WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 7, streaming now on Disney+.
As The Clone Wars gears up for its grand finale and ties off all its remaining loose ends, there's one open character arc from past seasons it would be almost criminal to finish the show without wrapping up. The character concerned was among the show's best, and her evolution from seemingly irredeemable villain to one of the coolest anti-heroes in the franchise just hasn't had the capstone it deserves. We, of course, are talking about Asajj Ventress.
When she was first introduced in the series, she was the choice assassin and Sith-in-training to Count Dooku, often serving as his most trusted underling attending to matters that he could not address personally. Over the course of those initial seasons, Ventress provided some of the most memorable lightsaber duels of the series, such as her face-off with Jedi Luminara Unduli in which the women's struggle over the Force blasted both backwards.
Yet as straightforward as Ventress' role may have seemed initially, the show was not content to let her languish as a flat one-dimensional character. Instead, she ended up attaining one of the most complicated relationships with the Dark Side of any character in Star Wars when Darth Sidious, motivated by the Rule of Two that dictated he and Dooku could be the only Sith in the Galaxy, ordered his apprentice to have Ventress murdered. Sidious did not want his apprentice to have an apprentice of his own, and Dooku accepted the mandate with only brief reluctance.
What this meant was that Ventress was betrayed by the Dark Side, barely escaping the attempt on her life and returning to her roots with the Nightsisters to plot her revenge. While many characters betrayed the Jedi in favor of the Dark Side, rarely have Star Wars fans had the chance to see the reverse happen. Audiences watched as Ventress first clung to revenge as her path and, upon her failure to assassinate Dooku, realize that there was a Galaxy of opportunity for her beyond the narrow scope of the Dark Side.
Living only for revenge is what Asajj Ventress would have done before growing as a character, but instead she underwent a journey of self-discovery that led her to become a capable bounty hunter, outperforming even the budding talents of Boba Fett. When she was last seen, she was framed by the the fallen Jedi padawan Barriss Offee, but since Offee's plot was uncovered, there has been no mention of Ventress' fate beyond her continuation in Star Wars novels.
However, much like Ahsoka, the books do not fill in the timeline of The Clone Wars finale, so there is no better time for the character to return than the series' swan song. Ventress' path so perfectly parallels Ahsoka, as both women are complicated individuals conflicted over the betrayal of their former allies, that it would be a shame for the two not to cross paths with one another again.
This could be the perfect time for Ventress to fully redeem herself, assisting Ahsoka to help preserve what little good remains in the Galaxy as times grow increasingly dark. Ventress' own path from the Dark Side into being an anti-hero would be complete if she could at last have her heroic moment. Her return would be the perfect way to tie up the show and much of the complicated characterization and nuanced morality that served as its central themes.
Streaming on Disney+, the final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars stars Matt Lanter as Anakin Skywalker, Ashley Eckstein as Ahsoka Tano, Dee Bradley Baker as Captain Rex and the clone troopers, James Arnold Taylor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Katee Sackhoff as Bo-Katan and Sam Witwer as Maul.
UPDATE: The 2015 novel Star Wars: Dark Disciple depicted Ventress' death at the hands of Dooku, so her return on The Clone Wars may be unlikely. However, the same might have been said of Maul.