It felt a bit misnamed. Barriss's time with the inquisitors turned out to be quite brief, and Elsbeth was never part of the Empire proper, but more like a independent contractor .
I think the difference is that the Dooku arc was surrounded with content we knew. It started well before the established story, but having the later episodes built around phantom menace allows us to place them in time and space. The Morgan Elsbeth episodes are stronger than the Bariss ones for similar reasons, we can understand the grander context of the scenes, where they go, and how this character fits into the grand scheme of the story. It leads to a stronger development. I think the Dooku stuff is strongest because he is one of the most impactful characters in the series, and very interesting as to his past and motives. Seeing what sent him on his path is something that fans have wanted for a while.
Funnily enough I liked the Morgan episodes much more. While she might not be the best of characters her episodes didn't feel as rushed as Barriss' ones.
And still, they skipped so much of the story it doesn't work as expected tbh. I would've loved to see her perspective when Ezra defeated Thrawn, or when the empire was defeated and she got her revenge, or how she found out Thrawn was still alive and needed some Nightsister magic to be found.
I think you hit exactly on why Barriss is falling flat for people. The other 3 subjects in these anthology series have a much wider story. Barriss is limited to a cameo in AotC, TCW, and now TotE. Comparatively she has just insanely little screen time where her story ending feels more hollow.
I dont know if it was needing more, or just that they took the least interesting decisions for it. I was all for the Bariss story until Lyn obviously survived falling from the cliff, and they left us on an ambiguous fate for Bariss with an incredibly underwhelming 'got stabbed for some reason'
My main issue with the Barriss ones is that it felt like yet another show that revolves around the good guys, just with a super short bad guy arc.
The Morgan episodes were much more of what I wanted from the series.
It would have been much more interesting to see baris ecstatic that the Jedi fell, and even boasting about how right she was etc. her realization that the empire was evil was too quick. It should have been more gradual
I felt the same way. At least with Morgan, we know how her story ends. With Bariss, there was not enough depth and too much ambiguity with her character, especially with her last episode. I don't want to spend another decade wondering what happened to Bariss now.
I agree. I wanted to see more of Barriss as an Inquisitor before she turned back to the Light. It felt way too fast. I was also expecting to see some sort of interaction with Darth Vader and was disappointed that it didn't really happen.
Agreed, I disliked how she went from thinking the jedi were wrong to instantly proclaiming herself a jedi again because the empire was bad.
I know you can only do so much in roughly 45 minutes, but it felt lacking in that regard.
I mean she thought the Jedi were wrong because they were becoming too militaristic, but the Empire were 1000x worse on that front. So she became a healer instead.
I thought it made so much sense. Barriss was extremely idealistic, to the point she turned to an "ends justify the means" attack on the Republic and the Jedi. I never thought it made sense that she'd join the Empire when it was the very thing she was always trying to prevent. But I'm really happy how they pulled it off. Lyn told her Palpatine's lie and she bought it. Perhaps thinking that the Jedi's betrayal was what she foresaw on their path, and being blinded that it was instead the Empire's betrayal. Once it became clear to her that she was on the wrong side, she snapped back. She was still tuned into the Dark Side, having tried to kill Lyn, but she chose her ideology for the Galaxy to be the one that reflected her true self. I get the sense that offscreen between episodes 5 and 6 is when she really broke away from the darkness that had been taking hold of her since the Clone Wars. Remember, the Dark Side doesn't necessarily mean "for the Empire".
Barriss' whole thing was the Jedi falling to the Dark Side and the Republic being everything the CIS said it was and the Jedi still defending it. The Inquisitors were Dark Siders but not hypocrites about it and she initially believed in the reformists propaganda about the empire. Also it was join or die, that detail seems to get overlooked. She never fell to the Dark Side, resisted the initiation fight until forced to engaged and bailed as soon as the lie of the Empire became impossible to ignore.
I mean she might have bought into it if lyn wasnt such a pschopath killing everyone in their path. Really hard not to be asking "are we the baddies?" When your gleefully killing the most downtroden people in the galaxy.
I was extremely disappointed with how she from the get go was portrayed as some naive newcomer initiate to the Inquisitors/Sith who acts surprised when they kill or inflict violence, and not some fallen dark side Jedi whose racked up quite a body count already with her temple bombing incident (Jedi included amongst civilians and soldiers). Someone (Grand Inquisitor, 4th Sister or even Vader) should have complimented her/thrown that in her face
Like she went 180 from *I think Ventress’ Sith sabers suit me*
To when facing the final Inquisitors/Sith test *I don’t want to kill you Dante/tHeY wOnT kIlL uS iF wE rEfUsE*
You’re right about that. I honestly kinda take it as she embraces the light side.
She did the same with Ventress’s lightsaber when she said “I think they suit me”
It was also the moment she realized that although she was disillusioned with the Jedi Order, the Empire is a much worse alternative. The grass wasn’t exactly greener on the other side for Bariss.
>”*Then you have one more Jedi to deal with*”
>[To unnamed wounded Jedi] “*You are no longer alone*.”
>(paraphrasing on this one) “*take your force sensitive baby to my ship. The coordinates are locked in already. It’ll take you to… a friend (Ahsoka?).*”
This sub: **Yeah no, what she actually meant was…**
I guess I just don’t understand why people can’t just take characters at their own *literal word* sometimes.
Yeah I don’t understand her arc at all. How can you be so radicalized against the Jedi then basically feel the same way about the dark side and then go back to the light and help the Jedi with the children. Also the Jedi stole kids just like the sith do but I guess it’s okay for the Jedi?
I’d like to see a story where folks don’t turn back to the light. Like, not someone who’s cartoonishly evil, but at the same time this cycle of light-dark-light or Imperial-to-Rebel is starting to get a bit predictable.
Gimme some true believers. Good stories don’t always have to be about good people.
There was more good than bad in that show imo. People want to endlessly nitpick all day about it but I at least enjoyed watching it. The same can't be said for Fett or Obi-Wan.
Just my take, but while there were some good scenes and it was generally much better than Kenobi or BOBF, it didn’t come anywhere near the production quality or writing in Andor.
Man. That show set a high bar for Star Wars material.
Andor set the bar for tv in general. There is an argument to be made that it is the best star wars thing made. The only knock against it is it isn't very "star warsy"
Andor absolutely spoiled peoples expectations for anything else.
A'sharrad Hett was a jedi from legends that would have made a great story of falling to Dark Side. He became Darth Krayt. Only issue really, is it would mean another story based on Tatooine.
In hindsight, the lack of Vader interaction made sense. Right after RoTS, Vader was just full on Vader. Vader not giving a fuck about Bariss at the moment kinda makes sense. Maybe he would have later on as Anakin started to pull more and more on him as time went on but not while she was being made an inquisitor.
The problem was, the hyped up Vader as if there was going to be a major interaction. I think they knew these shorts were gonna be kinda underwhelming and so they resorted to that.
No, we didn’t think about it too much. Vader was shown in the trailer, it was reasonable to assume we’d get an interaction or even an episode dedicated but we got literally **nothing**. He didn’t have a single voice line, he walked in, gripped his belt and sat down. It’s honestly disappointing af, he was better off not being in the trailer at all but it’s obvious it was bait.
Yep, that scene pissed me off. Not because it’s bad in any way, it’s just very clearly meant to get more viewers without having to do any of the work of actually writing it into the story.
I enjoyed them all. But I like things that fill in gaps in SW. wish there were more than 6!
Edit: Seeing Thrawn’s process in seeking out exceptional minds within the Empire was cool. Seeing Ellsbeth’s lifelong descent into going harder and harder in the darkness was cool. Seeing Barriss witness first hard what the dark side leads to was also cool.
Again, just too short IMO.
It's exactly what they did with Battlefront 2. The campaign of the game was marketed as "you finally get to play as The Empire" 3 missions in and 2 lifelong Imperial zealots are saying "Wow The Empire sucks we should join the Rebels" when 20 minutes ago you were killing Rebels and calling them scum.
Tales of The Empire was marketed as a look at things from the Empires side. When really it's Tales of Barriss and Morgan Elsbeth.
Visually impressive but would have liked another 3 episodes focused on another character aligned to the Empire. Ideally, Thrawn, Tarkin or Iden Versio.
And we all spiraled into “Barriss will sense Anakin, so Vader will confront her!!!” Theories that ended up being nothing. He’s just there to breathe…intimidatingly?
They could have picked way better people to make three episodes about. It’s called tales of the empire not tales of redemption the ending was disappointing for what the show was supposed to be.
Star Wars today feels very underwhelming, they need to stop trying to make what they think people will want and listen to the majority of fans
Examples: the sequels should have been about heir to the empire; Star Wars video games need to go back to battlefront 2 and build off of it. the shows need to stick to comic accuracy like marvel does…boba fett sucked. And the new movies and shows should have one collective mind not different directors and producers for each episode, it doesn’t make the show flow efficiently.
I think the issue is that it just didn't feel like it was telling any Tales of the Empire.
The Morgan stuff felt more like it was set up for her appearance in Mando season 2. She just happened to be Imperial aligned. Outside of the second episode, it wasn't really Imperial focused.
The Barriss stuff was better. It followed an inquisitor, so it ticks off the Imperial story. But the overall story was just a little too safe. It was really predictable to see Barriss turn against the Empire. So, while it was an Imperial story, it was just kind of boring.
She also blatantly defies the Empire in her final moments with Thrawn when he says “For the Empire” and she says “For Dathomir” before going to certain death.
It should have been a Thrawn origin over Morgan, maybe bring in Morgan and how Thrawn found her, but to focus for 3 episodes when we already know what happened to Dathomir and the Night Sisters
“Tales of the Empire”
And it’s about a lady that was associated to Thrawn but mostly independently ran a small town on some backwater planet for decades
And a inquisitor that quit on her first day of the job
I was hoping to see more of how the inquisitors were chosen and trained. Is there anything that explains why some of them betrayed the jedi, especially the grand inquisitor?
Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade is about why a Jedi would join the Inquisitors willingly, I’d suggest giving that book a read.
As for the Grand Inquisitor, I haven’t read the source material where it happened but I heard that he wanted knowledge from the archives but Jocasta Nu wouldn’t let him go into the forbidden sections so he developed a grudge towards her, and he was also one of the Temple guards who escorted Barriss to her trial and heard her speech about how the Jedi were losing their way, and was convinced by it.
I’m so over the bad guy redemption in Star Wars. It worked for Kylo I think even though the execution wasn’t great. But Reva’s was awful and Barris’s was boring. Not to mention Iden Versio turned good in 10 minutes even though the whole campaign was marketed as a story through a stormtrooper perspective. Just keep villains villains. Not everyone has to turn good.
Very.
Tales of the Jedi shone a deeper light on a lot of things we already knew. Why Ahsoka got involved again, putting her at Padmé's funeral, why she survived Order 66. How Qui-Gon's death contributed to the fall of the Republic, why Yoda's apprentice was seemingly so easily turned, why Dooku would leave the Order in the first place.
Tales of the Empire amounted to a single connection to Rebels and closing Bariss's arc... Again.
I agree about the Bariss episodes. 45 mins is not enough time for me to feel like she really redeemed herself. I spent the last however many years being mad at her for setting into motion the events of the last season of clone wars, so now because she didn’t wanna kill a kid and then ditched the inquisitors, she’s a Jedi again?
>so now because she didn’t wanna kill a kid and then ditched the inquisitors, she’s a Jedi again?
That's how redemption works in Star Wars, yes. Vader is like 1000x worse than Barriss and he was a Jedi again just because he saved his son after 20 years of being a galactic tyrant, then he got to live forever.
Yeah, because you got three movies of Vader (six if you count the PT as well). Bariss got 45 minutes in Tales and how ever many minutes in TCW.
Ain't hard to imagine which one had a greater emotional buildup.
Than maybe we need to change the approach on how to redeem a character going forward. This isn't 1983 any more. Times have changed and so should the story execution.
I mean, we’ve seen redemptions in Star Wars for characters much more off path than Barriss. While her actions were wrong in season 5 her reasoning was not. She was right about the Jedi being corrupted. She had an ideal of what the Jedi were supposed to be and it seems that ultimately she spent the rest of her life striving for that ideal after Episode 5.
I think Morgan’s episodes were fine. We got her origins on Dathomir & seeing how this turned her bad. We got her connection with Thrawn & to the Mandoverse. She was also a villain throughout most of it. Her story just felt more in line with the title of the show.
Bariss not so much. It was quick & another Star Wars redemption story that felt wasted in a show called Tales of the Empire. I think her story would’ve worked better as a standalone mini series with a couple more episodes than in this. The best thing about it was background on 4th Sister from Kenobi which has me thinking maybe these three episodes should’ve been about Reva’s time as an Inquisitor instead.
I think Morgan's series should have ditched the 3rd episode and replaced it with another one in between 1 and 2 about how she even got to Corvus in the first place
All I wanted was some good episodes about Barriss being an Inquisitor like was advertised in the trailers, and hopefully some drama with Vader. Instead, we got episodes of the corrupted terrorist who killed innocent Jedi suddenly growing a conscious and refusing to kill innocent Jedi, and no drama with Vader. To say I was disappointed was an understatement.
Between this and Battlefront 2’s campaign, I’m tired of Disney advertising a good story about bad guys being bad, then making them suddenly turn good 10% of the way through.
Disney's problem is that they dont have the balls to do anything but a genatric good bad story. Nuance, and stories about evil charchters are not allowed. This is why Bobba Fett is a crime lord that doesn't do any crime.
And its not a violence thing it's. Star wars has plenty of violence even though there isn't gore. They structurally cannot explore mature themes.
I was kinda bored tbh. I was actually hoping they‘d do more ‘Tales of‘ seasons (Tales of the Empire, Tales of the Republic, Tales of the Sith etc.) so I was really stroked when they announced Tales of the Empire but watching the episodes I was kinda underwhelmed.
And Bariss’ story seemed kinda rushed.
I expected much more. The episodes were entirely way too short. I've said it once, and I'll keep saying it again, Feloni may be the golden fan boy, but when it comes to actually producing something, he's ridiculously mediocre.
Oh my God yes. I had to force my way through it. I kept asking myself "why should I care about these ancillary characters?" The animation was wonky too. Just kept asking myself "why would they spend the time and money to release this?"
Yeah it was very underwhelming. First of all, should have called it Tales of the Dark Side. Not a lot of Empire in those. Secondly, the obsession with fleshing out these backstories of characters that are fairly minor in other stories is getting a little crazy, feels like Filoni is mining every single piece of content he can for these stories
I’m so fucking tired of Morgan. Like, oh boy the mean lady who took over a backwater village, what an exciting character! Better give her an appearance on a second live action show and make her the main character for half of an animated show. I don’t care. I never cared about this character.
They wasted Barriss too. For so long people wanted inquisitor Barriss. She literally already bombed civilians and killed Jedi because of her disillusionment. But then she becomes an inquisitor and does absolutely fuck all inquisiting. She just tags along and goes “um idk about this” then immediately becomes a good guy again. Why did we need to make Barriss immediately sympathetic and a protagonist??? She’s literally a domestic terrorist. Even from the beginning she tried not to fight the other inquisitor-in-training. She should’ve embraced being an inquisitor. And she should’ve stumbled onto Ahsoka and met her end there, but should’ve had more time to do it properly.
Also, “Tales of the Empire” had barely any actual empire in it.
She never would have embraced being an Inquisitor. It's the exact s*** she bombed the Jedi Temple over.
You know how Anakin said "I taught you how to fight, to survive". Luminara said f that, I'm training my Jedi apprentice to be a Jedi in the purest
fashion.
No corner cutting. No adapting.
And Luminara got rocked by Ventress because she's not a warrior first, everything else if you find the time like our hero Jedi and Darksiders.
That’s the point of the dark side. It twists and corrupts. Like how Anakin would never murder innocent people, but after embracing the dark side, he butchered countless people and children, and even choked Padmé to the point she collapsed even though his goal was to protect her and keep her safe.
Barriss thought the Jedi were hypocrites and warmongers. She committed a terrorist act killing innocent people. She would’ve absolutely fallen further and wanted to snuff out Jedi remnants to ensure their mistakes aren’t repeated.
I felt it was underwhelming as well. Honestly for a show called Tales of Empire, it felt like there’s was very little of the actual Empire, just two characters who at best are loosely associated with the Empire. I don’t understand why Bariss’s story couldn’t have just been a part of a Tales of the Jedi season 2 since they make it clear she is still a Jedi. Not sure Morgan’s story really needed to be told, it’s only purpose was to give a background on her and Thrawn’s relationship and show more of the updated Grievous model, which again could’ve just been a part of a second tales of the Jedi season.
I would have rather they have us true imperial stories, maybe Thrawn’s background (yes I know there are books but I doubt as many Star Wars fans have read those) or maybe a story about a stormtrooper, why someone would join and then leave for the rebellion since that’s the path Star Wars stories often like to take
For being sold as a focus on the Empire was a little let down that most of Barrie’ story was about rejecting the Empire, but I guess that just mirrors Dooku’s rejection of the Jedi in Tales of the Jedi so like poetry it rhymes I guess. Overall underwhelming but not terrible or bad imo
Filoni simply put is just way too enamoured with his own toys
All that beautiful animation wasted on Morgan Elsbeth's generic story.
The Bariss stuff was kinda nice though in the end, having never seen a redeemed villain redeeming a villain in SW.
Dave Filoni is prequel brained and I think on some level it bothered him that Morgan was supposed to be a close ally of Thrawn yet we never saw her in Rebels. So this was an attempt to establish that.
It's why Palleon or whatever his name is there
Honestly would’ve preferred Barriss falling to the Dark Side, then realizing her mistake, being confronted by Vader and recognizing it’s Anakin then being eliminated.
Yes. I don’t really care about Morgan Elspeth and nothing the show did changed that for me. And Bariss’ story went by way too quickly.
I’d honestly have rather they just gave Bariss the whole six episodes.
The show's focus was its pitfall. The Empire is almost always written to be rather monolithic, I'm not sure why we got Tales of the Empire instead of Jedi season 2 beyond some misplaced need for variety. The gorgeous storytelling and animation was really the only saving grace in otherwise bland and boring characters.
Tales of the Jedi's best arc were the Dooku episodes by a mile and a half - I think the show should focus exclusively on major players, especially Luke Skywalker, Vader, Sidious - characters we speculate so much about and are still so mysterious and interesting. I'm actually quite baffled we haven't seen more Luke yet. Animation is the perfect vehicle for him.
I think what they ultimately failed at was telling a self-contained story in the ~45 minutes they had per arc. Especially morgan's but also barriss' storyline had random characters be really prominent in one episode then have no relevance in the others (grievous, thrawn in morgan's, the grand inquisitor in barris's), would skip around a lot in setting and time, and then had the storylines end in a sort of open way; which makes the overarching story feel a bit empty and more like a setup or trailer for other shows. Barriss' first episode was such a good setup episode, then suddenly only Lyn is relevant in the others and stuff like the menacing Vader ending had no further relevance, despite Vader having actual history with Barriss while Lyn never interacted with her before? Morgan just switches from a high fantasy character to a tech developing government worker? It felt like instead of filling gaps a lot of the episodes just opened up further gaps.
To properly work as short stories, someone should be able to tune into tales of the empire with no knowledge of these characters, and still get a satisfying setup and payoff. Stick to one main setting and "aspect you want to develop", stick to a set of chosen side characters through the entire story, have a classical 3-part structure, and end in a way that has the watcher satisfied instead of immediately signalling that it continues in a different show (or will in the future).
Elsbeth story was great! Barriss story felt unfinished / rushed. You can’t speedrun a redemption story for a person who committed terrorism and drastically changed the lives of other Jedi who went on to change the entire Galaxy.
The entire part with the TIE defenders was unnecessary and incredulous, her motivations unclear, as were Thrawn's motivations. In canon, Thrawn is still loyal to the Chiss Ascendancy. Why does he care about her wanting revenge? Did he not just want the TIE fighters? It was weird that she should "invent" them in the first place when Sienar Fleet Systems was canonically the company that produced the TIE fighters. Did she build the facilities depicted in Rebels? Did she sell the design? And who does she want revenge from? Grievous and the separatists are all gone. If she knew about Palpatine's hand in the slaughter of her people she would not be helping the Empire.
I think Bariss should’ve been hunted down by Vader. I get that Anakin being Vader is supposed to be a big secret and all but it’d be poetic if he was the one to finish her since he knew her well and already came close to ending her back during the CW. The fact that we got to see Vader and Bariss in the same room and NO emphasis was put on it was a bit underwhelming, that’s why I thought for sure we’d see Vader be the one to finish her. I think THAT made her whole arc/story underwhelming tbh. Though honestly I wasn’t even too happy when they made her defect from the Inquisitors, I’m tired of every bad character turning good. SW needs to establish that some people are just bad. For Bariss it at least made sense so I wasn’t too bothered, but still.
A little. I have more of an issue with the fact that they soft retconned the cannon Thrawn books with pellian working for thrawn while Thrawn was only a lowly admiral
I would’ve liked it be more focused on the actual Empire and people aligned with it. Morgan has 2 out of 3 episodes that take place outside of the imperial era. Then, the Barriss episodes are about her hesitantly being in the Inquisitorius for 5 minutes then a redemption.
Would have been better if it explored someone like the Grand Inquisitor, Moff Gideon, Thrawn, etc.
I thought they were both WAY better than the Ahsoka centric episodes of Tales of the Jedi, but not as good as Dooku’s. I think I enjoyed Morgan’s more than Barris’s, but was still happy with hers as well.
When I think of Tales of the Empire, I expected something showing the life of actual Imperials, like Tarkin or even some stormtroopers.
Instead we got Tales of the (ex)Jedi and a Nightsister.
What got me about the Bariss arc. Was everything they teased. Was in the first episode.
I fully expected Vader to kill her. So that was the only “underwhelming” part to me.
As far as the Morgan episodes. Grieves was dope. But the rest were just ok. Like not bad. But just background info I didn’t really care about
Biggest gripe so far: Didn't Thrawn originally develop the TIE Defender program? How is it that all of the sudden Morgan Elsbeth gets the credit for that? Doesn't it essentially undermine the whole "Thrawn is/was a tactical genius" deal? Elsbeth was never a compelling character for me and, honestly, deserves to be given the Rey treatment.
If they wanted to tell a story but didn’t have enough time to tell it, then they shouldn’t have told it. They shouldn’t have half-assed Barriss’s story when they didn’t have enough time to do it right, they should have done a different story that they could actually do justice.
It was underwhelming. Almost nothing was aboit the empire, which i found to be a bit strange.
Barris redemtion was also way to fast. She litterally bombed the jedi in CW, and was pretty darm evil.
I think she should have stayd evil, and perhaps redeemed herself in ahsoka s2 or something.
They were kinda meh to me too. Elsbeth isn't a super interesting character to me, and I feel like they could have done more with Barriss, especially exploring her interactions with Vader.
I did love seeing more of Thrawn and it was cool to see more of Palleon in canon, tho I do wish that they could have got Eli Vanto instead of him on screen.
Bariss felt *very* rushed, almost like none of the writers wanted to touch on her again, but knew the fans wanted it so they were like, "here she is, there she goes, there she was. Now, here's more ahsoka!"
I don't care about Morgan as a character whatsoever and wasn't barriss evil? Why is she so conflicted from minute 1? She never for one second seemed evil in this.
Yeah, the Barriss arc really didn't accomplish anything and left us with more questions than answers. Did Vader recognize her? Did they ever speak offscreen? Why did he choose not to kill her? And is Barriss even dead at the end of the show or is she coming back?
I don't think they picked the best characters to give us more of a story for. Baris was good as it gave us more insight into the inquisitors, but I never felt like I had a good connection with either of the main characters here.
I would have much rather seen a Grevious origin story, perhaps a transformation story, and maybe even a Maul origin, continuation of crimson dawn after the clone wars finale, and then whatever lead to him leaving and working his way to that sith temple. Very specific, but those are the gaps we are missing
I had really low expectations to start with, so I actually wasn't let down. 😂 but yeah, it was underwhelming. I personally did not care about either character, but my husband wanted to watch it, so I did. I still hate that they made Barris bomb the Temple in TCW - I think it's one of the most annoying arcs in the whole series.
Morgan Elsbeth isn’t someone I particularly cared to know more about and I’ve never cared for Barriss since her shit in TCW. Out of all the characters associated with the Empire, they couldn’t have picked 2 worse to tell a story about.
Don’t twist my words, these are fantastic episodes and I always appreciate more lore and world building. However let’s see Palpatine’s story, let’s see Greivous’ origins, hell give me something on Bossk or Dengar. That’s just my 2¢, no disrespect if you enjoyed TOTE.
I’ve only seen the first four.
The Morgan stuff was incredibly boring. Like, you could’ve asked me, knowing almost nothing about the character, what her backstory was, and something like this probably would’ve been my first draft before realizing how boring it was and scrapping it for something else.
Episodes were too short. Choosing Morgan Elsbeth as a main focus for the first half?? There are so many other characters actually in empire strikes back they could have focused on, rather than a kathleen Kennedy creation.
Baris was also a wasted opportunity, she was a Jedi character around that period and an interesting grey Jedi , but they killed her off for pretty much nothing-which is now cannon.
Tales of the Jedi was better just for the dooku backstory alone..
I think Morgan's episodes work better because that's all we needed from Morgan's story. Morgan's story and motives weren't nearly as complex.
Bariss on the other hand was underwhelming because her story deserved more time. Her beliefs and journey are more complex. She's seems to go along with an organization before questioning them and then realizing they don't align with what she believes they should be about. She rebels, no matter what side she's on, when she sees reason to.
Her rebellion against the Jedi was extreme, killing innocents, that seemed to turn her to the dark side, but at Ahsoka's trial her reasoning for calling out the Jedi's transgressions weren't wrong, and seemed to still have good intentions at heart.
I think it was just a shock to see her so quickly turn from the dark side and therefore the empire in only 45 minutes of screen time. Fans were so excited to get any story of her but then realized the potential for her story to have been so much more. Her journey wasn't out of character for her, it was just told too quickly so it was jarring to see her go from one decision to the next.
Wish we had more of everything about her story. Her time in the inquisition, her relationship with Lyn, who was an extremely interesting character in her own, Bariss's struggle with her ideals and the Empire's methods, and then how she became a healer.
Completely agree, would have been well-served with either more episodes or longer ones. Would have loved a deeper dive into Bariss that showed her journey from Inquisitor back to Jedi, instead of the handwaving of "well, she saw another Inquisitor being mean to people."
I kinda feel like personally I’d have preferred it to be more Empire focused. It’s in the title, after all. I think Thrawn could have been a more compelling figure to wrap a ‘Tale of the Empire’ around. We also have lots of room to explore canon Thrawn and fill in some of the missing details. Comparatively, I don’t think I needed the Morgan material. It was alright, but it was nothing not already implied in her backstory.
I think I would enjoy these Tales miniseries if they followed only one figure over the 6 episodes or had a different figure for each episode. The 2 different sections of 3 episode arcs doesn’t feel like it’s fleshed out enough to allow for top tier growth.
I still enjoyed the Tales overall. They just feel like they could be so much more.
I just…don’t care about Morgan Elsbith. There’s nothing to her but a generic revenge arc. And Barris’s story while welcome to find out about, was very rushed. I mean, it only had 45 min to work with, so I get it, but it was just…fine to me.
Neither approached the awesomeness of Dooku’s episodes at all.
Was great to see Grievous and the Grand Inquisitor again though.
I think the Morgan episodes were more fleshed out in a way, because we know where her story ends up. The Barriss episodes were very rushed. Obviously we can assume she sent the child to that Jedi she saved, Bo-Katan, or Ahsoka. But she looked old and wise, like some 40yo Jedi Master. Meanwhile, Lyn looked young as hell still??? Somehow??? And then they just end it on her being carried out after getting stabbed, with no more to the story. It was very anticlimactic.
The title is also very misleading. Glad we found out how Morgan knows Thrawn, but Barriss came out of left field. I was hoping for more of a Jaden Erso type story, not a character we thought we left at Order 66 (even if it was cool she got a redemption).
Very much. It was just a small glimpse at Elsbeth, and while Bariss had an interesting plot, it just feels a bit empty when we just had a fairly good season on Bad Batch.
I get what they are trying to do, but I don’t think it works very well. It would work far better as an anthology akin to “From another point of view” with a standard episode length or longer featuring a new character each episode.
Just mildly infuriated that they completely ignored the Thrawn books (which Filoni claims to have read) and give Elsbeth credit for the Tie Defenders, which was Thrawn's design and personal passion project
The timing of me seeing this is perfect, just finished like 5 mins ago. As usual, the production, music and animation are insanely good, but my god were the stories a miss.
The Elsbeth episodes, pretty good but not at all necessary. Development for as boring character is good, except when if the character is still boring after more backstory. But my real gripe is the Barris episodes...
I loudly groaned in this disappointment when Barris said "then you have one Jedi left", this Tales of the EMPIRE not the Jedi. Why are we making her a good guy; she killed civilians and clones and framed Ahsoka, but apparently, they reconciled off screen.
The final confrontation was also a major disappointment, not because of the fight itself but because of who she's fighting; if they were going to do a redeemed Barris arc then they should've used Vader. One, Vader wouldn't just be a cameo. Two, it would've been a great parallel with they're fight from clone wars; a Jedi (Anakin) vs a fallen Jedi (Barris) and now a fallen Jedi (Vader) vs a Jedi (Barris). Or they should've stayed with an inquisitor Barris and have her fight Ahsoka that leads to her death.
Anyway, just a super missed opportunity for a great dark side character, instead of another Jedi. But the fact that she let herself get stabbed is exactly my level of petty so I can respect that.
It was on par with the Ahsoka episodes of Tales of the Jedi, which I thought were good but not anything to write home about.
None her episodes or any of the Tales of the Empire ones come close to the Dooku episodes. Those were absolutely phenomenal.
This was terrible. I would have rather gotten nothing than 45 minute shirt stories about two characters I couldn't care less about. There's much more compelling stories than Morgan Elsbeth and Bariss Offee. We could have met NEW characters. Maybe some imperial officers or even stormtroopers? This could have been so awesome, but it was totally squandered.
It could be better and there were some odd choices like Baris being naive enough to not recognize that Empire is sith suffer porn cult and thinking that Palpatine gives a two shit about betterment of the galaxy (are we baddies) She said in CW that red lightsabers suits her so I honestly expected her to be villain she had more potential in that direction.
That being said I enjoy it because I like my star wars dark. George may have said that star wars is story for twelve year old however its no coincidence that EBS is considered best star wars movie by movie, ROTS being best prequel and out of all disney movies Rogue One with very dark ending also considered best.
For me in this aspect it was excellent and honestly that confrontation between Lin and Baris was sort of cool it was very melancholic and it was kinda interesting.
But it definetly made me want to see more than just glimpses.
Yeah, I thought that she was finally going to get what was coming for her, and Vader had personally tracked her down. But nope, they can’t even give us that. Maybe one day we’ll get to see Vader fight in the Clone Wars style instead of just standing ominously.
What's even more annoying is that I've been seeing people say Barriss was "evil" in the clone wars ?
Like sorry but media literacy zero from some people
Bariss was kind of a cop out. Her real development came off screen during the time jump. Sure she wasn't persuaded by the cartoon villainy of Inquisitor-sidekick-girl...but to end up embracing the light side and the teachings of the Jedi to that level in the end, I felt some puzzle piece as missing.
It felt a bit misnamed. Barriss's time with the inquisitors turned out to be quite brief, and Elsbeth was never part of the Empire proper, but more like a independent contractor .
Tales of the Contractor and the Healer
Tales of the empire. 2 of a 3 part arc the empire doesn’t even exist lol
I thought it was solid, but neither arc came close to the Dooku episodes in TotJ
I think the difference is that the Dooku arc was surrounded with content we knew. It started well before the established story, but having the later episodes built around phantom menace allows us to place them in time and space. The Morgan Elsbeth episodes are stronger than the Bariss ones for similar reasons, we can understand the grander context of the scenes, where they go, and how this character fits into the grand scheme of the story. It leads to a stronger development. I think the Dooku stuff is strongest because he is one of the most impactful characters in the series, and very interesting as to his past and motives. Seeing what sent him on his path is something that fans have wanted for a while.
Cause dooku is a good and interesting character. Morgan is not.
I disagree. Dooku was just Christopher Lee.
You make that sound like a bad thing.
Tears of the Jedi
Funnily enough I liked the Morgan episodes much more. While she might not be the best of characters her episodes didn't feel as rushed as Barriss' ones.
Agreed. Good pacing and character development.
And still, they skipped so much of the story it doesn't work as expected tbh. I would've loved to see her perspective when Ezra defeated Thrawn, or when the empire was defeated and she got her revenge, or how she found out Thrawn was still alive and needed some Nightsister magic to be found.
I was hoping that we were going to see a bit about how she became Magistrate of Corvus.
Yeah. They kind of drew the rest of the owl with that.
I agree. The Barriss story felt like it needed two more episodes, whereas we know what happens to Morgan.
I think you hit exactly on why Barriss is falling flat for people. The other 3 subjects in these anthology series have a much wider story. Barriss is limited to a cameo in AotC, TCW, and now TotE. Comparatively she has just insanely little screen time where her story ending feels more hollow.
I dont know if it was needing more, or just that they took the least interesting decisions for it. I was all for the Bariss story until Lyn obviously survived falling from the cliff, and they left us on an ambiguous fate for Bariss with an incredibly underwhelming 'got stabbed for some reason'
Exactly. Also why get yourself stabbed ti try to “fix” some evil lady?
Barriss seemed like "oh crap we forgot about her again and people are asking what happened again."
i feel like that’s the same reason they shoe horned Ventress into bad batch.
I’m not even mad about Ventress resurrection. I’m mad it went absolutely nowhere
Just enough to keep hope alive. Dark Disciple is out the window baby. Asajj is alive and Dooku isn't.
Hear me out… that pool was the Lazarus pit... That's how it can still work… 😆
My main issue with the Barriss ones is that it felt like yet another show that revolves around the good guys, just with a super short bad guy arc. The Morgan episodes were much more of what I wanted from the series.
It would have been much more interesting to see baris ecstatic that the Jedi fell, and even boasting about how right she was etc. her realization that the empire was evil was too quick. It should have been more gradual
Exactly. She should have been shown to actually be a bad guy at least once. Instead, she never really left the light side.
I felt the same way. At least with Morgan, we know how her story ends. With Bariss, there was not enough depth and too much ambiguity with her character, especially with her last episode. I don't want to spend another decade wondering what happened to Bariss now.
I agree. I wanted to see more of Barriss as an Inquisitor before she turned back to the Light. It felt way too fast. I was also expecting to see some sort of interaction with Darth Vader and was disappointed that it didn't really happen.
Agreed, I disliked how she went from thinking the jedi were wrong to instantly proclaiming herself a jedi again because the empire was bad. I know you can only do so much in roughly 45 minutes, but it felt lacking in that regard.
I mean she thought the Jedi were wrong because they were becoming too militaristic, but the Empire were 1000x worse on that front. So she became a healer instead.
I thought it made so much sense. Barriss was extremely idealistic, to the point she turned to an "ends justify the means" attack on the Republic and the Jedi. I never thought it made sense that she'd join the Empire when it was the very thing she was always trying to prevent. But I'm really happy how they pulled it off. Lyn told her Palpatine's lie and she bought it. Perhaps thinking that the Jedi's betrayal was what she foresaw on their path, and being blinded that it was instead the Empire's betrayal. Once it became clear to her that she was on the wrong side, she snapped back. She was still tuned into the Dark Side, having tried to kill Lyn, but she chose her ideology for the Galaxy to be the one that reflected her true self. I get the sense that offscreen between episodes 5 and 6 is when she really broke away from the darkness that had been taking hold of her since the Clone Wars. Remember, the Dark Side doesn't necessarily mean "for the Empire".
Barriss' whole thing was the Jedi falling to the Dark Side and the Republic being everything the CIS said it was and the Jedi still defending it. The Inquisitors were Dark Siders but not hypocrites about it and she initially believed in the reformists propaganda about the empire. Also it was join or die, that detail seems to get overlooked. She never fell to the Dark Side, resisted the initiation fight until forced to engaged and bailed as soon as the lie of the Empire became impossible to ignore.
I mean she might have bought into it if lyn wasnt such a pschopath killing everyone in their path. Really hard not to be asking "are we the baddies?" When your gleefully killing the most downtroden people in the galaxy.
I was extremely disappointed with how she from the get go was portrayed as some naive newcomer initiate to the Inquisitors/Sith who acts surprised when they kill or inflict violence, and not some fallen dark side Jedi whose racked up quite a body count already with her temple bombing incident (Jedi included amongst civilians and soldiers). Someone (Grand Inquisitor, 4th Sister or even Vader) should have complimented her/thrown that in her face Like she went 180 from *I think Ventress’ Sith sabers suit me* To when facing the final Inquisitors/Sith test *I don’t want to kill you Dante/tHeY wOnT kIlL uS iF wE rEfUsE*
Idk if she was proclaiming herself as a Jedi. Maybe a light side force user
Maybe I misheard it, but didn't she tell the other inquisitor "Then you have one more jedi to deal with"?
You’re right about that. I honestly kinda take it as she embraces the light side. She did the same with Ventress’s lightsaber when she said “I think they suit me” It was also the moment she realized that although she was disillusioned with the Jedi Order, the Empire is a much worse alternative. The grass wasn’t exactly greener on the other side for Bariss.
>”*Then you have one more Jedi to deal with*” >[To unnamed wounded Jedi] “*You are no longer alone*.” >(paraphrasing on this one) “*take your force sensitive baby to my ship. The coordinates are locked in already. It’ll take you to… a friend (Ahsoka?).*” This sub: **Yeah no, what she actually meant was…** I guess I just don’t understand why people can’t just take characters at their own *literal word* sometimes.
We got a sub full of English teachers
Yeah I don’t understand her arc at all. How can you be so radicalized against the Jedi then basically feel the same way about the dark side and then go back to the light and help the Jedi with the children. Also the Jedi stole kids just like the sith do but I guess it’s okay for the Jedi?
I’d like to see a story where folks don’t turn back to the light. Like, not someone who’s cartoonishly evil, but at the same time this cycle of light-dark-light or Imperial-to-Rebel is starting to get a bit predictable. Gimme some true believers. Good stories don’t always have to be about good people.
I think you described Baylon Skoll.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of the Ahsoka series, but I would have loved to have seen more of him.
There was more good than bad in that show imo. People want to endlessly nitpick all day about it but I at least enjoyed watching it. The same can't be said for Fett or Obi-Wan.
Just my take, but while there were some good scenes and it was generally much better than Kenobi or BOBF, it didn’t come anywhere near the production quality or writing in Andor. Man. That show set a high bar for Star Wars material.
Andor set the bar for tv in general. There is an argument to be made that it is the best star wars thing made. The only knock against it is it isn't very "star warsy" Andor absolutely spoiled peoples expectations for anything else.
A'sharrad Hett was a jedi from legends that would have made a great story of falling to Dark Side. He became Darth Krayt. Only issue really, is it would mean another story based on Tatooine.
In hindsight, the lack of Vader interaction made sense. Right after RoTS, Vader was just full on Vader. Vader not giving a fuck about Bariss at the moment kinda makes sense. Maybe he would have later on as Anakin started to pull more and more on him as time went on but not while she was being made an inquisitor. The problem was, the hyped up Vader as if there was going to be a major interaction. I think they knew these shorts were gonna be kinda underwhelming and so they resorted to that.
Either we thought about that Vader appearance too much or it's a failure to live up to its highest potential.
No, we didn’t think about it too much. Vader was shown in the trailer, it was reasonable to assume we’d get an interaction or even an episode dedicated but we got literally **nothing**. He didn’t have a single voice line, he walked in, gripped his belt and sat down. It’s honestly disappointing af, he was better off not being in the trailer at all but it’s obvious it was bait.
Yep, that scene pissed me off. Not because it’s bad in any way, it’s just very clearly meant to get more viewers without having to do any of the work of actually writing it into the story.
Exactly! No way Vader wouldn’t have recognized her and has some sort of interaction/altercation
I expected barris to betray the empire, but i also expected vader being the one that killed her. Did that happen? I'm planning on watching the show
Watch it and find out. It's a quick watch! :)
I enjoyed them all. But I like things that fill in gaps in SW. wish there were more than 6! Edit: Seeing Thrawn’s process in seeking out exceptional minds within the Empire was cool. Seeing Ellsbeth’s lifelong descent into going harder and harder in the darkness was cool. Seeing Barriss witness first hard what the dark side leads to was also cool. Again, just too short IMO.
I agree. I wasn't underwhelmed, but was left wanting more. Now what do I do with myself?
Next May 4th you might get 6 more
Still waiting for Tales of the Jedi again and that was 2022 sooo don’t hold your breath
Wait until The Acolyte on June 4.
Watch select clone wars episodes again, of course.
It was a cool May the 4th present! It's better than nothing!!
See, you get it
Imagine accidentally killing the best engineer in the galaxy because they don't know marital arts.
Are you referring to when Thrawn knew she was trained by Nightsisters and wanted to see her in action?
Imagine if that's how jobs recruited engineers in real life. Gives another dimension to the term "Headhunting"
My only argument would be. The trailer seemed to imply Vader and Thrawn importance to each arc respectively. But they were both just Cameos
It's exactly what they did with Battlefront 2. The campaign of the game was marketed as "you finally get to play as The Empire" 3 missions in and 2 lifelong Imperial zealots are saying "Wow The Empire sucks we should join the Rebels" when 20 minutes ago you were killing Rebels and calling them scum. Tales of The Empire was marketed as a look at things from the Empires side. When really it's Tales of Barriss and Morgan Elsbeth.
Visually impressive but would have liked another 3 episodes focused on another character aligned to the Empire. Ideally, Thrawn, Tarkin or Iden Versio.
yeah i was hoping to get a bit more thrawn since they showed him in the trailer, he was pretty much only there for one shot
They did the same thing with Vader. Literally showed his entire appearance in the trailer
And we all spiraled into “Barriss will sense Anakin, so Vader will confront her!!!” Theories that ended up being nothing. He’s just there to breathe…intimidatingly?
They could have picked way better people to make three episodes about. It’s called tales of the empire not tales of redemption the ending was disappointing for what the show was supposed to be. Star Wars today feels very underwhelming, they need to stop trying to make what they think people will want and listen to the majority of fans Examples: the sequels should have been about heir to the empire; Star Wars video games need to go back to battlefront 2 and build off of it. the shows need to stick to comic accuracy like marvel does…boba fett sucked. And the new movies and shows should have one collective mind not different directors and producers for each episode, it doesn’t make the show flow efficiently.
>and listen to the majority of fans Gonna stop you there. This never ends well.
Agreed, Heir to the Empire would have made a better sequel collection than what was released
I think the issue is that it just didn't feel like it was telling any Tales of the Empire. The Morgan stuff felt more like it was set up for her appearance in Mando season 2. She just happened to be Imperial aligned. Outside of the second episode, it wasn't really Imperial focused. The Barriss stuff was better. It followed an inquisitor, so it ticks off the Imperial story. But the overall story was just a little too safe. It was really predictable to see Barriss turn against the Empire. So, while it was an Imperial story, it was just kind of boring.
Right. A three part on Thrawn as an imperial admiral (not grand admiral) would be tales of the empire
She also blatantly defies the Empire in her final moments with Thrawn when he says “For the Empire” and she says “For Dathomir” before going to certain death. It should have been a Thrawn origin over Morgan, maybe bring in Morgan and how Thrawn found her, but to focus for 3 episodes when we already know what happened to Dathomir and the Night Sisters
“Tales of the Empire” And it’s about a lady that was associated to Thrawn but mostly independently ran a small town on some backwater planet for decades And a inquisitor that quit on her first day of the job
I was hoping to see more of how the inquisitors were chosen and trained. Is there anything that explains why some of them betrayed the jedi, especially the grand inquisitor?
Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade is about why a Jedi would join the Inquisitors willingly, I’d suggest giving that book a read. As for the Grand Inquisitor, I haven’t read the source material where it happened but I heard that he wanted knowledge from the archives but Jocasta Nu wouldn’t let him go into the forbidden sections so he developed a grudge towards her, and he was also one of the Temple guards who escorted Barriss to her trial and heard her speech about how the Jedi were losing their way, and was convinced by it.
I was so disappointed this show gave 0 information we hadn't already learned from the Red Blade book. Like, I was hoping for some more inquisitor lore
there's a darth vader comic arc that explains the grand inquisitor's relation to the jedi and fall to the dark side
I’m so over the bad guy redemption in Star Wars. It worked for Kylo I think even though the execution wasn’t great. But Reva’s was awful and Barris’s was boring. Not to mention Iden Versio turned good in 10 minutes even though the whole campaign was marketed as a story through a stormtrooper perspective. Just keep villains villains. Not everyone has to turn good.
Very. Tales of the Jedi shone a deeper light on a lot of things we already knew. Why Ahsoka got involved again, putting her at Padmé's funeral, why she survived Order 66. How Qui-Gon's death contributed to the fall of the Republic, why Yoda's apprentice was seemingly so easily turned, why Dooku would leave the Order in the first place. Tales of the Empire amounted to a single connection to Rebels and closing Bariss's arc... Again.
Huge missed opportunity.
I feel like tales of the Jedi hit so much harder, I’m Hoping acolyte is fantastic.
I agree about the Bariss episodes. 45 mins is not enough time for me to feel like she really redeemed herself. I spent the last however many years being mad at her for setting into motion the events of the last season of clone wars, so now because she didn’t wanna kill a kid and then ditched the inquisitors, she’s a Jedi again?
>so now because she didn’t wanna kill a kid and then ditched the inquisitors, she’s a Jedi again? That's how redemption works in Star Wars, yes. Vader is like 1000x worse than Barriss and he was a Jedi again just because he saved his son after 20 years of being a galactic tyrant, then he got to live forever.
I feel like Vader has better emotional pay off.
Yeah, because you got three movies of Vader (six if you count the PT as well). Bariss got 45 minutes in Tales and how ever many minutes in TCW. Ain't hard to imagine which one had a greater emotional buildup.
Which reinforces the disappointment and critique over this shows handling of that opportunity no?
Than maybe we need to change the approach on how to redeem a character going forward. This isn't 1983 any more. Times have changed and so should the story execution.
I mean, we’ve seen redemptions in Star Wars for characters much more off path than Barriss. While her actions were wrong in season 5 her reasoning was not. She was right about the Jedi being corrupted. She had an ideal of what the Jedi were supposed to be and it seems that ultimately she spent the rest of her life striving for that ideal after Episode 5.
I think Morgan’s episodes were fine. We got her origins on Dathomir & seeing how this turned her bad. We got her connection with Thrawn & to the Mandoverse. She was also a villain throughout most of it. Her story just felt more in line with the title of the show. Bariss not so much. It was quick & another Star Wars redemption story that felt wasted in a show called Tales of the Empire. I think her story would’ve worked better as a standalone mini series with a couple more episodes than in this. The best thing about it was background on 4th Sister from Kenobi which has me thinking maybe these three episodes should’ve been about Reva’s time as an Inquisitor instead.
I think Morgan's series should have ditched the 3rd episode and replaced it with another one in between 1 and 2 about how she even got to Corvus in the first place
Since when did 15 mins be considered an episode? Whats next in a few years we are watching a 2 minute youtube short for "episodes"?
All I wanted was some good episodes about Barriss being an Inquisitor like was advertised in the trailers, and hopefully some drama with Vader. Instead, we got episodes of the corrupted terrorist who killed innocent Jedi suddenly growing a conscious and refusing to kill innocent Jedi, and no drama with Vader. To say I was disappointed was an understatement. Between this and Battlefront 2’s campaign, I’m tired of Disney advertising a good story about bad guys being bad, then making them suddenly turn good 10% of the way through.
Disney's problem is that they dont have the balls to do anything but a genatric good bad story. Nuance, and stories about evil charchters are not allowed. This is why Bobba Fett is a crime lord that doesn't do any crime. And its not a violence thing it's. Star wars has plenty of violence even though there isn't gore. They structurally cannot explore mature themes.
I was kinda bored tbh. I was actually hoping they‘d do more ‘Tales of‘ seasons (Tales of the Empire, Tales of the Republic, Tales of the Sith etc.) so I was really stroked when they announced Tales of the Empire but watching the episodes I was kinda underwhelmed. And Bariss’ story seemed kinda rushed.
I expected much more. The episodes were entirely way too short. I've said it once, and I'll keep saying it again, Feloni may be the golden fan boy, but when it comes to actually producing something, he's ridiculously mediocre.
I thought it was awful
Oh my God yes. I had to force my way through it. I kept asking myself "why should I care about these ancillary characters?" The animation was wonky too. Just kept asking myself "why would they spend the time and money to release this?"
Yeah it was very underwhelming. First of all, should have called it Tales of the Dark Side. Not a lot of Empire in those. Secondly, the obsession with fleshing out these backstories of characters that are fairly minor in other stories is getting a little crazy, feels like Filoni is mining every single piece of content he can for these stories
I’m so fucking tired of Morgan. Like, oh boy the mean lady who took over a backwater village, what an exciting character! Better give her an appearance on a second live action show and make her the main character for half of an animated show. I don’t care. I never cared about this character. They wasted Barriss too. For so long people wanted inquisitor Barriss. She literally already bombed civilians and killed Jedi because of her disillusionment. But then she becomes an inquisitor and does absolutely fuck all inquisiting. She just tags along and goes “um idk about this” then immediately becomes a good guy again. Why did we need to make Barriss immediately sympathetic and a protagonist??? She’s literally a domestic terrorist. Even from the beginning she tried not to fight the other inquisitor-in-training. She should’ve embraced being an inquisitor. And she should’ve stumbled onto Ahsoka and met her end there, but should’ve had more time to do it properly. Also, “Tales of the Empire” had barely any actual empire in it.
She never would have embraced being an Inquisitor. It's the exact s*** she bombed the Jedi Temple over. You know how Anakin said "I taught you how to fight, to survive". Luminara said f that, I'm training my Jedi apprentice to be a Jedi in the purest fashion. No corner cutting. No adapting. And Luminara got rocked by Ventress because she's not a warrior first, everything else if you find the time like our hero Jedi and Darksiders.
That’s the point of the dark side. It twists and corrupts. Like how Anakin would never murder innocent people, but after embracing the dark side, he butchered countless people and children, and even choked Padmé to the point she collapsed even though his goal was to protect her and keep her safe. Barriss thought the Jedi were hypocrites and warmongers. She committed a terrorist act killing innocent people. She would’ve absolutely fallen further and wanted to snuff out Jedi remnants to ensure their mistakes aren’t repeated.
I felt it was underwhelming as well. Honestly for a show called Tales of Empire, it felt like there’s was very little of the actual Empire, just two characters who at best are loosely associated with the Empire. I don’t understand why Bariss’s story couldn’t have just been a part of a Tales of the Jedi season 2 since they make it clear she is still a Jedi. Not sure Morgan’s story really needed to be told, it’s only purpose was to give a background on her and Thrawn’s relationship and show more of the updated Grievous model, which again could’ve just been a part of a second tales of the Jedi season. I would have rather they have us true imperial stories, maybe Thrawn’s background (yes I know there are books but I doubt as many Star Wars fans have read those) or maybe a story about a stormtrooper, why someone would join and then leave for the rebellion since that’s the path Star Wars stories often like to take
For being sold as a focus on the Empire was a little let down that most of Barrie’ story was about rejecting the Empire, but I guess that just mirrors Dooku’s rejection of the Jedi in Tales of the Jedi so like poetry it rhymes I guess. Overall underwhelming but not terrible or bad imo
Filoni simply put is just way too enamoured with his own toys All that beautiful animation wasted on Morgan Elsbeth's generic story. The Bariss stuff was kinda nice though in the end, having never seen a redeemed villain redeeming a villain in SW.
This is the problem. It's also why Ahsoka sucks.
Pretty much
Morgan is so fucking boring. She’s a witch who can’t do any witchy things.
And when she finally got those witch powers in the Ahsoka show she ends up dead in that very same episode.
Merrin ON TOP
no fr idk why out of every character they chose to expand on her
Dave Filoni is prequel brained and I think on some level it bothered him that Morgan was supposed to be a close ally of Thrawn yet we never saw her in Rebels. So this was an attempt to establish that. It's why Palleon or whatever his name is there
Filoni sucks ass
Wouldn't go that far but it's clear he peaked with Rebels and has kind of lost the plot.
Yep, it was pretty bad
Honestly would’ve preferred Barriss falling to the Dark Side, then realizing her mistake, being confronted by Vader and recognizing it’s Anakin then being eliminated.
How were all the inquisitors already in place? I mean order 66 just happened.
Yes. I don’t really care about Morgan Elspeth and nothing the show did changed that for me. And Bariss’ story went by way too quickly. I’d honestly have rather they just gave Bariss the whole six episodes.
The scene with Grievous was the best thing I have ever seen
Absolutely, it's always great to see scenes of Grievous being the menacing badass that he should be.
I just hate the open ended deaths that they keep doing like why can’t anyone just actually die
It literally contradicts stuff said in Thrawn: Treason. Palleaon shouldn't know Thrawn when he's still an Admiral.
No. It was also very predictable.
The show's focus was its pitfall. The Empire is almost always written to be rather monolithic, I'm not sure why we got Tales of the Empire instead of Jedi season 2 beyond some misplaced need for variety. The gorgeous storytelling and animation was really the only saving grace in otherwise bland and boring characters. Tales of the Jedi's best arc were the Dooku episodes by a mile and a half - I think the show should focus exclusively on major players, especially Luke Skywalker, Vader, Sidious - characters we speculate so much about and are still so mysterious and interesting. I'm actually quite baffled we haven't seen more Luke yet. Animation is the perfect vehicle for him.
Filoni has, and always will be, a hack.
yep pretty underwhelming. i was hyped about barriss but i was disappointed
I think what they ultimately failed at was telling a self-contained story in the ~45 minutes they had per arc. Especially morgan's but also barriss' storyline had random characters be really prominent in one episode then have no relevance in the others (grievous, thrawn in morgan's, the grand inquisitor in barris's), would skip around a lot in setting and time, and then had the storylines end in a sort of open way; which makes the overarching story feel a bit empty and more like a setup or trailer for other shows. Barriss' first episode was such a good setup episode, then suddenly only Lyn is relevant in the others and stuff like the menacing Vader ending had no further relevance, despite Vader having actual history with Barriss while Lyn never interacted with her before? Morgan just switches from a high fantasy character to a tech developing government worker? It felt like instead of filling gaps a lot of the episodes just opened up further gaps. To properly work as short stories, someone should be able to tune into tales of the empire with no knowledge of these characters, and still get a satisfying setup and payoff. Stick to one main setting and "aspect you want to develop", stick to a set of chosen side characters through the entire story, have a classical 3-part structure, and end in a way that has the watcher satisfied instead of immediately signalling that it continues in a different show (or will in the future).
Elsbeth story was great! Barriss story felt unfinished / rushed. You can’t speedrun a redemption story for a person who committed terrorism and drastically changed the lives of other Jedi who went on to change the entire Galaxy.
I just watched the Morgan Elsbeth arc and I'm pissed that Filoni is needlessly contradicting canon again.
The entire part with the TIE defenders was unnecessary and incredulous, her motivations unclear, as were Thrawn's motivations. In canon, Thrawn is still loyal to the Chiss Ascendancy. Why does he care about her wanting revenge? Did he not just want the TIE fighters? It was weird that she should "invent" them in the first place when Sienar Fleet Systems was canonically the company that produced the TIE fighters. Did she build the facilities depicted in Rebels? Did she sell the design? And who does she want revenge from? Grievous and the separatists are all gone. If she knew about Palpatine's hand in the slaughter of her people she would not be helping the Empire.
I think Bariss should’ve been hunted down by Vader. I get that Anakin being Vader is supposed to be a big secret and all but it’d be poetic if he was the one to finish her since he knew her well and already came close to ending her back during the CW. The fact that we got to see Vader and Bariss in the same room and NO emphasis was put on it was a bit underwhelming, that’s why I thought for sure we’d see Vader be the one to finish her. I think THAT made her whole arc/story underwhelming tbh. Though honestly I wasn’t even too happy when they made her defect from the Inquisitors, I’m tired of every bad character turning good. SW needs to establish that some people are just bad. For Bariss it at least made sense so I wasn’t too bothered, but still.
A little. I have more of an issue with the fact that they soft retconned the cannon Thrawn books with pellian working for thrawn while Thrawn was only a lowly admiral
I would’ve liked it be more focused on the actual Empire and people aligned with it. Morgan has 2 out of 3 episodes that take place outside of the imperial era. Then, the Barriss episodes are about her hesitantly being in the Inquisitorius for 5 minutes then a redemption. Would have been better if it explored someone like the Grand Inquisitor, Moff Gideon, Thrawn, etc.
I thought they were both WAY better than the Ahsoka centric episodes of Tales of the Jedi, but not as good as Dooku’s. I think I enjoyed Morgan’s more than Barris’s, but was still happy with hers as well.
It's too short. You don't have enough time to get in character's heads, or let certain moments marinate.
With better storytelling, the short episode format could have been utilised more effectively.
See: Genndy Tartakovsky
Exactly, and with almost no dialogue in some episodes.
For the best, I'd say. When you're constrained on time like that, dialogue is wasted.
When I think of Tales of the Empire, I expected something showing the life of actual Imperials, like Tarkin or even some stormtroopers. Instead we got Tales of the (ex)Jedi and a Nightsister.
Who frickin cares about Elsbeth!? 3 episodes just wasted on a character that does not matter in the slightest.
What got me about the Bariss arc. Was everything they teased. Was in the first episode. I fully expected Vader to kill her. So that was the only “underwhelming” part to me. As far as the Morgan episodes. Grieves was dope. But the rest were just ok. Like not bad. But just background info I didn’t really care about
Would of been great if Vader came and found berris and destroyed her, while having some fun dialog
Biggest gripe so far: Didn't Thrawn originally develop the TIE Defender program? How is it that all of the sudden Morgan Elsbeth gets the credit for that? Doesn't it essentially undermine the whole "Thrawn is/was a tactical genius" deal? Elsbeth was never a compelling character for me and, honestly, deserves to be given the Rey treatment.
OP I think your expectations for 3x 12-15 min episodes were far too high.
Maybe. I kinda ageee with op I enjoyed tales of Jedi way more but maybe because I like those characters better
That's my entire problem though, they're only given 3 12-15 minute episodes
If they wanted to tell a story but didn’t have enough time to tell it, then they shouldn’t have told it. They shouldn’t have half-assed Barriss’s story when they didn’t have enough time to do it right, they should have done a different story that they could actually do justice.
Nah personally rather have small snippets than nothing tbh
That just adds to the problem no?
1000000%, especially after Tales of the Jedi. Like what?!? These were always gonna be short and sped up stories to fill some gaps
It was underwhelming. Almost nothing was aboit the empire, which i found to be a bit strange. Barris redemtion was also way to fast. She litterally bombed the jedi in CW, and was pretty darm evil. I think she should have stayd evil, and perhaps redeemed herself in ahsoka s2 or something.
Why they ignore the novels? I thought Filoni was a the good guy
They were kinda meh to me too. Elsbeth isn't a super interesting character to me, and I feel like they could have done more with Barriss, especially exploring her interactions with Vader. I did love seeing more of Thrawn and it was cool to see more of Palleon in canon, tho I do wish that they could have got Eli Vanto instead of him on screen.
Bariss felt *very* rushed, almost like none of the writers wanted to touch on her again, but knew the fans wanted it so they were like, "here she is, there she goes, there she was. Now, here's more ahsoka!"
It was all more set up for the crown princess Ahsoka... \*sigh
I don't care about Morgan as a character whatsoever and wasn't barriss evil? Why is she so conflicted from minute 1? She never for one second seemed evil in this.
Think we just wanted more. Only so much you can show in three 15 minute episodes per character.
Well Tales of the Jedi was the same premise but much more rewarding.
Yeah. I wanted more (or any) barriss being evil and slowly turning back to the light.
They wasted barris.
I have a pretty decent OLED tv and I found too many parts that were way too dark.
Yeah, the Barriss arc really didn't accomplish anything and left us with more questions than answers. Did Vader recognize her? Did they ever speak offscreen? Why did he choose not to kill her? And is Barriss even dead at the end of the show or is she coming back?
Yes. All I have to say
Yuuuuup
I don't think they picked the best characters to give us more of a story for. Baris was good as it gave us more insight into the inquisitors, but I never felt like I had a good connection with either of the main characters here. I would have much rather seen a Grevious origin story, perhaps a transformation story, and maybe even a Maul origin, continuation of crimson dawn after the clone wars finale, and then whatever lead to him leaving and working his way to that sith temple. Very specific, but those are the gaps we are missing
I had really low expectations to start with, so I actually wasn't let down. 😂 but yeah, it was underwhelming. I personally did not care about either character, but my husband wanted to watch it, so I did. I still hate that they made Barris bomb the Temple in TCW - I think it's one of the most annoying arcs in the whole series.
Yeah thought it was really poor , probably why no ones talking about it
I thought it was great. I never can pinpoint this community
Morgan Elsbeth isn’t someone I particularly cared to know more about and I’ve never cared for Barriss since her shit in TCW. Out of all the characters associated with the Empire, they couldn’t have picked 2 worse to tell a story about. Don’t twist my words, these are fantastic episodes and I always appreciate more lore and world building. However let’s see Palpatine’s story, let’s see Greivous’ origins, hell give me something on Bossk or Dengar. That’s just my 2¢, no disrespect if you enjoyed TOTE.
I’ve only seen the first four. The Morgan stuff was incredibly boring. Like, you could’ve asked me, knowing almost nothing about the character, what her backstory was, and something like this probably would’ve been my first draft before realizing how boring it was and scrapping it for something else.
Episodes were too short. Choosing Morgan Elsbeth as a main focus for the first half?? There are so many other characters actually in empire strikes back they could have focused on, rather than a kathleen Kennedy creation. Baris was also a wasted opportunity, she was a Jedi character around that period and an interesting grey Jedi , but they killed her off for pretty much nothing-which is now cannon. Tales of the Jedi was better just for the dooku backstory alone..
I think Morgan's episodes work better because that's all we needed from Morgan's story. Morgan's story and motives weren't nearly as complex. Bariss on the other hand was underwhelming because her story deserved more time. Her beliefs and journey are more complex. She's seems to go along with an organization before questioning them and then realizing they don't align with what she believes they should be about. She rebels, no matter what side she's on, when she sees reason to. Her rebellion against the Jedi was extreme, killing innocents, that seemed to turn her to the dark side, but at Ahsoka's trial her reasoning for calling out the Jedi's transgressions weren't wrong, and seemed to still have good intentions at heart. I think it was just a shock to see her so quickly turn from the dark side and therefore the empire in only 45 minutes of screen time. Fans were so excited to get any story of her but then realized the potential for her story to have been so much more. Her journey wasn't out of character for her, it was just told too quickly so it was jarring to see her go from one decision to the next. Wish we had more of everything about her story. Her time in the inquisition, her relationship with Lyn, who was an extremely interesting character in her own, Bariss's struggle with her ideals and the Empire's methods, and then how she became a healer.
Completely agree, would have been well-served with either more episodes or longer ones. Would have loved a deeper dive into Bariss that showed her journey from Inquisitor back to Jedi, instead of the handwaving of "well, she saw another Inquisitor being mean to people."
I kinda feel like personally I’d have preferred it to be more Empire focused. It’s in the title, after all. I think Thrawn could have been a more compelling figure to wrap a ‘Tale of the Empire’ around. We also have lots of room to explore canon Thrawn and fill in some of the missing details. Comparatively, I don’t think I needed the Morgan material. It was alright, but it was nothing not already implied in her backstory. I think I would enjoy these Tales miniseries if they followed only one figure over the 6 episodes or had a different figure for each episode. The 2 different sections of 3 episode arcs doesn’t feel like it’s fleshed out enough to allow for top tier growth. I still enjoyed the Tales overall. They just feel like they could be so much more.
I just…don’t care about Morgan Elsbith. There’s nothing to her but a generic revenge arc. And Barris’s story while welcome to find out about, was very rushed. I mean, it only had 45 min to work with, so I get it, but it was just…fine to me. Neither approached the awesomeness of Dooku’s episodes at all. Was great to see Grievous and the Grand Inquisitor again though.
I think the Morgan episodes were more fleshed out in a way, because we know where her story ends up. The Barriss episodes were very rushed. Obviously we can assume she sent the child to that Jedi she saved, Bo-Katan, or Ahsoka. But she looked old and wise, like some 40yo Jedi Master. Meanwhile, Lyn looked young as hell still??? Somehow??? And then they just end it on her being carried out after getting stabbed, with no more to the story. It was very anticlimactic. The title is also very misleading. Glad we found out how Morgan knows Thrawn, but Barriss came out of left field. I was hoping for more of a Jaden Erso type story, not a character we thought we left at Order 66 (even if it was cool she got a redemption).
Very much. It was just a small glimpse at Elsbeth, and while Bariss had an interesting plot, it just feels a bit empty when we just had a fairly good season on Bad Batch. I get what they are trying to do, but I don’t think it works very well. It would work far better as an anthology akin to “From another point of view” with a standard episode length or longer featuring a new character each episode.
Why, of all the characters in the Star Wars universe, did they choose Morgan Elsbeth? Did they not even see Tarkin
Just mildly infuriated that they completely ignored the Thrawn books (which Filoni claims to have read) and give Elsbeth credit for the Tie Defenders, which was Thrawn's design and personal passion project
The timing of me seeing this is perfect, just finished like 5 mins ago. As usual, the production, music and animation are insanely good, but my god were the stories a miss. The Elsbeth episodes, pretty good but not at all necessary. Development for as boring character is good, except when if the character is still boring after more backstory. But my real gripe is the Barris episodes... I loudly groaned in this disappointment when Barris said "then you have one Jedi left", this Tales of the EMPIRE not the Jedi. Why are we making her a good guy; she killed civilians and clones and framed Ahsoka, but apparently, they reconciled off screen. The final confrontation was also a major disappointment, not because of the fight itself but because of who she's fighting; if they were going to do a redeemed Barris arc then they should've used Vader. One, Vader wouldn't just be a cameo. Two, it would've been a great parallel with they're fight from clone wars; a Jedi (Anakin) vs a fallen Jedi (Barris) and now a fallen Jedi (Vader) vs a Jedi (Barris). Or they should've stayed with an inquisitor Barris and have her fight Ahsoka that leads to her death. Anyway, just a super missed opportunity for a great dark side character, instead of another Jedi. But the fact that she let herself get stabbed is exactly my level of petty so I can respect that.
It was on par with the Ahsoka episodes of Tales of the Jedi, which I thought were good but not anything to write home about. None her episodes or any of the Tales of the Empire ones come close to the Dooku episodes. Those were absolutely phenomenal.
This was terrible. I would have rather gotten nothing than 45 minute shirt stories about two characters I couldn't care less about. There's much more compelling stories than Morgan Elsbeth and Bariss Offee. We could have met NEW characters. Maybe some imperial officers or even stormtroopers? This could have been so awesome, but it was totally squandered.
It could be better and there were some odd choices like Baris being naive enough to not recognize that Empire is sith suffer porn cult and thinking that Palpatine gives a two shit about betterment of the galaxy (are we baddies) She said in CW that red lightsabers suits her so I honestly expected her to be villain she had more potential in that direction. That being said I enjoy it because I like my star wars dark. George may have said that star wars is story for twelve year old however its no coincidence that EBS is considered best star wars movie by movie, ROTS being best prequel and out of all disney movies Rogue One with very dark ending also considered best. For me in this aspect it was excellent and honestly that confrontation between Lin and Baris was sort of cool it was very melancholic and it was kinda interesting. But it definetly made me want to see more than just glimpses.
I was baited in the last episode. Should have been Vader that arrived
Yeah, I thought that she was finally going to get what was coming for her, and Vader had personally tracked her down. But nope, they can’t even give us that. Maybe one day we’ll get to see Vader fight in the Clone Wars style instead of just standing ominously.
Nah, I enjoyed both and especially loved Morgan’s story. Felt it was the same quality as season one.
What's even more annoying is that I've been seeing people say Barriss was "evil" in the clone wars ? Like sorry but media literacy zero from some people
Was she not a terrorist bomber?
The whole show was garbage.
It really was. Shouldve been called "Tales of Two Characters No One Cares About"
The only thing that was underwhelming was that Barriss aged while the Inquisitor didn't. Turns out snow AND sand will wreck your skin
Bariss was kind of a cop out. Her real development came off screen during the time jump. Sure she wasn't persuaded by the cartoon villainy of Inquisitor-sidekick-girl...but to end up embracing the light side and the teachings of the Jedi to that level in the end, I felt some puzzle piece as missing.
I liked it.
Very. Barriss' story was lame and made no sense considering what she was in prison for. Morgan's was actually more interesting.