Tales of the Underworld Review – Star Wars at Its Shadiest

The Third Tales Entry Earns Its Place

⭐ This review is part of the Star Wars Tales Anthology – watch all three animated anthologies in order.

By the time Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld arrived in 2025, the anthology format had already proven itself twice. Tales of the Jedi was elegant and precise. Tales of the Empire was darker and even more visually striking. Both earned 9/10 ratings at the Dadnology household and a permanent place in the animated Star Wars canon conversation. The third entry had a high bar to clear.

It clears it, and does so with rather more swagger than the previous two — which is exactly right given who the stars are.

Ad

Star Wars The Black Series Hondo Ohnaka Figure (opens in a new tab)

Hondo Ohnaka in Black Series form — the greatest pirate in the galaxy deserves a shelf spot. Perfect companion to the Tales anthology.

The Underworld Premise: Villains Get the Best Stories

The genius of the underworld pivot is something Star Wars has always known but rarely exploited at this depth: the characters who operate outside the Force binary are often the most interesting ones in the galaxy.

Jedi and Sith are constrained by their philosophies, their commitments, and their mythology. A bounty hunter or a pirate has no such limitations. They can be funny, pragmatic, self-interested, occasionally honourable, and genuinely dangerous — sometimes all in the same scene. The moral landscape they inhabit is not good versus evil but “profitable versus very bad business decision,” and that ambiguity produces better drama than a great many lightsaber duels.

The underworld of Star Wars also happens to contain two of the franchise’s finest supporting characters — characters who have accumulated decades of fan affection precisely because the writers gave them room to be complicated.

Hondo Ohnaka: Star Wars’ Greatest Pirate

Hondo Ohnaka has been operating on the periphery of Star Wars since The Clone Wars, and he has never been less than entertaining. A Weequay pirate captain who has fought for, against, and alongside both Jedi and Sith with magnificent impartiality, Hondo lives by a philosophy that is unexpectedly coherent: business first, survival always, honour occasionally when it does not cost too much.

Tales of the Underworld gives him room to breathe in a format that suits him perfectly. The short anthology structure is ideal for a character who works best in concentrated bursts — Hondo in a full season-length show risks wearing out his welcome; Hondo in fifteen-minute shorts is exactly the right dosage. His segments here are funny, self-aware, and quietly wise in the way that only characters who have been genuinely tried by the world can be.

There is a line in Clone Wars that serves as the unofficial Hondo thesis: “I am a pirate. A part-time pirate, at least.” It lands as a joke, but it also captures something real about how he navigates a galaxy at war — with enough flexibility to survive when rigid ideologues get destroyed. His Tales of the Underworld appearances build on that philosophy with the confidence of a character fully realised.

Ad

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – The Complete Series (Blu-ray) (opens in a new tab)

Hondo and Cad Bane are both Clone Wars originals — the essential companion viewing for full Underworld impact.

Cad Bane: Cold and Perfect

Cad Bane is the counterweight to Hondo’s warmth. Where Hondo is entertaining, Cad Bane is chilling — the galaxy’s most efficient bounty hunter, a Duros in a wide-brimmed hat who has never taken a job he did not complete and never shown a moment of sentimentality that might complicate the transaction.

His appearances in Tales of the Underworld are precisely what the character demands. Cold, unhurried, technically precise. The shorts do not try to make him sympathetic or explain away his ruthlessness — they simply let him operate at the level he operates at, which is enough. Cad Bane at full competence is one of Star Wars’ most compelling on-screen presences, and the anthology format captures that without diluting it.

The interplay between Hondo’s piratical chaos and Bane’s cold professionalism — not necessarily in the same shorts, but across the anthology as a tone — is what makes Underworld feel cohesive. Two very different criminal philosophies, both portrayed with full conviction.

How It Compares to the Other Tales

The honest comparison: Tales of the Underworld is slightly less emotionally heavy than Tales of the Jedi and Tales of the Empire, and that gap is why it sits at 8 rather than 9. Its siblings hit harder because the characters — Ahsoka’s survival, Dooku’s fall, Barriss Offee’s redemption — carry more narrative weight than the underworld stories, which are ultimately about operators managing the chaos rather than navigating genuine moral transformation.

But “slightly less emotionally heavy” is not a significant criticism when the alternative is “more consistently entertaining.” Underworld has a higher average enjoyment level per short than either of its predecessors. The Hondo segments, in particular, have a warmth and wit that makes them immediately rewatchable in a way that the darker Jedi and Empire shorts are not.

The anthology as a trilogy works better than any single entry alone. Jedi gives you the idealists. Empire gives you the survivors. Underworld gives you the opportunists. Together they sketch out the full human — or alien — range of how individuals navigate a galaxy at war when the grand philosophical battle between light and dark is not really their primary concern.

Watch Order Notes

Tales of the Underworld is the most standalone of the three anthologies, but it still benefits significantly from Clone Wars background. Hondo’s entire character history — his relationships with Anakin, Obi-Wan, Ezra Bridger — is background information that enriches every scene. Cad Bane’s reputation as the galaxy’s most feared bounty hunter is built across Clone Wars and The Bad Batch. Knowing that history does not make Underworld inaccessible without it, but it makes it land at a different level.

The recommended order for the full Tales experience: Clone Wars first, then Rebels, then Tales of the Jedi, then Tales of the Empire, then Underworld. At that point, the Ahsoka series and Andor are also in your background, and the criminal underworld connections ripple through all of it in interesting ways.

If you are arriving at Underworld without that context, you will still enjoy it — particularly the Hondo segments, which are written with enough self-explanation to be accessible. But consider it incentive to do the homework.

The Dad Perspective: The Easiest Entry in the Trilogy

Tales of the Underworld has one significant practical advantage over its siblings: it is the most immediately accessible of the three, and the most reliably entertaining for a viewer who has not done extensive Star Wars animated homework.

The criminal underworld premise requires less prior investment than Ahsoka’s emotional arc or Barriss Offee’s redemption. Hondo is essentially self-contextualising — within two minutes of his first appearance, you understand exactly who he is, what he wants, and why he is funny. Cad Bane similarly announces himself through competence rather than requiring background.

For the right age — 12 and up, in our assessment — this is also the Tales entry most likely to spark genuine conversation about ethics. The underworld characters do not have the Force as a moral compass; they navigate by self-interest, pragmatism, and occasional unexpected loyalty. Asking a teenage kid why Hondo is interesting despite being a criminal, or what Cad Bane’s professional code says about him as a person, opens up more interesting ethical territory than most explicit moral lessons manage.

Ad

Star Wars The Black Series Cad Bane Figure (opens in a new tab)

The galaxy's most feared bounty hunter in Black Series form. Cad Bane is at his coldest and best in Tales of the Underworld.

Pros and Cons

From the screen to the shelf: the underworld is bounty-hunter turf — see our LEGO Jango Fett’s Starship (75433) review for the Firespray in brick.

Ad

LEGO Star Wars Jango Fett's Starship 75433 (opens in a new tab)

The bounty-hunter Firespray, in brick — fitting for the scoundrels and hunters of the galaxy's underworld.

📺 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.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Tales of the Underworld worth watching?

Absolutely, especially if you have already watched Tales of the Jedi and Tales of the Empire. It is the most entertaining of the three anthologies — Hondo Ohnaka alone is worth the runtime. Even as a standalone it works reasonably well, though the Clone Wars background enriches every short significantly.

Do I need to watch Tales of the Jedi and Empire first?

Not strictly for Underworld itself — it is more standalone than its siblings. But watching the full trilogy in order gives you the full arc of the anthology concept: Force users on both sides, then life under the Empire, and finally the world between. The experience is richer for the context.

Who are the characters in Tales of the Underworld?

The central characters are Hondo Ohnaka, the beloved Weequay pirate captain from The Clone Wars and Rebels, and Cad Bane, the cold and precise bounty hunter who is one of Star Wars’ best villains. Other underworld figures and criminal operators also appear across the shorts.

Is Tales of the Underworld suitable for kids?

We suggest 12+. The underworld setting means crime, violence, moral ambiguity, and characters who are genuinely dangerous rather than cartoonishly villainous. The humor in Hondo’s segments offsets some of the weight, but the overall tone is adult. Not a show for younger children.

Is Tales of the Underworld canon?

Yes. Like Tales of the Jedi and Tales of the Empire, Tales of the Underworld is fully canonical Star Wars, produced under Dave Filoni’s supervision as part of the animated anthology line on Disney+.