Thoughts on Massacre:
I was looking forward to checking this one out for a few reasons. First, it acts as a follow up to the Nightsisters arc, and would help me better form an opinion on whether the shuffling of episode order works better or not. Second, your description claims that it is one of your ambitious edits with a new narrative, which I usually have more feedback on.
3:20 It is unclear from the cut what is going on when the scene first cuts to the Lair of Grievous plotline. I know from your notes that it’s supposed to be that the Ventress told the Jedi where Grievous lives, but that is not clear at all from the context given. It almost feels like a non-sequitur since no one had ever even mentioned Grievous. When we eventually cut back to the Nightsisters, they clearly seem preoccupied with their own stuff and give no indication that they are going to or would want to go after Grievous.
5:32 Grievous’ dub here sounds really off, mostly because the audio source you used was from a transmission and has a lot of distortion that Star Wars adds to their holograms (you’d think that they’d have better telecommunication technology with all their future shit but w/e)
Dooku’s conversation with Grievous doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. He says that the Jedi are in his house, then points out that Ventress is at Dathomir (I assume that the implication here is that he is telling Grievous that she is behind the first statement, but that isn’t made clear how that would happen or why) Finally, Grievous’ line about “I will rest when those witches are dead” seems at odds with his line about “I’ll play your little game”, which indicated that he is only doing this at the behest of Dooku instead of for personal vengeance.
You’re right that Dooku never had a personal grudge against Ventress, but I think the original episode gives a fully satisfactory and complete explanation for why Grievous was sent to lead the attack: 1) Grievous’ role is largely as an attack dog for Dooku, the political leader of the Separatists, and Dooku wants them dead. 2) Grievous feels a loyalty to the Separatist cause (ironically arguably more so than any of his actual superiors) and Ventress was a traitor to that cause.
I agree with your notes that while Lair of Grievous as an episode has some great Grievous moments but also a lot of filler that can be removed. However I still think it works better as a follow up to the Assassin plotline or possibly its own standalone story albeit pared down. Here I think it mucks about with the pacing too much by having the Nightsisters content essentially put on pause for 10 minutes after initially starting with them.
On a similar note, including the epilogue with Savage feels sudden and disconnected from the story we had just watched. As per your notes, I understand that you want to build up hype for the upcoming Maul plotline (especially since you separated part 1 of the 4-part story about it), but I think it takes a really excellent and tragic ending that already existed for Massacre and distracts from that emotional gut punch.
I think that this episode reinforced my hesitations regarding putting the Nightsisters arc so early. I think part of the reason it might seem like you need to separate this episode from its quadrilogy is because otherwise there would be a really big gap between when the Ventress/Maul arc is introduced and when it picks up again in the Brothers and Sisters arc, but I would argue there is no harm in having of it hold off until later. I know you said you wanted to spice up the first couple seasons since they are weaker than what comes later, but spreading it out like that ironically does the opposite of this series edit’s claimed raison d’etre: making the whole story feel more focused.