Asajj Ventress is a former Jedi Padawan turned assassin who was trained in the ways of the dark side by Count Dooku. For several years, she yearned to be considered a true Sith, secretly acting as Dooku’s apprentice.
We first encountered her in The Clone Wars fighting for the Separatists and clashing with Jedi like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker with her twin red-bladed lightsabers in hand. However, when Dooku was ordered to dispose of Asajj and left her for dead, Ventress returned to her Nightsister clan to exact her revenge.
In time, she reinvented herself as a bounty hunter and reclaimed her identity, as neither a Sith nor a Jedi, and even became an unlikely ally to Ahsoka Tano for a time.
The Clone Wars never got a chance to end Ventress' story and her death was instead explored in the Star Wars: Dark Disciple novel by Christie Golden. In that, the bounty hunter rediscovered love, compassion and selflessness, sacrificing herself to save Jedi Quinlan Vos by taking the brunt of a force lightning attack by Dooku.
However, following a shock return in The Bad Batch season 3 trailer, the character's official profile has been updated to confirm "that wasn’t the end of Asajj's story..."
Talking to Star Wars.com (via SFFGazette.com), Brad Rau, supervising director and one of the show's executive producers, addressed Ventress's return. "We love Asajj Ventress. She’s a character that we’ve been wanting to tell more stories about."
"We don't want to spoil anything, but want fans to know that any new storytelling with Ventress will align with the events of Star Wars: Dark Disciple."
Seeing as The Bad Batch is set between the events of Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, the reformed villain clearly survived that battle with Dooku and could now become a big part of Star Wars storytelling moving forward. We know Dave Filoni isn't shy about contradicting tie-in material like novels and comics as it's something he's already done with with Ahsoka Tano's story.
Do you think we'll eventually see Asajj Ventress in live-action? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
In the epic final season of Star Wars: The Bad Batch, the Batch will have their limits tested in the fight to reunite with Omega as she faces challenges of her own inside a remote Imperial science lab,” reads the season’s synopsis. “With the group fractured and facing threats from all directions, they will have to seek out unexpected allies, embark on dangerous missions, and muster everything they have learned to free themselves from the Empire.