The Bad Batch's Final Season Is (Kind Of) Rewriting Star Wars: Dark Disciple In A Big Way
Dave Filoni does not like to throw away his toys.
Since joining "Star Wars" as a director on the 2008 "The Clone Wars" cartoon series, he's become the protégé of creator George Lucas and chief creative officer of Lucasfilm. Characters introduced (Ahsoka Tano) and reintroduced (Darth Maul) in "The Clone Wars" and follow-up shows like "Star Wars Rebels" and "The Mandalorian" continue to return time and time again, be it in animation or live-action.
The new trailer for the final season of "The Bad Batch" reveals another face is returning; Asajj Ventress. The trailer holds her appearance for an ending surprise, with Nika Futterman's raspy voice slithering in as narration before Ventress charges out with a yellow lightsaber.
There's just one problem — Ventress is supposed to be dead. In the 2015 novel "Star Wars: Dark Disciple" (authored by Christie Golden and based on scripts written for "The Clone Wars" before it was canceled and then revived for one last season on Disney+), Ventress is slain by Count Dooku and is buried on her homeworld of Dathomir. The novel, which takes place before "The Bad Batch" even begins, concludes with this line: "Asajj Ventress, at last, had come home." Pretty definitive, huh?
Of course, this isn't the first time that "Star Wars" has shown its "canon" to be undeserving of the label.
The creation of Asajj Ventress
Who is Asajj Ventress? The character originates from unused concept art for a female villain in "Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones." Her first name was a suggestion by Lucasfilm's Leland Chee, after Lady Asaji Washizu (Isuzu Yamada), the Lady Macbeth analog in Akira Kurosawa's "Throne of Blood." This is not the only debt "Star Wars" owes to Kurosawa.
Ventress debuted in the "Star Wars: Republic" comics but came to prominence in Genndy Tartakovsky's 2003 "Clone Wars" cartoon (voiced by Grey DeLisle). She's a warrior trained in the Force but with a hatred for the "corrupt and arrogant" Jedi, calling their order "a fading light in the dark." With Count Dooku watching, she slays an arena full of gladiators on the planet Rattatak to prove herself worthy of being called Sith.
Dooku and his master, Darth Sidious, send her to assassinate Anakin Skywalker. Ventress and Anakin duel on the moon Yavin 4 (yes, where the Rebel base was in the original "Star Wars") and he ultimately sends her plummeting down a canyon. However, she unknowingly fulfilled Sidious' true wish — to bring Anakin closer to the dark side.
That should have been the end of Ventress (she never appears again in "Clone Wars") but it wasn't. She returned in several comics and novels set between her "Clone Wars" debut and "Revenge of the Sith" (she even gave Anakin his facial scar), only to reappear in the 2008 "Clone Wars" (now voiced by Futterman). "The Clone Wars" is the only one of her early appearances that still "counts" in newly-produced "Star Wars" media.
Many stories that have become the tapestry of the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy exist outside the actual movies. Besides Ahsoka, Ventress is the character who most embodies that.
Ventress in Star Wars: The Clone Wars
In "The Clone Wars," Ventress is a recurring villain until the season 3 episode "Nightsisters." Sidious suspects that Dooku is training Ventress not as a mere pawn but as a genuine apprentice in violation of the Sith Rule of Two (and he's right). So, Sidious orders Dooku to kill her as a show of fealty, lest the two try to usurp him.
A now-vengeful Ventress survives and goes to Dathomir. "The Clone Wars" retcons that Ventress is a Nightsister, a sect of matriarchal witches who observe the dark side. Ventress and two of her sisters try to directly assassinate Dooku (using magic to conceal themselves and lightsabers to pose as Jedi). When that fails, they enslave the Nightbrother Savage Opress (Clancy Brown) and send him into Dooku's service as a mole — which also fails.
In the season 4 episode "Massacre," Dooku has the Nightsisters slaughtered but Ventress escapes again. With nothing left, she turns to bounty hunting. In season 5's final arc, when Ahsoka is framed for murder and on the run, Ventress gives her old foe a helping hand because she understands what it's like to be abandoned. That was the last of Ventress onscreen in "The Clone Wars," but her journey was meant to continue, as told in "Dark Disciple."
In this novel, the Jedi Council decides to assassinate Count Dooku and assign Master Quinlan Vos to do so. Vos teams up with Ventress to carry out the mission — no one else can instruct him on the dark side and Dooku's weaknesses. While training together, they fall for each other. Unfortunately, Vos is captured and corrupted by Dooku; Ventress fights to bring her beloved back to the light and falls while back in its grasp herself.
Legends of Star Wars
Filoni has said that while making "The Clone Wars," he and Lucas never considered Expanded Universe material (novels, comics, video games, etc.) as "canon." If anything, they were narrative orchards to pluck from if good and left forgotten if not. Filoni's productions since have disregarded both novels ("The Clone Wars" season 7 is mutually exclusive with the "Ahsoka" novel) and unproduced "The Clone Wars" scripts (bounty hunter Cad Bane, who was set to die there, returned alive in "The Bad Batch" and "The Mandalorian").
Now, Brad Rau (a supervising director on "The Bad Batch") has told StarWars.com, "Any new storytelling with Ventress will align with the events of 'Star Wars: Dark Disciple.'" It sounds like this could be a resurrection story, not an erasure of "Dark Disciple" from the canon. Even so, it still undermines the intent of the novel because the team wanted to reuse Ventress.
Now, some fans might be peeved by this flippant attitude. After Disney's buyout of Lucasfilm, all previous "Star Wars" media except the then-six films and "The Clone Wars" were made into "Star Wars Legends." The argument seemed to be that the "new" canon would be more consistent.
But frankly, I think "Star Wars" could afford to be looser with continuity. Reusing the same characters over and over makes the setting feel small, like there's a micro-continuity (the "Filoni-verse") outside the films. Plus, "Star Wars" is basically one big fairy tale; consistency matters less than wonder. "Star Wars: Visions" is great because of its creativity, and that is helped because it doesn't concern itself with fitting its shorts into a "canonical" timeline.
Bringing back yet another familiar, thought-dead character is not the type of imaginative storytelling I'd prescribe, but Ventress' return isn't worth getting mad about either.
"Star Wars: The Bad Batch" will debut the first three episodes of its final season on Disney+ on February 21, 2024.