Hogan Reviews

“Tales of the Empire” is both a second season to “Tales of the Jedi” and sort of its own thing, plus ironically focuses on two characters who weren’t ever really members of the Empire, not for long anyway, but there you go. Better than “Tales of these two characters we wanted to talk about” I guess! It focuses on recent live action character Morgan Elsbeth’s backstory and old Clone Wars animated character Bariss Offee’s future after her arrest during the classic cartoon show. The first is something I wasn’t that interested in, the second was at least a dangling plot thread that was fun to get tied up… so let’s take a look!

Similar to Ahsoka in the previous season, the story of Morgan Elsbeth plays out pretty much how you imagined it, especially Episode 1 which sees her already talked about backstory. As a young girl and member of the Nightsisters of Dathomir she has to flee from the invading droid army and sees her mother get killed by General Grievous (who has never been this terrifying, so good work there!) She survives and is picked up by the “Mountain Tribe”, who seemingly practice magic more akin to the lightside than their darkside-influenced sisters on the ground. She’s offered to stay but when she leads three Mountain Tribe girls down to what’s left of her village and gets one of them killed by the droids she’s left alone. As villain backstories go seeing your whole village and everyone you know and love slaughtered and burned down will do it, though ironically the people she tries to get in with, the Empire, are the same people responsible, or at least the man on top is. Anyway, Episode 2 fast-forwards us straight to where we saw her, pretty much, as she’s now the magistrate of Corvus and tries to gain the favour of the Empire by showing them her new Advanced TIE fighter designs and saying how they could use the riches of Corvus to build them, but her idea is shot down, though an attending Gilad Pellaeon was interested in the concept…

Morgan’s mother tries to hold off General Grievous with her magic hooks.

This leads to Morgan returning to Corvus only to be attacked by Rukh, and after fighting him off then-just-Admiral Thrawn himself arrives (Pellaeon, Rukh and Thrawn in the same episode, Legends fans eating well this episode!) He praises her convictions and her Advanced TIE designs and agrees to work more closely with her. The twist of Thrawn’s Advanced TIEs from the Rebels series actually being Morgan’s idea is a neat way to connect the two more closely to explain the Ahsoka series stuff. In episode three we then fast-forward to shortly before her debut in Mando S2 as Morgan denies a New Republic contingent their request for her to stand down and let Corvus join the new order. When some of her own people side with them she burns the entire surrounding forests down (explaining that, if the scenery really needed explaining…) and killing the New Republic reps. I liked the symbolism of the first story having Morgan be a scared child watching all she loves get burned down by people she rightfully hates only to grow up and become someone who burns down and kills people in a village to teach them a lesson, it’s a sad but realistic backstory for her. That said, given before this we knew she was a nightsister who survived the purge, became the “magistrate” of Corvus and then searched for Thrawn because the two knew it each other this three-part backstory really didn’t give us anything new.

Thrawn and Morgan take in the view…

The Bariss Offee episodes on the other hand give us plenty of new stuff!  They start with her still in a prison cell on Coruscant where she sees the Jedi temple on fire in the distance and a now ex-Jedi called Lyn Rakish arrives and offers Bariss a place in a brand new organisation that’s being set up by Palpatine. Lyn is the Fourth Sister from the Obi-Wan Kenobi series so it wasn’t a shock when the next few scenes see the Grand Inquisitor putting Bariss through her paces on a still-under-contraction Fortress Inquisitorius. She’s eventually forced to kill a fellow ex-Jedi in combat to secure her place as an Inquisitor, and in the next episode she and the Fourth Sister are off to hunt for a Jedi in hiding. What’s good is that it’s clear throughout the first two episodes that Bariss isn’t really into the whole evil / darkside stuff, which given her admittedly unpleasant crime was to try and wake the Jedi Order up to its corruption rather than anything out of hatred or malice makes sense. When the Fourth Sister kills a bunch of innocent civilians when they tried to keep the presence of a Jedi a secret it was clear Bariss was having second thoughts, so it only took meeting the young Jedi and watching him desperately try to fight back again the former Lyn to wake her up, Force Push the Fourth Sister off of a mountain and then help the Jedi escape…

This leads to the final episode, which I may as well put in the Spoiler section. It’s a good set of episodes, though none meet the lofty heights of the Dooku trilogy in “Tales of the Jedi”. I do like to see more of the Inquisitors though, who doesn’t like a cheesy Star Wars villain in the black mask?

Overall Thoughts:

“Go onnnnn, be evil! Please?” “Oh, okay then. Sure. I’ll give it a go.”

“Tales from the Empire” may be lacking in anything as good as the Dooku episodes from “Tales of a Jedi” but I really enjoyed the Bariss episodes, with the three Morgan Elsbeth ones being perfectly fine too. Frankly they can keep churning out these mini-series of “stories we want to tell but don’t know where to put them” as often as they like, they’ve so far been constantly high quality little slices of Star Wars.

Episode 6 has a young family on the run because their child has been found to be Force sensitive by the Empire and they’re after it, and on a remote snowy mountain they meet Bariss, now looking much older. She’s working as a healer as well as a contact point to get people who are Force sensitive to safety (the “Hidden Path” isn’t mentioned by name, but presumably them) but the Fourth Sister, now post Kenobi, arrives after the child. The two duel as the family make their escape through a cave strong in the Force and Bariss shows complete calm and control over her movements, easily dodging all of her foes attacks but not fighting back, proper Luke from Episode VIII “peak Jedi” stuff. The Fourth Sister runs past her and into the cave but gets lost due to the cave helping people with good intentions to the exit while keeping those with bad ones lost.

Bariss as part of the Inquisitors, with the Fourth Sister, “that one from Ahsoka that turned into green gas” and “the bird-masked one from the Ahsoka episode of Tales of the Jedi”.

Bariss enters the cave in hopes to rehabilitate her old Jedi ally but gets impaled for her trouble. As she begins to die (seemingly, but you never know with lightsabre stab wounds these days) she encourages Lyn to let go of her hate in order to exit the cave, and sure enough she leaves her Inquisitor lightsabre behind and manages to find her way out of the cave with Bariss in hand, showing her walk back towards the light has begun.