Tales of the Empire Review – Morgan & Barriss Offee
Tales of the Empire is Filoni's darker anthology: Morgan Elsbeth's rise to serve the Empire and Barriss Offee's path through the Inquisitors. Gorgeous and essential.
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🎬 The Dark Mirror
⭐ This review is part of the Star Wars Tales Anthology – watch all three animated anthologies in order.
If Tales of the Jedi was Filoni’s meditation on the light and how it falls, Tales of the Empire is its dark mirror — a companion anthology about two women navigating life under Imperial rule. It’s bleaker, sharper, and arguably even more beautiful, and for the Dadnology household it’s another 9/10: a gorgeous, mature set of shorts that deepens the saga in exactly the places it needed deepening.
AdStar Wars: The Clone Wars – The Complete Series (Blu-ray) (opens in a new tab)
Tales of the Empire is Disney+ only — but its characters are born in The Clone Wars, the essential companion on disc.
The structure mirrors its predecessor. Six shorts, two characters, two opposite journeys. Three follow Morgan Elsbeth from the destruction of her Nightsister home to her cold, calculated rise as an Imperial power broker. Three follow Barriss Offee — the fallen Jedi who betrayed Ahsoka in The Clone Wars — through the brutal world of the Inquisitors and toward something genuinely unexpected. One arc is a descent into ambition; the other is a climb back toward the light. Together, they explore what the Empire does to people, and whether anyone can claw their way out.
🧠 Story & Themes: Ambition and Redemption
The symmetry is, again, the masterstroke — but this time both roads run through darkness.
Morgan Elsbeth’s arc opens with tragedy: her Nightsister village on Dathomir is annihilated during the Clone Wars (the massacre fans saw from another angle in The Clone Wars). Orphaned and consumed by the need for order and revenge, Morgan rises through the Empire as a ruthless industrialist and strategist, ultimately devoting herself to a single obsession — the return of the exiled Grand Admiral Thrawn. If you’ve seen the Ahsoka series, this is the origin of its villain, and it makes her live-action scheming hit far harder. It’s a chilling study of how grief, untreated, hardens into something monstrous.
Barriss Offee’s arc is the emotional heart. Longtime fans know Barriss as the Jedi who bombed the Jedi Temple and framed Ahsoka in The Clone Wars — an act that drove Ahsoka from the Order. Tales of the Empire picks her up afterward, recruited into the Inquisitorius to hunt her former kind. But where Morgan descends, Barriss slowly, painfully ascends — rediscovering compassion inside the cruellest institution in the galaxy. It’s a redemption arc for one of the franchise’s most controversial figures, and it lands beautifully.
The shared theme is choice under tyranny: two women shaped by loss, one who lets it consume her and one who refuses to. It’s mature, morally rich storytelling told with remarkable economy.
AdStar Wars The Black Series Inquisitor Figure (opens in a new tab)
The brutal Jedi-hunters at the heart of Barriss Offee's arc — a chilling addition to any shelf.
🎭 Characters & Performances: Villains with Depth
The anthology thrives on giving complexity to characters the saga had treated as one-note. Morgan Elsbeth, voiced with icy precision, becomes far more than the live-action series’ stern antagonist — she’s a tragedy of vengeance. And Barriss, long dismissed as a traitor, is granted genuine humanity and the rare gift of a second chance.
| Arc | Character | The Journey |
|---|---|---|
| Descent | Morgan Elsbeth | From a destroyed Nightsister home to Imperial power |
| Redemption | Barriss Offee | From fallen Jedi and Inquisitor back toward the light |
| Shared theme | Life under the Empire | What loss makes of us — and whether we can choose otherwise |
The connective tissue is the real treat. Morgan’s story is a direct prequel to Ahsoka. Barriss’s draws a line from her Clone Wars betrayal through the Inquisitor era of Rebels and the Obi-Wan series. Familiar faces — Inquisitors, Nightsisters, and a certain returning figure — drift through, rewarding viewers who’ve done the homework with constant little jolts of recognition.
🎨 Animation & Audio: Beautifully Bleak
Visually, Tales of the Empire may be the most striking entry in the Tales line. The Nightsister green of Dathomir, the cold steel of Imperial facilities, and the red-lit menace of the Inquisitor fortress give it a darker, more dramatic palette than its predecessor. The art direction leans into shadow and contrast, and the result is gorgeous — more proof, if any were needed, that animation is where Star Wars looks its best.
Kevin Kiner’s score is suitably ominous, weaving Nightsister motifs and Imperial dread through the shorts. As with Tales of the Jedi, the compact runtimes are used with real precision — music and silence doing the heavy lifting at exactly the right moments. It’s a technically beautiful, atmospheric piece of work.
AdStar Wars The Black Series Morgan Elsbeth Figure (opens in a new tab)
The Nightsister-turned-Imperial whose vengeance shapes the Ahsoka series. A standout shelf piece.
👨👧 The Dad Perspective: Short, Dark, and Essential
Like its predecessor, Tales of the Empire is a roughly 90-minute commitment — an easy single-evening watch for a busy dad. And like its predecessor, it’s a companion piece, not a starting point. Morgan’s arc only resonates if you’ve seen (or are about to see) Ahsoka; Barriss’s only lands if you remember her Clone Wars betrayal. Watched in context, both are superb. Watched cold, they’re handsome but hollow. (Our animated Star Wars guide lays out the full journey.)
On age, this one’s a step darker than Tales of the Jedi — we’d hold it at 12+. The Imperial cruelty is real, the Inquisitors are genuinely frightening, and the themes of vengeance and moral compromise are heavy. But for older kids and adults who’ve done the journey, that darkness is the point: Barriss’s redemption only means something because the world around her is so bleak. It’s a rich watch-together for the right age, sparking real conversation about choice, grief, and whether anyone is beyond saving.
The only thing keeping it from a 10 is the same as its sibling: scope. These are beautiful, essential side stories, not main events. But as a dark mirror to Tales of the Jedi — and as the missing backstory for Ahsoka’s villain — it’s close to indispensable.
🌟 Standout Shorts
Morgan’s opening short is the gut-punch: the destruction of her Nightsister village, witnessed through a child’s eyes. It’s a sequence fans glimpsed from the outside in The Clone Wars, now reframed as a personal apocalypse, and it explains everything about the cold, vengeful woman she becomes. Few origin stories in Star Wars do so much with so little screen time.
But the anthology’s beating heart is Barriss Offee’s final short. Trapped inside the Inquisitorius and ordered to commit an atrocity, she makes a choice that quietly redeems a character fans had written off for a decade. It’s a small, human moment of defiance against an inhuman institution, and it’s genuinely moving — proof that even in its grimmest corner, Filoni’s Star Wars still believes people can choose the light. That single short is worth the price of admission.
✅ Pros & Cons
Pros
- A perfect dark mirror to Tales of the Jedi — ambition vs redemption
- Essential backstory for Morgan Elsbeth, the Ahsoka series villain
- A meaningful, surprising redemption arc for Barriss Offee
- Possibly the most beautiful, atmospheric entry in the Tales line
- Economical storytelling rich with connective payoffs
Cons
- Not a starting point — leans heavily on Clone Wars and Ahsoka
- Darker and heavier than Tales of the Jedi; firmly 12+
- Short by nature — an essential side story, not a main event
🗣️ Conclusion
From the screen to the shelf: Tales of the Empire lives on the dark side — our LEGO Darth Vader Bust (75439) review covers the centrepiece display bust.
AdLEGO Star Wars Darth Vader Bust 75439 (opens in a new tab)
The Sith Lord in brick — fitting for these dark-side character studies of Morgan Elsbeth and Barriss Offee.
🗣️ The Empire’s Beautiful, Bleak Companion
Tales of the Empire is the dark mirror to Tales of the Jedi — two women, two roads through the Empire, told with the same economy and even more striking visuals. Morgan Elsbeth’s cold rise gives Ahsoka’s villain a tragic origin, and Barriss Offee’s redemption rescues one of the franchise’s most controversial characters. It’s mature, gorgeous, and richly connected to everything around it.
It’s a 9 — held from perfection only by its modest scope. Once you’ve done the animated homework, it’s mandatory, and at 90 minutes it’s an effortless, rewarding watch. Filoni’s darkest Tales, and one of his most beautiful.
The Final Word: Don’t start here — but once you’ve earned it, this dark companion is essential.
📺 Movie night sorted: thousands of films and shows are streaming on Prime Video — free for 30 days. Worth a look before you buy the disc.
📌 FAQ — Frequently Asked Questions
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Disclaimer: This review and its visuals were created with the help of AI. Some links may be affiliate links – we may earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you.
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