Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi was a fantastic look at two characters: Count Dooku and Ashoka, both of whom become slowly disillusioned with the Jedi order. Dooku slowly falls towards the dark side of the force, and though Ashoka’s disillusionment isn’t a massive element of Jedi, does also exist in a similar headspace as seen in the final arc of Clone Wars Season 5. It bares to reason that Tales of the Empire does the same only with the dark side instead. It’s main characters Clone Wars’s Barress Offee who fittingly was a big part of Ashoka’s disillusionment, and newer character Morgan Elsbeth from Mandolorian Season 1 and Ashoka. Both character find value and appeal in the empire and the darkside, but both struggle to embrace the empire in full: one from an emotional standpoint and the other from a pragmatic standpoint. Both three-episode stories ultimately touch on something massive: that the empire for all it’s power and authoritarianism, ultimately becomes a barrier against sustained-growth. This barrier eventually leading to its downfall.
The Path of Morgan Elsbeth
The first of the trilogy of shorts focuses on Morgan Elsbeth, a young acolyte of the Night Sisters who narrowly survives the destruction of the Night Sister home by the Seperatist’s droid army. Morgan is impulsive, and in her anger with the loss of her home, seeks revenge. Not knowing how to get revenge, she becomes the magistrate of a resource rich planet Corvus and pitches a starship design to the empire who only seem to have interest in the planets resources, not her. She becomes upset that the empire doesn’t care about her nor the people of her planet. The empire is driven by money and quick bucks rather than longterms sustain growth. Thrawn notes such saying “Many in the Empire will trade lives for profit, overtime this will create a weak and disillusioned military.” Thrawn decides to support Elsbeth as she clearly cares about the long game, but only after Elsbeth realizes that the general empire isn’t what she thinks it needs to be. The empire is short-sighted.
Barress Offee
The second of the trilogy focuses on Baress Offee, who is in prison following her bombing of the Jedi Temple. Still feeling like the Jedi have become no better than the Sith, she recieves an offer from the Empire’s new Grand Inquisitor to become something new. She agrees and earns her way into the order. However, it becomes clear quite quickly that Offee’s ideals and the Empire’s desires for her don’t align. When she and fellow Inquisitor Lyn Rakish are sent to investigate rumors of a Jedi, she sees Lyn use fear and violence to try to get her way, while Offee uses kindness and humanity. Lyn is ineffective at using fear to find the jedi, but Offee with her humanity convinces a kid to tell them. Later after finding the jedi, Offee gets a Jedi to surrender by showing empathy and offering kindness. After both moments of Barres’s success, Lyn goes on vicious, unnessecary killing sprees. Baress realizes that the empire and the inquisitor order is evil and isn’t making the galaxy better. She backstabs Lyn and disappears. Barress could have been a powerful tool for the empire. Her effectiveness would strengthen the empire with new numbers and create stronger relationships with its people. Instead, the empire wields fear and relies on setting examples to create order and encourage rebellion against it. Just as the empire values short term profits, it also values short-term control over being able to survive in the long run.
More General Thoughts
The stories paint have a really interesting take that the empire in all its focus on creating fear and mantaining its power, ultimatey isn’t focused on long-term success. Though I appreciate the parallels between the two stories, I feel like neither quite offered what I was personally looking for in a set of stories focused on dark character. They are interesting looks at the flaws of the empire from within, but don’t add much to the tapestry of Star Wars. Offee’s story may not be over just yet, but Elsbeth’s story didn’t really add anything to her relatively flat character. Elsbeth doesn’t go anywhere and her big emotional lessons are hidden away in a 4 minute section of the middle of the second act of her story. Offee’s story is better, but doesn’t live enough in the dark side. There were lots of ideas that I would’ve loved to have seen: lightsaber bleeding, a deeper dive into the Inquisitor organization as a whole, or the story of how someone falls fully into the dark side of the force. Though the trilogy had things to say, I can’t help but feel it missing it’s full potential. I was VERY excited about this, but I think it will ultimately be forgotten.
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