Asajj Ventress arrives on Pabu to inform the Bad Batch about why the Empire wants Omega.
Tropes:
- Back from the Dead: Ventress has somehow returned to life after her painful death at the hands of Count Dooku in Dark Disciple. She provides no explanation for this beyond stating she has a few lives left. It has been confirmed that the details around her survival will be revealed in the future.
- Blatant Lies:
- Omega's claim that the Batch's interest in M-counts is for a friend is shaky enough that Ventress clearly doesn't buy it even before Omega ends up giving the truth away.
- Wrecker tries to claim that the Batch were holding their own against Ventress, even after Omega arrived to find them totally at her mercy.
- Ventress claims that as far as she can tell, Omega doesn't have an elevated M-count; Crosshair quickly clocks that she's lying, but Ventress, without confirming that he's right, simply warns him and Hunter that the Batch isn't as safe on Pabu as they think, and that if Omega does have an elevated M-count, she'd need to be trained in the Force, which would require taking her away from the Batch.
- The Bus Came Back: Ventress makes her first chronological appearance since her apparent death in Dark Disciple and her first appearance onscreen since season 5 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
- Continuity Nod: Ventress's presence in particular leads to a lot of nods to the rest of the franchise.
- Ventress was forced to desert the Separatists after Count Dooku was forced to try to execute her to assure Darth Sidious of his loyalty back in "Nightsisters".
- Omega's first test has her trying to balance on one foot, recalling both Yoda's training of Luke in The Empire Strikes Back and Luke's own training of Grogu in ''From the Desert Comes a Stranger".
- When Omega fumbles during her first test, Ventress instructs her to try again with a sharp "again", recalling Anakin's training of Ahsoka in Tales of the Jedi.
- Ventress asks Omega to try to reach out and feel an affinity with "everything" as Luke will eventually do with Rey on Ach-To in The Last Jedi.
- Ventress is able to calm the sea monster attacking them and gently touch it with her hand, as Grogu will do with Boba's rancor in "In the Name of Honor".
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Ventress subdues Hunter, Wrecker, and Crosshair while barely trying. Made all the more impressive in that aside from disarming the Batch of their blasters with the Force at the onset, most of her curb-stomping was done via hand-to-hand combat taking them on 3-on-1. Even after the Batch recover their blasters and escalate the fight, forcing Ventress to use her lightsaber, the next time they're seen, Ventress has Hunter and Crosshair floored and Wrecker in a Force-choke.
- Dramatic Irony: The audience is already aware of Omega's elevated M-count, so Ventress' claim that the young clone isn't Force-sensitive is immediately obvious as a lie, even without Crosshair calling her on it.
- Exact Words: When Omega asks if she was once a Jedi, Ventress denies it while simply saying that she "knows some of their ways", disguising her past as a Sith assassin and alluding to her training under Ky Narec without explaining the source of her knowledge.
- I Have My Ways: Ventress refuses to explain how she tracked the Batch to Pabu beyond "I have my ways."
- I Have This Friend: Omega tries to disguise the Batch's interest in M-counts as being for a friend of hers. The pretense, thin enough to begin with (Omega's hesitation and referring to her friend as "she" made the claim suspicious from the start), falls apart when Ventress explains that those with high M-counts can be Force-sensitive, prompting Omega to exclaim her surprise that she could be a Jedi.
- I Know You're Watching Me: It doesn’t occur to Wrecker that a Force Sensitive can sense when they’re being watched, even from a distance, so he's freaked out when Ventress stares directly at him from the boat.
- Immune to Bullets: The sea monster that attacks Omega and Ventress has an outer shell so tough that it only seems annoyed by the Havoc Marauder opening fire on it.
- Internal Reveal: While they're no closer to finding out exactly what Hemlock is doing, the Bad Batch learn that "M-count" is shorthand for "midichlorian count", and that a high count (like Omega's) is a sign of potential Force-sensitivity.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Ventress, as ever, is aloof and dismissive, but Omega quickly zeroes in on her having some soft spots, saying that Ventress actually likes her and the Batch, which Ventress doesn't deny and later proves by going out of her way to save Omega's life, which endears her to the rest of the Batch.
- Let's You and Him Fight: After they realize Ventress' identity, the Batch's already present distrust of her quickly escalates into a fight, not helped by Ventress' bad attitude.
- Never My Fault: Downplayed. When the Batch call Ventress out on being a war criminal, she claims she was merely a pawn in the conflict just like them. While she was Dooku's, and by extension Palpatine's, Unwitting Pawn, she still freely and intentionally committed those war crimes and wasn't tricked or deceived into them.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Ventress says she and the Bad Batch were pawns in the Clone Wars and they all lost at the end of it.
- Not Using the "Z" Word: Averted. Ventress openly uses the word "midichlorian", whereas works since "The Siege" have used simply "m-count".
- Overshadowed by Awesome: Despite Clone Force 99 being an Elite Army, they're completely and utterly outclassed against Ventress, who has fought and beaten the likes of Anakin Skywalker and General Grievous in single combat.
- Out of Focus: Echo's absent again like in the previous episode.
- Poor Communication Kills:
- Fennec didn't bother to inform the Bad Batch that she sent Ventress to find them, and Ventress herself didn't announce her arrival until Omega found her hidden ship, leaving the first meeting between the Batch and Ventress tense from the get-go. Ventress further makes a bad first impression by finding them on Pabu without needing coordinates, apparently not caring how it would look for a bounty hunter to turn up in their safe refuge unannounced.
- Tech's Republic file was apparently never updated to account for Ventress' desertion from the Separatists or her presumed death, leaving Hunter, Wrecker, and Crosshair to take her past as a Separatist assassin at face value.
- Psychic Strangle: Omega returns from her retrieval task to find Hunter at lightsaber-point and Wrecker being lifted by a Force choke. Ventress then releases him to demonstrate that she could have killed them and is choosing not to.
- Took a Level in Kindness:
- Ventress is still no Omega, but she demonstrates she's mellowed even more since her last appearance. She's very patient even when the crew come gunning for her and is all but said to be concerned for the fate of Omega, and by extension, the fate of the innocents on Pabu given she tells the Batch they need to leave. Pulling a Grogu on the sea monster is also quite a notable change from how she likely would've dealt with it during the Clone Wars.
- Crosshair is seen actively interacting with and helping the citizens of Pabu, who seem to like him. Crosshair is also more overtly protective of Omega, even going out of his way to research Ventress due to being suspicions of the bounty hunter's intentions for the girl.
- Unexplained Recovery: Ventress obliquely alludes to her apparent death in Dark Disciple by saying she has "a few lives left", but doesn't mention how she is alive now. Since the Bad Batch seem unaware of her prior fate (or that she ever left the Separatists in the first place), no one thinks to ask.
- Wasn't That Fun?: Following the encounter with the sea monster, Omega gasps that it was "pretty fun", earning her funny looks from Crosshair, Wrecker and Ventress.
- Wild Card: Challenged by Crosshair over what side she's on, Ventress simply replies "my own".
- You Can't Go Home Again: Alluded to by Ventress, who warns the Batch that their sanctuary on Pabu isn't as safe as they think. After all, she found them without being told.
