Didn't think this was very good at all.
The Morgan stuff just doesn't come across as interesting or meaningful since it's not explored in any real depth and the character herself is not particularly engaging on her own. We learn a bit more of her backstory but otherwise there's just not much there. Bonus points for having yet another New Republic character act like a complete moron.
The Bariss stuff had more potential but with such short run times everything happens way too quickly characterwise, with no time taken to let the story breathe/play out. There's nothing inherently wrong with the general outline of the story they presented, but having it happen over 30-35 minutes felt very rushed and unearned.
That's how I felt. I finally got to watch it today, and overall I was left disappointed. The Morgan storyline is basically a whole lot of nothing. The first episode was the best of the bunch, but that was because of everything happening around her, not anything to do with her specifically. It was definitely fun seeing Grievous again, and watching the destruction of the Nightsisters from another point of view, and it was definitely cool to see another Dathomirian culture, but as for Morgan herself...
Well, we learn that she was a bad kid who got others killed in the name of revenge. Then becomes a bad adult who kills and subjugates others in the name of revenge.
There's supposed to be some irony that in her quest for vengeance she's become like the people she seeks to destroy, but it falls flat, partially because none of the people she's subjugating and being cruel to have anything to do with her past, and it's been so long since it happened that the Separatists are long dead. Like, by the point of the final Morgan episode, Grievous flamed out over 3 decades prior, and the Confederacy itself along with him.
If the story was about her struggle with desiring revenge against an enemy who is long gone, and the anger and lack of fulfillment she feels against being unable to strike back against those who hurt her, then okay, that's a valid motivation...but we don't really see that when she's trying to sell the Empire on her new ship designs and trying to strike good business deals with them. So it makes that first episode feel pretty disconnected from everything that comes after, and makes those following two episodes feel like things are happening just because, since they don't seem to tie in with her supposed motivation.
I get that visually, they do try to tie everything together, with her burning the forest at the end, similar to how Grievous burned down the forests of Dathomir, but in-universe she doesn't really give a reason for why she does that. Some ambassadors from the New Republic shows up, so she kills them and then decides to burn down all the forests right outside her city because...? I guess because Grievous burned down her forests, and she hates Grievous, so she'll do the same. It's weird.
The Barriss stuff on the other hand is decently good. The trouble with it is that it tries to stuff too much into too short of a time frame. Unlike with the Dooku story from Tales of the Jedi which showed us bits of his life throughout the decades, with each piece building towards the greater story of his total disillusionment (first with the Republic, then the Jedi Order, and finally the Jedi Council), Barriss' story doesn't feel like it builds to something grander in total.
Barriss starts off being disillusionment with the Jedi and then begrudgingly joining The Inquisitors. Cut to her being an Inquisitor, but One of the Good Ones™ who doesn't actually ever do anything bad, and then almost instantly becomes disillusioned with the Empire. Cut to her then being a wise old reformed Jedi who has seemingly made up with Ahsoka(?!) and atoned for her past misdeeds... And by "misdeeds", I mean the single temple bombing, because we're not shown her doing anything evil as an Inquisitor. If anything, compared to the rest of them, she was an absolute saint.
I don't have a problem with the broad strokes of the story either. It actually makes a lot of sense that Bariss, a person who was so disillusioned with the Jedi for becoming warriors and killers would also eventually have similar problems with the Inquisitors, a group who are far worse. Her deciding to leave the Inquisitors is
We're teased with Barriss and Vader interacting, which should be a big deal considering their history, but nope. The most we get is a glance. We're teased with the idea that Barriss and Ahsoka have reunited, which should be a big deal considering their history, but nope. The most we get is an off-handed comment. Heck, we also know that The Grand Inquisitor himself was one of the Temple Guards who brought Barriss to trial, and the experience was what made him himself question the Jedi Order and fall to the dark side. You'd think there'd be a bit more interaction between them, given that, but once again, no. They fight a little, he introduces them to Darth Vader, that's the extent of it.
Instead the meat and potatoes of the Barriss story is her relationship with Lyn / Fourth Sister. Which is...fine. The trouble with it is that we don't really know Lyn as a character. We see her briefly in the Obi-Wan series being all Inquisitorius, and then we see her again her, again being extremely evil, slaughtering dozens of innocent people in the name. We're told that Barriss knows her from her time as a Jedi, but we're not given any insight into their past relationship. Were they friends? Acquaintances? Did Lyn hate Barriss for betraying the Jedi at the time? Did she agree with her? Who knows.
Ultimately, we're supposed to sort of sympathize with Barriss' struggle in the end to reach Lyn, but Lyn is barely even a character, and nothing we've seen about her thus far makes her seem redeemable. She's not even given a motivation for joining The Inquisitors or questioning the Jedi the way Barriss is, so as far as the audience knows maybe Lyn was always just someone who was a sociopath, just waiting for permission to slaughter people.
It just feels like a missed opportunity, because Barriss has so much history with so many other characters, but we get none of that. Heck, we don't even know how she felt about Order 66 and the Jedi being wiped out. Is she cool with Palpatine being the Emperor now; serving the same guy who oversaw her trial? Even if she doesn't realize Anakin is Vader, seemingly she might have some feelings about those two things. The little bits of dialogue we get in make it sound like she's cool with all the way things went down, and she only disagrees with slaughtering innocent people and surrendering Jedi, but that leaves so much unanswered about how she got to that point.
Which I guess is my biggest problem with the Barriss episodes. They feel like they skip over far too much. It feels like the show should have been 6 episodes of her. We need to see her conflict in learning that the Jedi Order was destroyed, because as much as she felt they lost their way, surely she would have been saddened or at least shocked by their destruction? We need to see her actually believing (or trying to convince herself that she believes) that the Empire and the Inquisitors are a force for good in the galaxy, before becoming more and more disgusted with them before her eventual betrayal. And while we don't actually need to see what happens in the years between her leaving the Inquisitors and becoming Old Woman Barriss, a little more in-between to flesh it out would be nice.
It's quite the leap for the first two episodes take place over the course of what is probably a couple years, and then have the next episode jump probably a decade or more into the future. That would be fine if every episode featured a similar time skip, but instead of a beginning, middle and end, it sort of feels like two beginnings (Barriss joins the Inquisitors, Barriss starts her new life) and a distant ending (Ancient Barriss accepts the end of her life). Again, I think this could have been solved with more time and episodes. This was just too much of a story to cram into 3 (not even full length) episodes.
Hopefully we get another Tales of series next year. Tales of the Bounty Hunters, Tales of the Confederacy, Tales of the First Order, or whatever, I don't care. I just hope it's a little more even next time around. I like the idea behind these types of shows, but this one was more of a miss than a hit for me. Still worth watching though, because even as uneven as it was, the animation was drop-dead gorgeous, and there's a lot of good here, despite my complaints. Plus, if you don't like any particular episode, they're over fast enough, and none of them drag. I just had hoped for a bit more.
