A follow-up to last year’s Tales of the Jedi mini-series which told the separate stories of Count Dooku and Ahsoka Tano through their journey of disillusionment from the Jedi Order, Tales of the Empire flips the faction and tells the tale of Morgan Elsbeth and Barriss Offee, two warriors now on the run after losing what they called their family for so long.
They both find themselves in league with the newly formed Galactic Empire, however, misgivings about their new allies begin to grow when the true nature of the Empire reveals itself. Both tales told here are a rather mixed bag, with one of them feeling unnecessary and inconsequential while the other feels rushed and weightless.
Nightsister: Survivor
The first three episodes of the show cover the journey of Morgan Elsbeth, a former nightsister of Dathomir whose clan was viciously wiped out by General Grievous and the Separatist army during the Clone Wars, leaving her as the sole survivor. A series of events takes us through to where we see her in The Mandalorian where she was first introduced as magistrate of Calodan, ruling with an iron fist over her people.
There’s some nice musical continuity here thanks to Kevin Kiner who produced the score for the show, with the New Republic theme playing as the New Republic ship touches down on Corvus, then later as Ahsoka’s theme plays when Nadura uses her final moments to send a distress signal to presumably Ahsoka Tano, although Bo-Katan Kryze is the one who answers the call on the other end.
Less Is Mor(gan)
As a character who is relatively new in Star Wars canon with not a lot of supplementary material or screen time for that matter, it’s hard to justify the allocation of half the show to flushing out some fairly basic and uninteresting information on Morgan, especially since her story was sealed in the Ahsoka series last year. There’s just not a lot of incentive to care about her and these three very short episodes certainly did nothing to help. A better avenue that could’ve been used to give her the proper lore she needed is perhaps a novel or a comic book which allow for more creative freedom to be as in-depth as possible.
My personal suggestion for if they had to go the route of a Dathomir-related character is Taron Malicos or Merrin, both of whom first appeared in the video game Jedi: Fallen Order. This would’ve been the perfect opportunity to bridge mediums and become one step closer to having a video game character make their live-action debut. Nonetheless, these first three episodes were a disappointing waste of an opportunity and should have either been given to lengthen Barriss’ arc or someone else entirely.
Back to Barriss
The second half of the show, which consists of three episodes that reveal what happened to Barriss Offee after Order 66, are much more interesting but rather short. It picks up during the height of the attack on the Jedi Temple, with Barriss worryingly staring out the window of her prison cell in the distance. There’s a symbolic parallel here, as the last time we saw Barriss, she was in handcuffs for being caught as the person who bombed the Jedi Temple during the Clone Wars after being disillusioned with the ways of the Order.
Now, she’s watching as the temple is once again being desecrated at the hands of another disillusioned Jedi, but this time instead of sharing her contempt, she shares her concerns about the attack with a bit of regret in her voice, a sign that she’s still clinging on to her morals as a Jedi. She’s then freed by the Fourth Sister, a former Jedi named Lyn who once knew Barriss but is now working as an Imperial Inquisitor tasked with hunting down surviving Jedi. She offers Barriss a second chance at a new life as a servant of the Empire, and Barriss reluctantly accepts as she has no other choice but to face death.
A sequence of events shows Barriss training with the Grand Inquisitor at a half-built Fortress Inquisitorius on Nur, going on a mission to track down a Jedi with Lyn only to turn on her and abandon the Inquisitorium, and finally ending up as a “healer” on a secluded snow planet, giving aid to those who pass by. Although it’s nice to see Barriss’ Jedi roots prevail through serious tests and trials, it was severely rushed and not enough time was dedicated to her status as an Inquisitor. It almost diminishes the impact of her fall as a Jedi and makes it seem as if it never happened.
Short, Sweet, But Misses the Point
A story like this is too nuanced to be crammed into three, 15-minute long episodes and as mentioned earlier, is too short to create any emotion or stakes. A better solution would have been to use all six episodes solely for Barriss’ arc or give her a separate mini-series entirely.
She should’ve been tasked with hunting down her former master, Luminara Unduli, which would’ve been a far more compelling story. It would’ve made the weight of her radicalization feel more palpable and convincing, and also be a good way to explain how Luminara got to where she was in Star Wars: Rebels.
The ending of the final episode, without revealing too much, is rather annoying and only gets us asking the same question that we did before the series came out. Barriss’ fate is once again ambiguous, leaving another project with the task of tying the knot on her character, and forcing us, the viewers, to have to wait for it again. Leave it to Dave Filoni to answer “What happened to Barriss Offee?” with, “What happened to Barriss Offee?”
The Tales series of shorts has a lot of potential and promise—gorgeous Clone Wars-style animation, returning characters, loose ends being tied up—but not all of it lives up to expectations. Some of the saga’s most prominent characters are shoved into 20 minute-long episodes that add little to nothing to their character or blitz through their arcs with little care. Tales of the Empire unfortunately falls victim to that, and even though it’s enjoyable enough, it deserved longer runtimes, different characters, or a combination of both.
Star Wars: Tales of the Empire is now streaming exclusively on Disney+. It stars Diana Lee Inosanto, Meredith Salenger, Jason Isaacs, Rya Kihlstedt, Lars Mikkelsen, and Matthew Wood. The series is produced by Dave Filoni and is scored by Kevin Kiner.
