Star Wars: Tales of The Empire

 Star Wars: Tales of the Empire continues off of the success of series, Tales of the Jedi. The six episodes focus on two characters; Morgan Elsbeth and Barriss Offee, each getting three episodes respectively.

The episodes are structured much better than its jedi counterpart with each episode focused in different eras to get an overall character arc over the span of many decades.  The 15 minutes episodes format continue to be a concise form of storytelling for the Star Wars universe

The animation style for the bad batch continues to be a staple in Star Wars but is some of the best animation we have seen to date. Clearly, Lucas is really honing in on this style and improving both the visual appeal and its frame rate flow to make it more seamless, especially during light sabre battles. 

Music and sound is always something that drives passion in all Star Wars properties and Tales of the Empire is no different. Star Wars has a way to make us interested in characters that are not the brands most popular characters. Exploring them in animated form allows us to get much needed back story on many characters in the universe and especially these two because they are currently integrals parts of the new Dave Filoni expansion universe. 

Morgan Elsbeth was such a huge part of the Ahsoka series and these three episodes allow us to understand her involvement in the empire in such a short runtime. 

The lightsaber combat in the Barriss Offee episodes were so gorgeous and in many instances, I had to question if it was live actin because the lighting and shadows were so realistic.

I really hope the Star Wars Tales series continue with many more character expansions because they are extremely effective world building tools. 

All 6 episodes of Tales of the Empire are available Saturday May 4th on Disney + 

May the 4th be with you! 

Review by: Stefano Bove 

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