Who is Asajj Ventress in Star Wars: The Bad Batch?

There's a lot of connections between the two animated Star Wars series The Clone Wars and The Bad Batch. They take place at a similar time, and there are a lot of characters who've made the jump from one show to the other. Now, as The Bad Batch approaches its end, another fan favorite has returned to our screens in the latest episode, "The Harbinger."

Asajj Ventress is one of the best-loved animated Star Wars characters. She originated in a 2003 Star Wars microseries developed by Gennty Tartakovsky, but is best known for her appearances in the 2008 Clone Wars movie and subsequent TV series.

She's a major antagonist in the early part of The Clone Wars show, a Force-sensitive Nightsister from the planet Dathomir hired as a Separatist assassin by Count Dooku. She's a significant threat and something of a counterweight to the Jedi who easily overpower the ineffectual battle droids.

While Dooku was only supposed to hire Ventress as an assassin, he's secretly training her as his apprentice in the hope of overthrowing his Sith mater Palpatine in the future. While Palpatine originally tolerates Ventress, he soon realizes her true purpose and senses the threat she poses, ordering Dooku to kill her. Dooku reluctantly obeys, abandoning her during a battle with the Republic and leaving her for dead.

Ventress is severely injured but survives and makes her way to her home planet of Dathomir where she begins to work on her revenge. With the help of Mother Talzin, the Nightsisters' leader, they attempt to kill Dooku. After an unsuccessful attempt on his life, they infiltrate the Count's fortress by giving him a new apprentice, Savage Opress, who is secretly under Ventress' control, but this too is unsuccessful, with Dooku proving too powerful for them to defeat. In retaliation for the betrayal, Dooku sends a droid army to Dathomir, wiping out the Nightsisters and leaving only Ventress alive.

With her sisters gone, Asajj Ventress turns to bounty hunting, working alongside noted professionals such as Bossk and a young Boba Fett. Her Force skills make her successful in the field, and she continues to work in the trade until near the end of the war, when she's recruited by the Jedi to make an attempt on Dooku's life. Seeing this as her chance to get even with her former master, she joins forces with Jedi Master Quinlan Vos, who's working undercover, and together they work out a plan to take down Dooku.

Ventress appears to die during their confrontation with Dooku after sacrificing herself to save Vos from her former master's Force lightning, and her body is even returned to Dathomir for burial, as described in the canon novel Dark Disciple by Christie Golden.

Now, somehow Asajj Ventress returned in Star Wars: The Bad Batch, following in the wake of characters such as Darth Maul and Boba Fett who've seemingly come back to life after being presumed dead by fans. There's been no explanation yet about how she survived, but it looks like she's still working as a bounty hunter. Her Force abilities are also as formidable as ever, and it seems that she's becoming more attuned to the light side of the Force. Executive producer and head writer on The Bad Batch Jennifer Corbett has said that how Ventress survived will be revealed in the future, so there's a good chance we'll be seeing more of her onscreen soon.

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