[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_clone_wars_nightsisters.png]]
->''The swiftest path to destruction is through vengeance.''

Troubled by Asajj Ventress' growing prowess with the Dark Side of the Force, Darth Sidious commands Count Dooku to eliminate her. However, Ventress survives Dooku's assassination attempt and the jilted former apprentice vows to take revenge, enlisting the aid of her kinswomen — the mystical Nightsisters — in her sinister scheme. Mother Talzin, leader of the Nightsisters, veils Asajj and her fellow assassins in a cloak of invisibility, and they infiltrate Dooku's palace on Serenno. Though they fail to kill the Count, their use of captured Jedi lightsabers leads Dooku to mistakenly believe that the Jedi have tried to kill him. Interested in protection, he requests a new apprentice from Mother Talzin.

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!!Tropes:

* AnachronicOrder: This episode takes place after "[[Recap/StarWarsTheCloneWarsS2E15SenateMurders Senate Murders]]" (2:15).
* AmazonBrigade: The Nightsisters are an army of woman warriors, [[{{Matriarchy}} reigning dominant]] over Dathomir.
* BadBoss:
** Sidious orders Ventress' death out of (justified) paranoia, and his treatment of Dooku is little better, threatening his apprentice into carrying out the command and mockingly praising his loyalty afterwards.
** Dooku may not have ordered Ventress' death of his own volition, but his method of assassination is to order one of his own ships destroyed, caring nothing for the loss of droid soldiers.
* BadassBoast: Dooku has just been struck with a poison dart, rendered functionally blind, and is outnumbered three to one. What does he have to say to his assailants?
-->'''Dooku''': I do not need my eyes to see you, [[FalseFlagOperation Jedi]].
* BlackSpeech: The language the Nightsisters are using for their enchantments is the creepy variant.
* CallForward: Dooku defeats the Nightsisters with the exact same trick that his master later uses to defeat Mace Windu: feigning weakness, waiting for the right moment, then zapping them with Force Lightning and [[DestinationDefenestration throwing them out the window]]. Unlike Windu, however, the Nightsisters survive.
* CanonImmigrant: Apart from the AdaptationSpeciesChange, Ventress' backstory of having grown up on Rattatak and trained by Jedi Master Ky Narec comes straight from the ''Legends'' comics that introduced her.
* CastingGag: Ky Narec is voiced by Creator/CoreyBurton, who also voices Count Dooku.
* TheCorrupter: It is shown that Dooku swayed Ventress to the Dark Side while she was vulnerable after her Master's death, playing on her desire for revenge.
* DestinationDefenestration: Dooku ultimately ends the Nightsisters' assassination attempt by blasting them with Force Lightning and throwing them out of a high window. Ventress manages to stop her own fall, then uses the Force to stop Karis and Naa'leth's falls.
* EliteMooks: The Droid Tri-Fighters make their chronological debut in this episode.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: Dooku is repulsed by Sidious' order to eliminate Ventress, and only goes through with it at Sidious' insistence.
* EvilVersusEvil: Ventress, Karis, and Naa'leth vs Count Dooku.
* FalseFlagOperation: The Nightsisters provide their agents with Jedi lightsabers (blue for Ventress and green for her lackeys Karis and Naa'leth) so that Dooku will blame the assassination attempt on the Jedi if he survives.
* GoodCounterpart: Ky Narec, for Count Dooku; both men are or were Jedi, and both become Ventress' master, but where Narec is a decent man who took Ventress in and trained her out of the kindness of his heart, Dooku is a cold villain who nurtures her darkness and who, when push comes to shove, is willing to put aside his own care for her in service to his own master. Both Narec and Dooku are even voiced by Creator/CoreyBurton.
* HandicappedBadass: Dooku is poisoned, blinded, and outmatched 3 to 1... and he still handily defeats Ventress and her fellow Nightsisters in the end.
* HotWitch: All of the Nightsisters (even Mother Talzin) are very beautiful.
* InformedAbility: Ventress is said to be growing so powerful in her abilities that even ''Darth Sidious'' is beginning to feel threatened by her. But in almost every episode, she [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption fails at her goals]], mostly because of the ForegoneConclusion of events that have already happened in ''Revenge of the Sith'', and even throughout the three-part story arc is shown to be vastly inferior to Dooku's own powers.
* LaserBlade: Ventress had a green blade in her youth as a Padawan and after her master, Ky Narec, died she later used it to kill the pirate who killed him. She obtains a blue-bladed lightsaber while Karis and Naa'leth receive a green-bladed lightsaber.
* KickTheDog:
** Count Dooku doesn't even tell Ventress the real reason for his betrayal, coldly telling her that she's failed him.
** After Dooku, against his own wishes, seemingly succeeds in killing Ventress, Sidious chuckles and mockingly praises his apprentice's loyalty.
* MagicPotion: Mother Talzin provides Asajj and the other assassins with a potion whose fumes, when walked through, turn them invisible.
* {{Matriarchy}}: No males are seen among the Nightsisters; Talzin offers one as an assassin for Dooku because he "couldn't tame" a female.
* MistreatmentInducedBetrayal: Ventress has been built up in previous episodes as utterly loyal to Dooku, but all of that goes out the window in this episode. She once killed an ally just for downplaying her abilities, so she's going to go berserk when someone she saw as a ParentalSubstitute tries to murder her. It doesn't help that she has no way of knowing that Sidious ordered Dooku to do it. As soon as she's recovered, she's not conflicted at all — the only thing she wants is his death.
* NiceJobFixingItVillain: After Dooku disowns Ventress as his apprentice, she becomes so enraged by the betrayal during her fight with Obi-Wan and Anakin that she grabs both of them in a force choke. And likely would have killed them both had Dooku not ordered the rest of the Separatist fleet to fire on them. Later, during the same fight, Anakin and Obi-Wan have Ventress cornered and may well have done Dooku's job for him, only for Dooku to order a kamikaze strike on the hangar that forces the Jedi to scatter and allows Ventress to escape.
* NotSoStoic: Dooku is aghast at Sidious' command to kill Ventress, even protesting his master's orders before being cowed into obedience.
* ParentalAbandonment: Ventress was handed over to a slaver by her own mother; her father was presumably killed by tradition before her birth.
* ParentalSubstitute: Jedi Master Ky Narec was this for Ventress. It appears that she considered Dooku as such, too.
* PetTheDog: In a rare show of humanity, Dooku admits that he values Ventress as a person and objects to Sidious' command to have her killed. Downplayed, as he doesn't admit any of this ''to'' Ventress, and it doesn't stop him from following through with Sidious' order.
* ProperlyParanoid: Sidious suspects that Dooku is training Ventress as his own apprentice with [[TheStarscream the aim of eventually overthrowing him.]] He's completely correct of course, as it's the Sith Way under the Rule of Two to eventually overthrow your own master. However, Dooku knows he and Ventress are not yet powerful enough to take on Sidious, so he has no choice but to obey.
* {{Revenge}}: Ventress' sole focus after recovering is to avenge herself upon Dooku. As seen during her {{Troubled Backstory Flashback}}s, revenge upon the killers of her parental figures has been a primary motivation for most of her life.
* ShameIfSomethingHappened: Darth Sidious senses the growing powers of Count Dooku's assassin, Asajj Ventress. He almost says the trope, hinting that he will kill Dooku if he's breaking the Rule of Two.
-->'''Sidious:''' I would hate to think you are training your own Sith apprentice to destroy me....
* ShootYourMate: Darth Sidious orders Count Dooku to eliminate Ventress because he fears Dooku might try to overthrow him with her help.
* ShoutOut: To the original ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|1978}}'', when the tactical droid says "By Your Command" in her monotone.
* StartOfDarkness: As shown in flashbacks, the death of her Jedi Master, Ky Narec, triggers Ventress' descent into the dark side.
* SuddenlyShouting: When Dooku attempts to protest Sidious' order to kill Ventress.
--->'''Darth Sidious''': Eliminate her.
--->'''Dooku''' [''shocked''] She's my most trusted--
--->'''Darth Sidious''': I SAID. Eliminate her!
--->'''Dooku''' ...as you wish, my lord.
* TroubledBackstoryFlashback: Ventress' history (traded away as a slave for the survival of her tribe, rescued and trained by a Jedi, fell to the Dark Side and found by Dooku after he was killed) is summarized while she is unconscious and her injuries are treated by the Nightsisters' magick.
* VillainEpisode: Obi-Wan and Anakin appear at the beginning, but the focus is on Ventress' betrayal and revenge.
* VisibleInvisibility: The Nightsisters' potion renders Ventress and her lackeys invisible "to most". To the viewers they appear smoky and indistinct. Their lightsabers are quite visible, but this serves to convince Dooku that they are Jedi.
* VoiceOfTheLegion: Mother Talzin's words echo in a voice far deeper than her own.
* WhatYouAreInTheDark: After seemingly succeeding in killing Ventress, Dooku is shown brooding in anger and possible regret before contacting Sidious to report Ventress' "death", showing that his claims of Ventress being important to him were genuine.
* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: The plan to kill Dooku hinges on hitting him with a dart filled with poison to dull his senses so that he won't be able to see the assassins... no explanation as to why that poison couldn't just be something that would kill him is given.
* XanatosGambit: Talzin's plan to help Ventress avenge herself on Dooku; either Ventress succeeds in killing him, or he survives the assassination attempt and, believing his assailants to be Jedi, is open to Talzin's subsequent offer of a new Dathomirian apprentice, who would be an agent of Talzin's.
* YouHaveFailedMe: Dooku's stated reason for abandoning Ventress to die, though the truth is quite the opposite: she has become too powerful and effective to be compatible with Sidious' paranoia. The fact that she actually ''has'' failed him ([[FailureIsTheOnlyOption again]]) merely gives him a convenient excuse.
-->'''Dooku:''' You have failed me for the last time, and now you shall die.

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