This Saturday, May the 4th, will see the release of the new Star Wars: Tales of the Empire series of animated shorts from Lucasfilm. Laughing Place was granted access to advance screeners of this series, and below are my mostly spoiler-free thoughts.
About a year and a half ago in the fall of 2022, Lucasfilm gave us Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi (not to be confused with the 1990s Dark Horse comic book series set during the Old Republic era) which consisted of six episodes filling in some of the narrative gaps in the lives of the characters Ahsoka Tano and Count Dooku, for three episodes each. And now creator Dave Filoni– who has since been rather deservedly promoted to Lucasfilm’s Chief Creative Officer– and his team have delivered another iteration of the same concept, this time titled Tales of the Empire. Here we get six more installments, now zoomed in on the characters of Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth (who was first introduced in the live-action series The Mandalorian and then expanded upon in Ahsoka last year) and former Jedi Knight Barriss Offee (who initially appeared on-screen in Episode II – Attack of the Clones, though we didn’t really get to know her until The Clone Wars animated series). Interestingly, the Elsbeth segments in Tales of the Empire serve as a prequel to her established story from the “Mandoverse,” whereas the Barriss segments serve as a sequel to where her story last left off.
From Ahsoka we knew that Morgan Elsbeth (voiced by Diana Lee Inosanto, who played the same role in live-action) was related to the Nightsisters of Dathomir, but now we get to see where exactly she was in her life when that race was wiped out by General Grievous (Matthew Wood, reprising his role from Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and other media), how that affected her, and how she eventually found herself allied with Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen, back from Star Wars Rebels and Ahsoka). There are a couple other surprise character appearances as well in the Elsbeth segments, though I won’t spoil them here except to say they had me jumping for joy as a fan of the Star Wars Legends novels from which Grand Admiral Thrawn originated. But mostly I found myself fascinated by Morgan’s arc, and grateful for the additional Star Wars lore– for both the character and the world surrounding the Nightsisters– that these installments provide.
Being a bigger devotee of The Mandalorian and Ahsoka than I am of The Clone Wars, I was somewhat less excited for the segments focused on Barriss Offee, who was a character I remembered from the animated series but who didn’t make a tremendous impression on me during my time watching that show. I am aware that fans have been curious about her fate after the events of The Clone Wars, so it makes perfect sense to me that Filoni and company would want to follow through on her arc. As the trailers for Tales of the Empire have revealed, Offee’s story intersects with that of the Inquisitorius, the Grand Inquisitor (Jason Isaacs, returning to his role from Star Wars Rebels), and even Darth Vader, but there’s also another major character in this journey– whose name I won’t reveal here– that fills in another puzzle piece in the overall picture of the Sith Lord’s Inquisitorius program. Again, Barriss’s installments were less interesting to me overall, and her story also featured an overly abrupt ending that once again left me asking questions about her ultimate destiny. But I still thoroughly enjoyed seeing the universe fleshed out more, which brings me to my general cause for enthusiasm over the Tales of… series from Lucasfilm Animation.
When I was a teenager in the 90s, there was another Tales of… series from Star Wars, though that one was told exclusively through the company’s publishing arm. There were short-story collections called Tales from Mos Eisley Cantina, Tales of the Bounty Hunters, Tales from Jabba’s Palace, Tales from the New Republic, and yes, Tales from the Empire. These books went a long way for me in making the Star Wars galaxy come across as even more real and far-reaching, shining the spotlight on characters and locations which would not have found a home in other full-length novels or comic books from that period. In many ways, the current Tales of… series feels like it is ripe with the same potential that those beloved anthologies had 30 years ago– I couldn’t see either Barriss Offee or Morgan Elsbeth getting their own live-action Star Wars movie or Disney+ series, but giving them a few (absolutely gorgeous-looking, I should add) animated shorts each to continue their individual legacies as characters is a truly wonderful idea. I’m so glad that Tales of… exists in this form and I can only hope that there’s much, much more to come.
Star Wars: Tales of the Empire will be released in its entirety this Saturday, May the 4th, exclusively via Disney+.