Tales Spin

A few months back, I blogged about the excellent Star Wars: Andor. But now that The Mandalorian has returned with season 3, I'm reminded that there was actually another Star Wars series that overlapped Andor a little, and I've said nothing about it.

Tales of the Jedi was a collection of 6 short stories. Bringing back the Clone Wars characters, these 15-minute-ish episodes focused on Ahsoka Tano and Count Dooku. The episodes are arranged chronologically, skipping forward through a period of about 20 years to show us moments not previously covered in the Clone Wars series.

In so many ways, this mini-series really felt like a Clone Wars season 8. (Or perhaps, 7.5?) Not only did it bring back the characters, it brought back the voice cast, the animation style, and the storytelling techniques of the more sophisticated later seasons of Clone Wars. And more, no effort was made for Tales of the Jedi to feel like a stand-alone series.

That's particularly true in the episodes that focused on Ahsoka Tano. There's really no arc to those three episodes; they're just painting in fine details of things you're already assumed to know. In particular, I expect the very last episode would lack any resonance at all unless you're a fan who has seen every single episode of Clone Wars and Rebels, and has pretty good recall of what happened in those series. Maybe in this modern age of entertainment "universes," all this is supposed to contribute to the whetting of your appetite for the coming Ahsoka TV series? (And these episodes maybe kind of do that. Yet they're hardly essential viewing.)

It's actually the three Count Dooku episodes that really shine here. First, they cover a period of time not previously depicted in a Star Wars film or TV series -- the time before he turned to the Dark Side. Second, the episodes collectively present a tight, clear character arc: how Dooku's disillusionment took root. As the saying goes, the bad guy never thinks they're the bad guy... and yet until these episodes, Dooku was still fundamentally just a mustache-twirling adversary. Far less background with the cartoon series is needed to appreciate the simple-but-effective story being told here.

Overall, I'd give Tales of the Jedi a B. Ultimately, if you've liked Clone Wars (or The Bad Batch, or Rebels), you'll like these. At the same time, if you've confined your Star Wars viewing to the live action stuff, you really shouldn't start with these -- both for the content and for the fact that they probably aren't going to "win you over."