Spoilers ahead for ‘Tales of the Empire‘

Tales of the Empire is the latest in the line of animated Star Wars miniseries that expands on the backstories of some of the franchise’s most important characters. After Tales of the Jedi showed us the light side, this time we’re going down the dark path, with a look at some of the Force Users who served the Empire.

Like its predecessor, the show is split into two storylines, each following a different character. The first of these is Morgan Elsbeth, the Nightsister from Ahsoka.

It starts strong, showing her backstory during The Clone Wars. She was there when the Separatist droid army attacked Dathomir and wiped out the Nightsisters, and shows how she started off down the path of revenge and anger. This is the best episode in the show and even manages to make Grievous cool again.

Sadly, the other episodes don’t follow this. They skip ahead to the Imperial era, showing Morgan presenting her concept for the TIE Defender to the Empire, which catches Thrawn’s attention, prompting him to set up a partnership between them.

This is an odd way to do things, as she’s never been shown as a starfighter designer before. We also don’t see any reason why she would risk everything to bring back Thrawn, even giving her life to protect him. It seems more logical that Thrawn would want her because of her skills with Nightsister magic, which would give him a unique advantage over his enemies.

Everything from the third episode really just repeats what we see in The Mandalorian and doesn’t show us anything new or interesting. It’s a shame, as there was a lot of intrigue in her backstory, but once we leave Dathomir, it quickly becomes boring.

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The second story arc follows Barriss Offee. She’s been a loose end since season five of The Clone Wars. In that show, she bombed the Jedi Temple and pinned the blame on Ahsoka. Despite clearing her name, it led to her leaving the Order, while Barriss was imprisoned for her crimes, and her fate after Order 66 wasn’t known.

This show gave a chance to reveal what happened to her after the war, and I was eager to see where it went. Sadly, it misses its opportunity.

The first episode shows her being brought into the newly formed Inquisitors. This could be a good way to show her struggle with the Dark Side, but we don’t get to see that.

She seems kinder than in The Clone Wars when she willingly murdered innocents in a terrorist attack, but here she won’t even kill a Jedi. It feels like a waste not to have included her former master Luminara Unduli. We see in Rebels she was captured by the Inquisitors, what if Barriss was the one who brought her in?

The final episode is an unsatisfactory way to leave it. She was a terrible person in TCW, but we don’t see her going on any redemption arc or struggling with her past, she just turns good. It also adds another non-fatal lightsaber wound to the list.

There was a lot of potential here, her conflict with the Jedi, former friendship with Ahsoka, Luminara’s fate, but it’s all left untouched, and what we get instead feels safe and rushed.

Sadly, Tales of the Empire doesn’t do anything as well as TOTJ. Maybe it’s because that show featured snapshots from important characters’ lives. We already knew their story and this was just filling in the gaps. This was more an obligatory resolution to a loose end with Barriss, and Morgan’s potential was wasted.

The animation here is excellent and some of the best I’ve seen. I’d still like to see more of these ‘Tales Of’ series, as they can be effectively used to expand on characters and storylines that wouldn’t get a full series, they just need to be more focused and really show us something we’ve not seen before.

TOTE has outstanding animation but sadly lacks the story and character development to make it an outstanding show. Barriss Offee’s arc in particular feels like a wasted opportunity to do her character justice. 6/10