ventress is back.



The character has a long history in both current Star Wars canon and in the Legends stories, but her tale was considered wrapped up nine years ago after her untimely death in the Dark Disciple book released in the wake of The Clone Wars' initial cancellation. How the character survived her not-so-permanent death is unclear, and something the show will surely explain.



It's been nine years since we last saw Asajj though (last year's Hyperspace Stories comic issue aside), so we're going to go back through the key points to refresh our memories about her before The Bad Batch season 3.







Asajj Ventress was initially created for Genndy Tartakovsky's 2003 Clone Wars animated series on Cartoon Network as a Force-wielding villain on the side of the Separatists, intended as a rival for Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. She was an apprentice of sorts to Count Dooku, but did not hold the title of Sith as the Rule of Two didn't allow for a third Sith. Even so, she was eager to prove her worth to her master and become a true Sith Lord.



Origins

When George Lucas included the character in his own The Clone Wars series, he left her Legends backstory mostly intact; Ventress was born a Nightsister of Dathomir but was sold into slavery at a young age, to a pirate who was threatening to harm the Nightsister coven. He brought her to Rattatak, a wartorn world where she remained his slave until she entered her teens.



She had a surprisingly kind relationship with her master, but the pirate was eventually killed by Jedi Master Ky Narec, who pretended that his killers had been Weequay pirates (a departure from Legends, where Narec had nothing to do with the death of her master, who really was killed by the Weequay). Sensing Asajj's strong connection to the Force, Narec decided to take the girl as his padawan even though she displayed feelings of anger to the people she believed had killed her former master.







Narec trained Asajj in the ways of the Jedi for 21 years, but they stayed on Rattatak to protect the locals from the various pirates and warlords who still threatened their lives. Asajj killed all the significant warlords but one. When she attempted to assassinate him (not very Jedi-like) she failed and was thrown into a gladiatorial arena. It was here that she first caught the attention of Count Dooku, the former-Jedi-turned-secret-Sith-Lord who was attending the event in his capacity as the Count of Serenno, but was secretly looking for an apprentice of his own.



She escaped the arena, but it wasn't long until tragedy struck. Ky Narec was killed in a battle with Weequay raiders and died in Asajj's arms, who had once again lost her master to the criminals of Rattatak. She was soon approached by Count Dooku, who had little trouble convincing her that Narec had ultimately died because the Jedi Order had abandoned him, leading Asajj to blame the order for her master's death.



Asajj vowed to destroy the Jedi to avenge her master, and agreed to become Dooku's 'Dark Acolyte' in order to fulfil that goal. It was during her apprenticeship that she learned the truth that Ky Narec had killed her original master, which deepened her resentment of the Jedi; Narec's lies proved to her that they could not be trusted.



Separatist Commander

Her origins were all told via flashbacks in The Clone Wars animated series, where she became a commander of the Separatist droid army -- her first canon appearance in Star Wars is in the 2008 The Clone Wars movie, where she fights Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker at the Battle of Christophsis and enacts a plot to kidnap Jabba The Hutt's son Rotta and pin it on the Republic. She took the baby Hutt to a monastery on Teth, where she fought Anakin Skywalker for the fate of the child (that Teth monastery was glimpsed in the recent Bad Batch trailer).



Ventress fought many Jedi during the early days of the Clone Wars, including Obi-Wan, Anakin, Ahsoka Tano, Yoda, Luminara Unduli and Aayla Secura, and even managed to rescue Nute Gunray from a Republic prison on Coruscant in an early mission.







However, Count Dooku was unimpressed by her many other failures and was losing his patience with her. On top of that, Darth Sidious had become concerned -- Ventress' power in the Force continued to grow and he was concerned that Dooku would use her to help overthrow him as Lord of the Sith. He commanded Dooku to have her killed, who reluctantly obliged.



At the Battle of Sullust, Asajj contacted Dooku to request evac. He responded by informing her that she was on her own, renouncing her as his charge. She was engaged in a fight with Obi-Wan and Anakin on her command ship (and beating them) when Separatists fired on it. They all escaped, with the two Jedi believing her to have gone down with the ship.



Nightsisters

With all her enemies believing her dead, Asajj returned to Dathomir, hoping to find solace among her people. She was successful in that -- Mother Talzin took her in and the two hatched a plot to get revenge on Dooku and Darth Sidious. Accompanied by two other Nightsisters, Asajj headed to Serenno to kill Dooku.



The mission was ultimately a failure, but Dooku assumed they were Jedi assassins and continued to believe Asajj was dead. Talzin contacted Dooku and offered to find him a new apprentice, secretly planning to make him a double agent that would kill Dooku when he least expected it.







Asajj led a lengthy recruitment process among the Zabrak Nightbrothers on Dathomir, picking Savage Opress as Dooku's next acolyte. Dooku glady accepted and began training Savage in the ways of the Sith, but the plan was always to have him betray his master in the future. Unfortunately that future arrived a lot quicker than they expected, after the Jedi launched an investigation when Savage executed two Jedi on Devaron. Worried that Savage would be killed by the Jedi before they could enact their plan, Talzin rushed it ahead.



So, Asajj teamed up with Savage to kill Dooku and failed once again. The Sith Lord struggled against their combined might but when Asajj berated Savage for his inability to strike a killing blow, he turned on both of them. The three-way duel gave Dooku an edge and Asajj barely escaped with her life.



She returned to Dathomir and Talzin welcomed her back with open arms, but trouble would soon follow. Now that Dooku knew Asajj was alive and he had been betrayed, he ordered General Grievous to lead a Separatist army to kill the Nightsisters. The Dathomiri witches gave a spirited defence but were overwhelmed by Grievous' forces. The Nightsisters were wiped out, with Ventress the only survivor.



Bounty Hunter

With no allies left, Asajj wandered alone, purposeless. She ended up on Tatooine and fell into bounty hunting, joining the likes of Bossk, Dengar and a young Boba Fett on a contract. She betrayed the hunters upon finding out that their 'cargo' was a young girl, safely returning the girl to her family.



Asajj had been consumed by anger and revenge for so long; this act of kindness was the first time she'd done something genuinely good in her adult life. She wasn't quite back on the light side yet, but this 'anti-hero' chapter of her life saw her forced to partner with an old foe -- Obi-Wan Kenobi.



She ran into Obi-Wan while tracking Savage Opress, who unbeknownst to her had formed a new alliance with his brother Maul. A ferocious battle raged between the four of them, with her and Kenobi both forced to flee in the face of the Nightbrother and former Sith's combined strength.







At the end of The Clone Wars' fifth season, we meet Ventress again when Ahsoka is on the run as a fugitive from the Republic. Asajj dueled with her and intended to bring her back to the Republic and collect her bounty, but found sympathy once Ahsoka explained that she had been betrayed and abandoned by her masters; something Asajj could definitely relate to.



She agreed to help Ahsoka prove her innocence, provided that Tano got her a pardon from the Republic for her past crimes. During their investigation, Asajj was attacked by Bariss Offee and knocked unconscious. Bariss -- the real culprit who had framed Ahsoka -- took her helmet, intent on framing Ventress as Ahsoka's imagined accomplice.



Bariss' ploy worked and the Republic believed Ahsoka had teamed up with Ventress to kill Jedi. Anakin soon tracked her down and nearly killed her, but ultimately believed Asajj when she told him the truth of what happened with her and Ahsoka. While Bariss was eventually discovered and Ahsoka and Asajj were cleared of their perceived crimes, Asajj never received that Republic pardon for her previous crimes while serving Dooku.



Bariss had also seized her red lightsabers, so Asajj was forced to buy a new one on the black market, settling on a yellow blade. She was pleased with the color, believing it signified that she was neither Jedi nor Sith (conveniently forgetting the Jedi temple guards used this color).



Dark Disciple

The rest of Asajj's story is continued in the Dark Disciple book, where she met Jedi Master Quinlan Vos. He was undercover as a bounty hunter, approaching Ventress about a contract while secretly intending to learn as much from her about Count Dooku as possible so he could assassinate him, as per his orders from the Jedi Council. She reluctantly agreed to partner with him on multiple contracts over the next few months, and the two of them privately developed romantic feelings for each other.



After completing a contract for the Pyke Syndicate that got them in a bunch of trouble with the Black Sun, Vos eventually came clean and revealed that he was in fact a Jedi Master. Asajj took the admission well, particularly as she had already begun to suspect it herself. She agreed to help Vos kill Dooku, but warned him that he would need to abandon his Jedi principles to accomplish the task. Vos agreed and she trained him in the dark side of the Force, while simultaneously entering a romantic relationship with him.



Their story took many twists and turns from there as a lot was crammed into a single book -- Vos was captured by Dooku and became his apprentice for a time, Asajj teamed up Boba Fett, Bossk and Embo, and then Obi-Wan and Anakin in two separate rescue missions, and Vos returned to her again to ask for her help in killing Dooku. They found and defeated him, only for Mace Windu to order the bombardment of their location once confirming that Vos had fallen to the dark side -- eventually, she died when she bore the full brunt of Count Dooku's Force lightning to save Quinlan in their final battle on Christophsis.



Her sacrifice shook Quinlan Vos out of his dark side stupor and he resolved to return to the Jedi Order. Asajj seemingly died in his arms and he laid her body to rest on Dathomir, where she rejoined her sisters once more.



What next?

That's everything you need to know about Asajj Ventress' story. I have absolutely no idea how they're going to explain how she's still alive, as both Quinlan Vos and Obi-Wan Kenobi believed she was dead on her journey from Christophsis to Dathomir. Perhaps some Nightsister resurrection magick will factor into it, but I'm sure it will be explored in The Bad Batch season 3.



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