Star Wars: Tales of the Empire: Incomplete Show

Tales of the Empire Tells Us Parts Of A Whole Story

After having such a good time reviewing Tales of the Jedi, I figured that Tales of the Empire would be similar. That it would also contain a bunch of interesting looks at the history of various familiar characters. But I wouldn’t call these characters familiar—and I wouldn’t say it explored all that much.

Indeed, perhaps I was doomed by my own assumptions—or a failure of consistency. Not only is Tales of the Empire not a true anthology like its predecessor; it’s more like two long backstory episodes for characters. One, I believe, was maybe in an episode of The Mandalorian.

And do not take this as an admittance of lack of Star Wars knowledge. I have plenty. This is simply to say that, if you were hoping for a series that any fan of Star Wars could pick up and watch, you would be mistaken. It’s not even a snapshot of various Sith’s lives. It’s two characters getting three episodes each—and they do not interact.  

These Could Just Be Episodes Of The Clone Wars

So, with that in mind, we really have two reviews to do. I’ll keep them short-ish, and I’ll start with Morgan Elspeth. And how Morgan’s tale feels a lot like a reverse version of the classic epic fantasy beginning. Her life is destroyed by the villains. She makes several big mistakes. She’s very powerful. But rather than have this mold her into someone who protects, it teaches her to harm other people for power. By the end of the three episodes, she’s mercilessly cruel. You can actually map a fair bit of it against Luke’s journey—if you think of Admiral Thrawn as an evil Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The second set of episodes, starring Barris Offee, actually explores a parallel idea. We get a barebones Sith story. We have a person training to be a Sith—technically an Inquisitor—although we don’t get to see a ton of Sith training. And from there, we get the evil mirror of the classic Jedi and Padawan connection. What indeed does happen when two Siths are meant to work with each other, but don’t agree on everything? How does that progress in a world where two ex-Jedi hunt current Jedi?

Tales of the Empire Presents Fascinating Premises

But it’s all rushed. Both sets of episodes don’t allow their premises to breathe, for the situation to unfold. We time jump, instead of developing the plot. We get very quick emotional changes, instead of exploring the obvious grief both characters are feeling. If each episode had been thirty minutes, I think we could’ve had two fascinating—and complementary—tales that really explore what it means to be on the villain’s side in these conflicts. Not to make them sympathetic—Tales of the Empire thankfully doesn’t seem to excuse the truly evil things these characters do—but to give us more of the Star Wars universe.

And the animation, especially the facial expressions, is really well done so that we can get an understanding of these characters’ internal conflicts. And when they’re fighting, the action is frantic and brutal—although a little choppy sometimes—so you can understand the danger. You can tell a lot of care went into each scene of Tales of the Empire—there just needed to be more scenes. And I don’t understand why there weren’t.

Tales of the Empire Needed To Be A Longer Series

There are also a few other problems that happen because of this rushed style. The first is how it treats a character. As far as I’ve seen, Tales of the Empire has the first non-binary character in Star Wars. And they die within a few moments of being introduced. Maybe they didn’t—the episode doesn’t make it clear. But it seemed a fatal wound. And I hopefully don’t need to explain why that’s a problematic trope. The scene doesn’t even need to change that much to avoid this issue. Just show that they survive with a quick moment.

The other is arguably how blasé some of the scenes are about death. The scenes leading up to Morgan Elspeth’s second big tragedy make narrative sense, but—because of the need to end the scene and do a time jump—the weight of it just isn’t allowed to register. A mother just lost her daughter. A person was just left alone on a planet with no one to help her. And, in Barris’s story, she murders a kid. Maybe the obvious emotional fallout of all this is covered in some other series, but within Tales of the Empire’s standalone story, it’s jarring.

Now, fairs fair, this all could be, once again, maybe an issue of expectations. I assumed a show would be moderately self-contained. Maybe we aren’t in a media landscape where that’s a given anymore. But, even with that in mind, this feels like someone adding in missing scenes. Tales of the Empire certainly held my attention well enough and had impactful moments, but it’s not even really a show.

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