There was unfinished business for Nika Futterman. As the voice of Asajj Ventress, the Sith assassin serving Count Dooku, she played one of the most important — and well-liked among fans — characters of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series. A dual-lightsaber-wielding menace, Ventress held her own against Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Ahsoka Tano, before leaving the bad guys behind for free agency. But just as Asajj’s journey was taking a surprising turn, it all stopped when the series was cancelled.
“I thought we had gotten to a place in her story where it was going to continue on in this really interesting way,” Futterman tells StarWars.com. “I just thought, now that she's going to be a bounty hunter, there's just a world of possibility that she could be anything and do anything and become anything.”
But the Force works in mysterious ways. Ten years after she last played Ventress in the fifth season of The Clone Wars, which saw bounty hunter Ventress tracking (and then aiding) a fugitive Ahsoka Tano, an email arrived from her agent. Lucasfilm wanted Futterman back as Ventress for Star Wars: The Bad Batch. “It was really surprising and very exciting,” she says. “She's fun, interesting, and multi-layered. She's all these things that I wanted to continue on doing. So, of course, I was like, ‘Yeah, baby! What is next?’”
When it comes to Ventress’ return, however, there’s a need to address the bantha in the room. For all intents and purposes, Ventress met her demise in Star Wars: Dark Disciple, a novel based on unused scripts of The Clone Wars. Still, series creator Dave Filoni, executive producer Brad Rau, and executive producer/head writer Jennifer Corbett had a plan.
“Ventress is one of our all-time favorite characters,” Rau says. “So, when Dave brought up the idea of bringing her into The Bad Batch, we were beyond excited.”
“We had several discussions about the book and how her story could continue,” Corbett explains. “How she survived will be revealed in future content, but for this story, we were thrilled to include her and explore her unique connection to, and compassion for, Omega.”
“They found a way to continue her story,” Futterman says. “I think they must have discovered that the fans really love this character and they want her around, which makes me very happy because I love her, too.”
In the most recent episode of The Bad Batch, “The Harbinger,” Ventress pays a visit to the titular squad of heroes, sent to deliver them intel on the nature of M-count research (i.e., midi-chlorian count, and measuring one’s Force potential) and why it relates to the young clone Omega. The Batch don’t trust Ventress, and become hostile when they realize who she actually is. But this is the new Asajj, and she goes easy on the elite clones — stopping short of killing them. She even hangs around to test Omega, acting as something of a mentor, and ultimately saves her from a giant sea creature by connecting with it through the Force. “That's the kind of side of her that I always knew that she had, but we didn't get to get there because you just see her fighting power, but not her mental power, really,” Futterman says. “I thought what was really cool about this is, it shows that she's closer to the [light side of the] Force than she is, really, to the evil part of power — that there's some part of her that is really more like the good guys, that she's very capable of using her mental powers for good.”
For Brad Rau, seeing Futterman bring Ventress back to life was a highlight of Season 3. “She is a tour de force,” he says of the actor. “There are so many sides to Ventress over the years. She's got this big, bold, villainous personality, but also this awesome subtlety that really, really bubbles up. And so we had a lot of fun with her in the booth. She knows the character better than anybody.”
“I feel like I am her and she is me,” Futterman says. “Even though we're very different.”
Though Ventress walks away from the Bad Batch and Omega in the end, there’s a feeling that the future is wide open. Or as Futterman says, that Asajj could do anything and become anything. “I think we're going to find out a lot of things about a lot of things,” Futterman says. “And I think we're going to have all kinds of fun adventures.”
