I was finally able to catch up on some more episodes. The new version of Ryloth with Liberty works a lot better in a way that really elevates the episode. The Death Watch and Children of Night were solid aswell.
I skipped a few episodes to check out the new version of Massacre that includes Lair of Grevious, overall I think it’s an ingenious idea and it fits really well, LoG is a pretty fun little episode and it’s cool you were able to find a pairing that can elevate both episodes, similarly to your Ryloth cut.
However, the one thing that didn’t really work for me was the way you sprinkled some dialogue from Massacre into LoG, namely both of Grevious’ calls with Dooku. Firstly, I get the idea of trying to more explicitly tie Ventress to the attack on Grevious’ Lair, but it really doesn’t come off that way. The lines from Massacre don’t really gel with the originals, so it ends up feeling like two different conversations happening at the same time. Secondly, I feel that interjecting talk about Ventress and the witches takes away all importance from the immediate plot about Grevious having to fend off against Fisto & company, it makes that confrontation drag as it feels like something we just have to get over with so the real plot of the episode can begin.
In my opinion it would work a lot better if first we focused on Grevious fighting off the intruders on his lair, juxtaposed with Ventress recieving a warm welcome home and celebrating with the night sisters. And then after Grevious has successfully defeated his assailants, he’s contacted by Dooku and comanded to take vengeance against Ventress (now Grevious becomes the assailant!). I would say to remove the first conversation with Dooku entirely, cutting instead from Ventress’ baptism to Grevious fully repaired ready to fight the Jedi again. This makes Grevious feel more isolated as he deals with the surprise intruders on his own, instead of getting a random call from Dooku that aknowledges the intruders but doesn’t make any further remarks or offer any help. Then once he kills Nahdar and the clones and forces Fisto to flee, he is contacted by Dooku simply to command him to attack the witches on Dathomir.
Here’s a rough mockup I did of how it could play out:
https://vimeo.com/667454669
I think Dooku’s expressions and mouth movements sinc up well enough to pass off. I also like that it would remove the bit where Grevious has to coyly tell Dooku that Fisto escaped, framing it as a failure. I’d say he did pretty good for a surprise attack, specially now that it was not a “test” set up by Dooku, I think it’s better to just remove all of that dialogue. This also falls in line of your goal of making Grievous appear more menacing in TCW:R, this is one of the few episodes where we actually see him hunting down Jedi and that bit of dialogue kinda undermines it.