Ahsoka might be scratching an itch many fans of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars have been feeling since the series wrapped in 2020, but many of us are still feeling the sting of our missing favorites. Ahsoka’s first nemesis Asajj Ventress lives rent-free in many fans’ minds, but the bald baddie will never get the chance for a live-action adaptation.
At least not in the current canon. Though it never happened on screen, the Sith assassin met her end in a climactic clash years before Ahsoka began her search for Ezra Bridger.
What happened to Asajj Ventress?
By the end of Star Wars: The Clone Wars Ventress is a practicing bounty hunter in the outer rim worlds. Her skills with a saber, connection to the force, and natural Dathomarian talents make her more than capable of competing with the best of the worst. The former assassin is quickly dubbed, “The Bald Banshee,” and gains a reputation for only working solo.
Her fierce reputation was enough to keep most rival hunters away, but her only long-term partner, Quinlan Vos wasn’t the average thug. A longtime friend of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Vos was the first of his kind: a Jedi assassin. Though it went against the Order’s primary beliefs, the Jedi Council felt that Count Dooku presented enough of a threat to warrant a break from tradition. Vos intended to familiarize himself with Dooku’s style through Ventress and find a way to use her intimate knowledge of Dooku’s fighting style to assassinate the Separatist leader.
Vos playfully tailed Ventress for weeks, sometimes interfering with her hunt, sometimes helping. He proved himself to be reliable and trustworthy, and against her better judgment, Ventress became fond of her new friend. Though it went against her nature, the duo agreed to a temporary alliance. Though Vos was skilled at hiding his Jedi abilities, Ventress quickly began to notice his true nature.
While Ventress began to suspect Vos of being force-sensitive, the Jedi was falling in love with her. His feelings came to a head after a mission gone awry, and Vos admitted his affiliations with the Jedi Order. Ventress was well aware of his connections and cautioned him against assassination. It went against many of the Jedi’s ideals, and she felt Vos was too soft for cold-blooded murder. Despite her reservations, Ventress longed for revenge against her former master, and agreed to help Vos if he left the Order and allowed her to train him in the dark side.
During their training, Ventress realized that she reciprocated the former Jedi’s feelings. The duo became more than master and apprentice, and Ventress came to trust him completely. She took Vos to her home world of Dathomir where she pushed him to embrace the dark side of the force using Night Sister tricks. When Vos finally managed to kill in cold blood, she knew he was ready.
Despite multiple attempts on Dooku’s life, the duo was destined to fail. Their feelings for one another caused their first attempt to fail, and Ventress was forced to abandon Vos to Dooku’s dark machinations. She spent her life’s saving in an attempt to save Vos, but when she found him in prison, he was a shell of his former self. Where Ventress had failed to open Vos to all that the dark side had to offer, Dooku had been successful. The Sith lord twisted Vos’s mind, manipulating him into hating Ventress for leaving him behind. She attacked his former teacher, refusing to listen to her words of reason.
Badly injured and forced to retreat, Ventress took the news of Vos’s fate to the Jedi council with help from Obi-Wan Kenobi. Though the Jedi were skeptical of her intentions, Ventress convinced them of her story. Kenobi believed his former rival and quickly offered to help her save his friend.
Obi-Wan tapped Anakin Skywalker to join their assault, and the trio broke into Dooku’s palace. They found Quinlan in a worse state than Ventress had last seen. He was badly beaten and starved, and while he pleaded with her to forgive him for his assault and claimed to have seen through Dooku’s tricks, she felt anger under the surface. Though Kenobi couldn’t sense the darkness within, Ventress believed that the only way Vos could ever be free of the dark side was through death.
Kenobi returned Vos to the Jedi order, but Ventress couldn’t trust her former paramour. Though Vos’s return to the Jedi Order meant the two could never romantically reconcile, the two still met in secret. Ventress’s concerns were validated when the Jedi Council began to suspect Vos of sending information back to Dooku. In a bid to force Vos to reveal his true nature, the Council renewed Vos’s mission to assassinate Count Dooku.
Though she had tried to fight her feelings, Ventress still loved Vos. Unable to let him go to his death, she joined his mission and the pair traveled together. Their plan failed, and when Dooku loosed a flurry of dark lighting at Quinlan, Ventress took the blow. Quinlan stayed with Ventress as Dooku escaped. In the end, Ventress was right: . It was death that brought Quinlan Vos back from the dark side, just not his own. As she faded into death, the light side of the force carried her away, and with it, it cleansed Vos of Dooku’s influence.
