Star Wars: Tales of the Empire, the sequel series to Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi, has difficulty finding its footing or exploring the core theme of what made the first installment so great. Divided into two halves, the first “path” follows the journey of Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto), while the other focuses on former Jedi Barriss Offee (Meredith Salenger) and explores how their path led to the Dark Side of the Force, during the rise of the Empire.
After Tales of the Jedi explored the rise of Ahsoka Tano and Count Dooku before the latter turned into a Sith Lord, it’s a surprise, to be sure, but a welcomed one, to see that season 2 would not focus on more Jedi, but on how powerful figures rose within the Empire. But the six-episode show, unfortunately, doesn’t have enough meat around the bone to dive deep into both stories, with one being more interesting than the other, simply because it takes a different direction than its episode initially presents.
Perhaps if the “short” format weren’t preferred, we would’ve gotten more development on Morgan’s side of the series, as she’s one of the most interesting new characters to be introduced in Star Wars’ Disney+ era. Inosanto wonderfully portrays the character in a far more vulnerable light than in The Mandalorian and Ahsoka, as her village is attacked by General Grievous (Matthew Wood) in its first episode and compellingly develops her arc in its next two. However, everything around her isn’t interesting enough to sustain eleven or fifteen-minute-long episodes. A few intriguing appearances from pivotal empirical figures foreshadows the path she will eventually take in Ahsoka, but it’s not enough to explore what pushes someone with somewhat benevolent intentions to turn (and support) the Empire.
Tales of the Jedi did it so much better by briefly alluding to Dooku’s doomed future as he slowly strays away from the ways of the Jedi, whilst Empire has a difficult time attempting to peer through both characters’ small arcs, no matter how decently performed the actors are and beautifully animated the series is. Because it is one of the more stunning animated productions Star Wars has released on Disney+, with action sequences so epic and beautifully realized, it legitimately feels like live-action compositions, far more elaborate than in The Bad Batch and the final season of The Clone Wars.
And it’s only because of this that the show warrants your attention, even if the Barriss episodes are far better than Morgan’s because there’s an actual thematic underpinning acting as a throughline to her journey, which is filled with inner conflict and strong moral choices. Without giving anything away, Barriss’ path is far more emotionally shocking than Morgan’s because we know the former’s preordained destiny, while Barriss is a character who’s never had her full time to shine in the animated series until now.
That gives the character some form of agency, which at least allows showrunner Dave Filoni to fully bring her into the spotlight. As a result, the final episodes we spend with her are far more emotional than the rather underwhelming arc that Morgan goes through, even if it’s filled with enough striking imagery to at least be visually enticing. It still isn’t enough to carry a three-episode arc that barely fills the gap in Morgan’s satisfactorily. Inosanto’s performance brings some life to the proceedings, but the paper-thin scripts written in all three episodes can only go so far before the arc eventually sinks down.
As such, Star Wars: Tales of the Empire feels very much like a step down from Tales of the Jedi. While the Barriss arc is emotionally intriguing and has plenty of surprising moments, as it examines the character’s decision from a far more internal point of view than Morgan’s, the material presented on-screen leaves little to be desired and will be forgotten as quickly as it takes time to watch it. It’s a shame because the potential for an Empire-related series is so rife with incredibly audacious thematic underpinning and characters to explore it in a short format, but to waste it with very little to offer from a narrative point of view seems especially disappointing. Here’s hoping its next installment will be far better than this one and exceed what Tales of the Jedi introduced.
All episodes of Star Wars: Tales of the Empire will be released on Disney+ on May 4th.
