All six episodes of Tales of the Empire will premiere on Disney+ on Saturday, May 4.
On its surface, Tales of the Empire does everything right. Featuring graphic animation, exciting music that adds to each action sequence, and stories that weave together new chapters in the lives of two characters from Star Wars history. What it’s missing are big names like those at the heart of its predecessor, 2022’s Tales of the Jedi. Where that series boasts meticulously crafted stories to flesh out never-before-seen moments in the lives of Ahsoka Tano and Count Dooku, Disney+’s latest Star Wars Day offering can’t It does the same for the likes of notable and lesser-known characters The Mandalorian’s Morgan Elsbeth and The Clone Wars’ Pariss Offee.
Tales of the Empire aims to shift the perspective of Star Wars anime to the Dark Side, taking a look at how Morgan and Barriss fell into the grip of its magnetic power. The series serves as an origin story for the former and an epilogue for the latter, attempting to take a closer look at falling into and emerging from fear, anger, and hate. But she often struggles to achieve these goals for any of her heroes.
Morgan’s is certainly the most disappointing of the six episodes, giving the audience a superficial look at how she got to where we met her in The Mandalorian. Promising something more, the three episodes that follow Morgan are titled “The Path of Fear,” “The Path of Rage,” and “The Path of Hate,” which any longtime Star Wars fan will recognize as the steps toward the dark side of Star Wars. Power. The first part in this trilogy does the best job of tracking Morgan’s decline, highlighting what scares her, and how that leads to anger. Later episodes feel less concerned with how anger causes hatred (and don’t forget suffering), but instead focus on the more superficial aspects of her life that lead to her eventual antagonistic role in Ahsoka’s series. An inside look into Elsbeth’s psyche has been abandoned in favor of a retrospective setup for another show entirely.
Tales of the Empire had much more success with Barriss’ story, taking it down a path tailored to the character. The fate of the Padawan was left somewhat ambiguous at the end of the Clone Wars, and Inquisitor’s stories have been told in various forms and ways ever since. As a former Jedi disillusioned with the ways of the Order, Barriss is an obvious candidate for the Jedi-killing League of Assassins. The problem is that it may be also A clear story to tell, moving without any surprises and at a pace that makes things feel rushed. In the synopsis, of the 12 to 15 minutes we’re given in each episode, there’s not a lot of time for her to sit with her cognitive dissonance, so when she makes her pivotal decision, it feels abrupt, or like she’s reached the end. From her arc very early. However, the final episode’s focus on character is able to solidify Barriss’ arc into something more satisfying as a whole, and succeeds in giving it a conclusion worth telling.
Series creator and Lucasfilm honcho Dave Filoni is as much a fan of these characters as any of Wookipeida’s best contributors, and he’s made sure that Tales of the Empire will have Star Wars enthusiasts pointing and whistling at their TV like Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time. Time…in Hollywood, and that might be enough. That’s not to say that this sort of thing isn’t worth talking about — it’s one of my favorite parts of the vast Star Wars universe — but with Tales of the Jedi, we get all of that plus deep, contemplative stories about two fan-favorites. Tales of the Empire attempts to do the same for Morgan and Barriss, but with so little of their stories previously told, these episodes had a lot of heavy lifting to do. They end up feeling like they’re checking boxes rather than being the introspective character studies they aspire to be.
