The Tales of the Jedi moniker has been around for a while. In its original form, the brand referred to a series of comic books that ran between 1993 and 1998, back when Dark Horse Comics still had the rights to publish Star Wars. This was before the prequels, before those Clone Wars cartoons, and long before Disney began its unfettered expansion of the franchise.
Remember that the 80s and 90s were a very difficult time to be a Star Wars fan. Return of the Jedi had come and gone. We had no idea if George was ever going to make any more movies. And so we settled for whatever scraps we could get our hands on. The occasional comic book. Trilogies of novels that grew the universe beyond Episode VI. Technical journals and RPG guidebooks. We were happy with anything and everything that took us back into that faraway galaxy.
When Disney took over the franchise, they rebranded that Expanded Universe as Star Wars Legends and declared it non-canonical to the franchise. But with the return of legacy characters like Thrawn and Mallatobuck, it looks like Lucasfilm is looking to mine its original stable of content in order to craft the future of Star Wars. And why not? The sheer amount of material available is absolutely staggering.
The Tales of the Jedi comics were particularly fascinating because they explored a corner of the Star Wars universe that we had never seen. We learned about Jedi history. We were properly introduced to the Sith. It was the kind of mythmaking and worldbuilding that helped satiate our fanboy cravings.
The Path to the Dark Side
In its current iteration, Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi is a series of six shorts that chronicle key moments from the prequel era. Unlike Star Wars: Visions, however, these aren’t standalone experiments, but a series of interconnected stories that center on two Jedi, namely Ahsoka Tano and Count Dooku.
Theirs are seemingly parallel lives, that were driven by the same purpose, but ended up going in very different directions. Ahsoka and Dooku are both portrayed as powerful but impulsive, only one is self-assured while the other is arrogant. And therein lies the subtle yet crucial difference between what makes a Jedi and what makes a Sith. The tragedy of Dooku was always that he believed that he was doing the right thing in order to bring peace and order to the galaxy, when in fact he was merely a pawn in Palpatine’s grand scheme. And in Tales of the Jedi, we get to see how that plays out in a wonderfully concise and nuanced manner.
These shorts work a lot better at filling in backstory than something like The Book of Boba Fett. Their runtime forces a pithiness that doesn’t take away any of the myth associated with these characters. Both Ahsoka’s rise and Dooku’s downfall are shown through action and not exposition. Throughout these six episodes, we see them make choices and take decisions that both cement who they are as characters and change the course of history. It’s incredibly effective writing.
“Luminous Beings Are We, Not This Crude Matter”
Tales of the Jedi is also a lot of fun.
Yes, we love it when we get to explore different sides of this massive and ever expanding universe. We enjoy stories that go beyond the Skywalkers. But as Star Wars fans, we also really love lightsabers. The best contemporary Star Wars has always been that fine balance of new and old. Of introducing interesting new ideas while cleverly providing just the right kind of fan service as well. Series creator (and George Lucas protege) Dave Filoni knows this. And he doesn’t disappoint. There are a lot of Jedis doing Jedi things here. Ambassadorial things. Crime investigator things. Force things. Lightsaber things. Filoni taps into our nostalgia and uses it to great effect.
It was also great hearing Ashley Eckstein, Liam Neeson, and Ian McDiarmid reprise their roles as Ahsoka, Qui-Gon, and Palpatine respectively.
Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi is something that is purely for the fans. Sure, there’s enough here for the casual viewer to enjoy. There’s a moral message. There’s the usual philosophical musings about the nature of good and evil. But the ones who are going to get the most out of this series are those who have been following every little detail of this story for the last five decades.
God knows I’m not complaining.
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