A triple shot of Ventress episodes make up this week’s offerings. Let’s dig in!
1. Origin(s)
I’m not going to bury the lede: I really, really enjoyed these episodes. Ventress is one of the more interesting characters the show has produced, and this episode really dug in its heels and made you pay attention to her. In the beginning of the episode, all we know about her is that she’s Dooku’s Force-using assassin. After? Well, we know a whole lot.
First of all, we see her personal origin as a child ripped form her family, before we see her Force-origin as a Jedi’s padawan. Then, we see her Sith origin, as Dooku takes her under his wing. Finally, we see her new status quo come into play as she’s abandoned by Dooku, betrayed by Savage (we’ll get to him later), and jettisoned into space after barely escaping death at both’s hands.
Instantly, Ventress has become the series’ most interesting free agent, not quite Sith, not quite Jedi. I am nearly positive we’ll be seeing her again, and I can’t wait. This is how you make a character compelling.
2. Savage
Savage is an interesting character for a variety of reasons, none of which have anything to do with the character itself, at least not once he becomes super powered by the Nightsisters. He is protective of his brother in the trials of Ventress, but eventually becomes more of a hulking automaton after being supercharged.
But he’s interesting because of what he connects: Darth Maul (we’ll get to him shortly), Count Dooku, Ventress, the Nightsisters, and the Jedi. He’s also an incredibly powerful character, strong enough to easily kill a few Jedi, and Force sensitive, though that last part is a bit of a mystery. Are all Dathomirians Force sensitive?
3. Dooku’s deets
These episodes also allowed Count Dooku to come into greater focus, and for us to learn one very, very important piece of his deal: he’s not as loyal to Darth Sidious as he appears. Sidious specifically tells him ‘don’t be training an apprentice,’ and yet he is all about getting Savage to be just that. Dooku is an interesting case, as he is given such little screen time in the prequels that he’s not really taken very seriously, for good reason. But here, we’ve learned so much more about him. We know he is the governmental leader of the Separatists, we know he has ambitions to take out Sidious in one way or another, and we know that his Force powers are nothing to scoff at. All of that might have been hinted at or briefly mentioned in Attack of the Clones, but we get so much more depth here.
The shame of this is that Christopher Lee, who portrayed Dooku in the films, is an incredible actor, and could have done so much more with the character if given more to work with. Just like Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Jimmy Smits…
4. Chaos
One of the unspoken traits of the Jedi appears to be their commitment to order. Not just order in terms of justice, but the way they keep their records, the way they train their young, everything. They present a very orderly existence. It always made sense to me that the Dark Side would be the opposite of that in many ways, and we’ve had hints of that in the past. The way, for instance, that every single Sith we’ve met, aside from Maul, has tried to, or succeeded at, screwing over their apprentice in one way or another. Or how Kylo Ren is someone who serves something called the First Order, yet is as impulsive and destructive as can be.
Here, we see all of the order of master/apprentice/good/evil break down, as Savage, Dooku, and Ventress all battle each other. Ventress has motive: Dooku left her for dead. Savage, initially, does as well: he’s under Ventresses’s power. Dooku is just trying to not get dead. But eventually, all of that is stripped away for pure anger, and that is when the Dark Side really comes alive.
The battle of the three Sith-ish folks is something we’ve never really seen before. In the past, when we’ve seen, say, Vader turn on the Emperor, Vader is doing so in the name of what is right and good. That’s not the case here; this is not a shifting of allegiances. This is simply “FUCK YOU LET’S FIGHT.” It is chaos, it is insanity, it is exactly the opposite of what the Jedi would do. It is the Dark Side.
5. Maul!
I knew we would get here, and I’m very glad we did. Darth Maul being alive was something I had dreamed on since I first saw The Phantom Menace in 1999. It seemed to me that he could be rebuilt, and here we are. Obviously, we’ve gotten very little of him yet, but the promise of him being a major player is really exciting.
