While it can be hard to keep track of the seemingly infinite number of Star Wars television programs, Tales of the Jedi was a great short-form animated series that flew under the radar back in 2022. It set a meditative tone through moody backdrops and deliberate pacing, transforming Count Dooku from a pulpy bad guy to a more complicated figure while also having us sit with each chapter in Ahsoka Tano’s story. It was followed up by the commendable Tales of the Empire, which also packed redemptive quests and humanizing turns into a brief runtime.
However, Tales of the Empire came with a problem that’s become increasingly unavoidable with a lot of recent Star Wars output: if you weren’t knee-deep in the specifics of Dave Filoni-helmed projects, like The Clone Wars cartoon, you might not have known who the hell its characters were or what was going on. Unfortunately, that problem has only worsened with Tales of the Underworld, the latest installment in the series.
Like before, this season is a quick watch made up of six 15-ish minute episodes divided into two arcs. The first is focused on fan-favorite Asajj Ventress, a dual-wielding Jedi-turned-Sith-turned-bounty hunter. Tying into that whole thing about Star Wars being increasingly unparsable for all but the hardcore fans, while Ventress is relatively well-known for a character who never appeared on the big screen, this chapter in her story is a continuation of her trajectory in The Clone Wars and its 133 episodes and her stint in the spin-off The Bad Batch (and also sort of the non-canonical Genndy Tartakovsky series she originates from). Far more unhinged, these episodes heavily reference the 2015 novel Star Wars: Dark Disciple, functioning as a fairly direct follow-up that relies on the audience understanding Ventress’ relationship with renegade Jedi Quinlan Voss. It’s one thing to have easter eggs to appease superfans, but the issue is that this show relies on that outside context for many of its central dramatic beats.
Luckily, Ventress still proves an interesting enough protagonist to ensure there’s at least a little bit of something here for more than just the diehards, and it’s quite refreshing to spend time with a force wielder who isn’t an outright do-gooder or a cackling villain. Voice actor Nika Futterman rides this line nicely, conveying the character’s mixture of disdain and reluctant heroism. You can see traces of her past as an assassin in how she somewhat nonchalantly talks about what she’s done, but she also puts her own life on the line to help others, like an unlikely apprentice. This particular relationship is another area where prior context adds more flavor, as a defining element of Ventress’ backstory is her nightmarish stint as Dooku’s apprentice and her own brief time as a master to a guy who, I kid you not, was named Savage Opress.
But even without that context, it’s largely enjoyable to watch Ventress and her pupil cut through this post-imperial backdrop in some well-animated heists as they team up with a very Star Wars dual-wielding robot bounty hunter and other colorful characters. Across their brief adventures, there’s even a nice bit of subversion around the series’ usually weird take on Tuscan Raiders-esque locals (namely, how our “heroes” tend to gun them down with little thought).
All that said, while it’s nice to see Ventress again, the biggest problem with these episodes is that they feel like a postscript to her character arc, lacking any real heft because she’s already made her biggest decisions about who she wants to be. When compared to Barriss Offee’s appearance in the previous season (I apologize if you have no idea who that is), where she made a pivotal moral choice, Ventress has already come out of the other side of her “Big Decision,” making her actions here somewhat perfunctory. It’s a largely enjoyable trio of episodes, but it’s mostly a victory lap that will only have that intended effect if you’ve witnessed every pitstop on her journey spread across multiple TV shows and mediums.
As for the other main character, the series also focuses on Cad Bane, a ruthless gunslinger also introduced in The Clone Wars. Although his episodes are theoretically a bit more approachable because it’s an origin story that tells Bane’s tale from the start, like many prequels, it is clearly meant as a payoff for those already familiar with this outlaw.
More importantly, it suffers from the opposite problem as Ventress’ arc: while it gives us the full context for Bane’s trajectory to becoming a cold-hearted killer, unfortunately, he’s just not a particularly interesting figure. Building on a long line of Star Wars bounty hunters enshrined in nerd culture by a couple of throwaway shots in The Empire Strikes Back, up until now, Bane has mostly been defined by cutting a cool profile and being really good at shooting guys. While this arc attempts to humanize him through a decades-spanning saga that’s shot and written like a Western, it doesn’t have the space or economic storytelling to make good on these aesthetics.
Things begin with Bane as a Dickensian orphan in a convincingly portrayed Great Depression-adjacent backdrop where a futuristic cityscape meets hard times and sepia tones. From here, we jump across time as Bane goes from a little guy to a moody twenty-something to eventually his gravelly-voiced endpoint as his vengeful actions put him in a death feud with an old friend. It’s a setup leaning into a particular type of tragic western and epic crime story, and it does have its moments here and there. There are betrayals, shootouts, and showdowns outlined by fire. Later, in a tense High Noon-styled sequence, Bane’s rival Nero works against a ticking clock as an inevitable standoff approaches, one that’s eventually effectively framed via gun-on-holster camera angles. And between it all, you can see the shape of a grand tragedy, as former allies become bitter enemies.
But while there is a reasonable amount of style on display, these episodes never fully pull us into their drama or make us invested in these characters. It all feels too deeply stooped in familiar genre beats and broad strokes, like an imitation of much better Westerns with more time to patiently develop their conflicts and cast. The time skips, combined with the brief 45-minute runtime, give us too little notice to settle into each phase of this journey. All in all, this stretch relies on viewers being existing Cad Bane superfans (if those exist) who are eager for whatever scraps they can get of this previously enigmatic figure.
Although Tales of the Underworld shares the impressive animation of Lucasfilm’s recent work, the tales it tells simply aren’t as moving as the studio’s best. Part of the problem is that, like a lot of Star Wars media these days, it’s too entangled in the Gordian knot of existing canon: getting the most out of these Asajj Ventress-focused episodes requires a lot of prerequisite reading, while Cad Bane’s origin story is the kind of thing that no one but the most dedicated The Clone Wars fans asked for. Sure, Tales of the Jedi and Tales of the Empire required this degree of familiarity to wring out every drop of drama, but in those cases, it was more a cherry on top than a necessity thanks to how those seasons delivered satisfying, contained narratives. Although Tales of the Underworld makes for a light, sometimes entertaining watch, it’s too obsessed with reveling in its own mythos instead of giving us something new.
Elijah Gonzalez is the assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.
