It happens every year and we have finally reached May 4th aka Star Wars Day and Disney decided today to release the follow up to the successful Tales of the Jedi with a new show Star Wars Tales of the Empire and I have watched it this morning and this is my review of the show. The premise of the show documents the journey's of Morgan Elsbeth & Barriss Offee and how their lives were affected by different events.
Main Character
The first 3 episodes of the show documents the journey of Morgan Elsbeth with Diana Lee Inosanto reprising her role from The Mandalorian & Ahsoka and she is great. It shows how she became the character that we met in those shows. She does a really effective job of showing the anger and the devotion that she has to her new mission, her character was great in live action and it continues here.
The latter 3 episodes focus on Barriss Offee who is once again voiced by Meredith Salenger. The show picks up after she was expelled from the Jedi Order in The Clone Wars. Salenger does a good job, we still see the inner turmoil of her character and that even though she was against the Jedi, she might not be fully on board with the Empire and it is just nice to get some follow up on her which people have been asking for years.
Supporting Characters
To be honest this show is all about the two main characters and doesn't have too much time for the rest of the cast but everyone does a good job. Probably the main one is The Fourth Sister who has a good story with Barriss and gives some more character to this pretty dull character so that was good to see.
It was also nice to see cameos from characters from the Star Wars universe such as General Grievous, Thrawn & The Grand Inquisitor. They all offer something to the stories and it was just nice to see them make a return here.
Story
The stories are good. Seeing how Morgan Elsbeth went from surviving on Dathomir to become a Magistrate is well realised and it does set up future events in Ahsoka which is appreciated. I also enjoyed seeing Barriss journey to becoming an Inquisitor and how it showed her different viewpoints of the galaxy. But, there is no doubt that there is something missing here, it just isn't as interesting as I wanted it to be. Morgan's story doesn't do enough to tell us more stuff about her, it probably would have come across better if we had seen it before Ahsoka was released and we knew what happened to her. Barriss story does feel a little bit like missed potential and I think maybe they could have had 6 episodes just on that and it would have been better and the ending is incredibly abrupt and doesn't quite work like I think Disney thought it would.
Script
The script is okay, this show is incredibly mature and dark and that does work and I am glad that this show goes with that tone and the lack of humour isn't an issue. The issue is that none of the drama really nails the mark fully, similar to the story I think Disney expected more and it just fell a bit flat at crucial times.
Style
The animation looks fantastic. We have seen with other animated Star Wars shows that the animation has got better and better and this is up there with the best yet. The character models look fantastic and the action flows incredibly well and feels very smooth. But the pacing is where the issue is, with us only having 3 episodes each with these lesser known characters, plenty is left out and it feels a bit janky especially with Morgan Elsbeth which made it hard to really get invested in it.
Overall
Overall, Star Wars: Tales of The Empire is a good show that has some merit to it and will entertain fans of the franchise. But it doesn't hit the landing as much as it should and feels like a slight let down in that way but it is still a decent watch.
Rating - 7/10.
