May the Fourth be with you! In celebration of the “Star Wars” day of celebration, Disney released “Tales of the Empire” — a sequel series of sorts to the anthology series “Tales of the Jedi.”
This time around, we focus on the stories of two agents of the Empire — Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto) and fallen Jedi Barriss Offee (Meredeth Salenger). Three episodes are dedicated to each, though their paths don’t cross.
For Morgan’s portion, we first see her live through the destruction of her village on Dathomir at the hands of Separatist droid Gen. Grievous (Matthew Wood) and how it warps her into a hateful person who hurts others to feel secure. She is given refuge by another tribe of Dathomir, but soon leads them into danger.
The following episodes follow her reign as magistrate of Corvus (the planet we see her rule in “The Mandalorian”). Early on, its residents are distrustful of her, but she gains favor with Capt. Gilad Pellaeon (Xander Berkely) and Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen) of the Empire, setting up their eventual partnership in “Ahsoka.”
This was my least favorite half of the show. Morgan worked well as a one-off dictator for Mando and Ahsoka to overthrow in “The Mandalorian” — and her duel with Ahsoka is my favorite of that show — but I just don’t find her that interesting of a character.
Worse yet, “Tales” gets crucial moments in her character development wrong — what exactly makes her cruel? At what point in her past did she decide the path of revenge was the one she had to take? We see her do terrible things but we don’t understand why she does them, which makes it hard to emphasize with her.
Barriss’ half is much the same in terms of quality, but she has a more compelling story. Barriss betrayed the Jedi order right before it fell, saving her from the Empire’s Order 66 genocide. But that doesn’t mean she’s free to go — she’s forced to become one of the first inquisitors (fallen Jedi loyal to the Empire tasked with hunting down their former comrades).
Through this, Barriss has a really good arc in which she realizes that the path of the dark side is not for her — she just made a really terrible mistake in betraying her friends in “The Clone Wars.” But she’s still young and capable of change, which she does do.
The issues with her episodes arise from their execution of her induction into the inquisitors. It’s unclear how long this program had been in the works or how much time passed since the fall of the order and the start of her training. As such, it leaves too much room for disloyalty, which Barriss exhibits pretty blatantly. Her conditioning is virtually nonexistent.
Like Morgan’s arc, hers also fumbles critical moments — like when Barriss has to kill a fellow candidate. A scene like this needs a moment of realization that she is in a survival scenario and that, in a way, she is still a prisoner. But it simply moves too fast to let any of that sink in. A character like Barriss should come out of that scene learning that she has to act as directed and that the people who oversee her can’t be trusted.
Instead, she oozes empathy — in direct contrast to her brutal training — on her first mission and almost immediately rejects the inquisitors when she catches onto their true nature. Her superior, another fallen Jedi, acts like any other inquisitor we’ve seen in canon — hateful and unnecessarily cruel (she kills an entire town square of people to set an example).
Barriss’ arc is great, but it pokes so many holes in the inquisitor program that it’s hard to take her peril seriously. It’s a far cry from the intimidatingly iron fist their regime was portrayed as in “Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
“Tales of the Empire” is a middling series even “Star Wars” fans will yawn at. This show — originally a comic series that told anthologized tales from various eras of the franchise — needs to step away from Dave Filoni’s leftovers and tell original, interesting stories from characters we haven’t met yet.
As it stands, this series is like “Clone Wars” and “Rebels” B-roll. It should be structured more like “Visions,” which tells a different, contained story every episode, often with stunning results.
Even if you’re a “Star Wars” fan, this is a series you can skip.
“Tales of the Empire” gets a 6/10
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