Talking over the Ventress episode with my mom has (I think) solidified that as much as I liked Ventress and love the fight sequence, it really felt like the middle of the season got derailed just to have Ventress show up and maybe tease a Ventress show? Whether it be how she survived as part of Tales of the Jedi s2 or in a new spinoff show about The Path or something, this appearance didn’t feel natural for TBB to us. Granted, maybe by the end of the season we’ll feel differently and be eating humble pie, but that’s where we stand right now.

More rambling under the cut, you have been warned.

Like it really feels that they specifically had Rex not know what an M-count is just so Ventress could show up and say it, which feels a little :/ come on now. Between Rex possibly having contact with Ahsoka and being the Captain under Anakin “The Chosen One” Skywalker, it feels very odd to have him NOT know what the hell M-count could be.

It’s also frustrating from a narrative perspective to have 2 episodes dedicated to the gang finding out what M-count means, when we the audience have known what it meant since it was first mentioned! I would’ve been fine with Fennec saying at the end of last episode something like “All I know is M-count is something to do with the Jedi, so good luck with whatever you need that info for cause the Empire will never let it go”, and then the Ventress episode could have instead been “well is it safer to stay on Pabu and hope the Empire doesn’t know where we are, or are we endangering all these people’s lives by being here? Can we ever have a stable place to live, or should we constantly be on the run from the Empire, thus painting a bigger target on us by giving us more opportunities to run into them?” But by having both episodes be “what could M-count mean for Omega?” and basically tell us what we already know: they are never gonna be safe from the Empire because they will never stop looking for Omega, it feels like a lot of ground was lost that could have been dedicated to other things, like letting Omega interact with characters other than Crosshair.

Also it’s such a weird episode cause they kinda had to avoid the whole Ventress died thing because that would bog down the episode by confusing people who hadn’t read The Dark Disciple, but it leaves people who know about it hanging with how the hell it happened?? Like there’s that one line about many lives but it doesn’t really answer anything, which is whatever but at the same time super frustrating cause it feels like such an unnecessary can of worms to open? Especially in the last half of the last season of a show that’s already got A Lot going on.

I do wonder how different I would’ve felt about this episode if it had been Quinlan instead of Ventress, because A) he’s not dead and B) we already know he’s got Stuff he’s doing (The Path) so it’s not unreasonable to see hints of it early on in the reign of the Empire. Also having another character of color come back would’ve been nice, since we STILL haven’t actually seen Phee outside of one singular holocall this season, let alone any sighting of Shep and Lyana.