*spoilers ahead for Tales of the Jedi and Ahsoka*
Do you hear the Imperial March playing in the distance?
I’ve made several posts about Filoni’s odd pet project, Tales of the Jedi. Bearing a misleading title, the short six-episode series featured stories divided evenly between Ahsoka Tano and Count Dooku – two Jedi who both famously left the Order. Despite this intriguing premise, TotJ was a mixed bag. Dooku’s episodes, while repetitive, were interesting, but Ahsoka’s, while filling in empty spots in her story, tried to undo her entire titular novel.
(And Ahsoka and Dooku never interact! I mean, come on!)
Anyhow. I was hesitant and curious if SW would release a second season of TotJ. If the show had been what it initially appeared – a series of unconnected episodes about different Jedi – then a continuation would make sense. But with a series so heavily focused on two central characters, both with wrapped-up arcs, there didn’t seem to be much room for anything else.
Enter Tales of the Empire.
For all my claims of loyalty and adoration towards Star Wars, I’m admittedly not the best at keeping myself up to date with the most recent SW news. (In my defense, for a while it was just two TV shows and a new movie every year.) So I saw this poster for TotE by accident while I was in my math class, and it caught me so off-guard I literally felt my stomach drop. Barriss Offee certainly wasn’t a face I expected to see again anytime soon.
I’ll get this out of the way – I haven’t seen the show’s trailer, and I’m not planning to. I don’t like watching trailers in general, since they tend to carry so many spoilers, but SW and Marvel are the worst offenders here. I’ll watch the show when it premieres, of course, but this post is going to be my thoughts on the poster alone. And the main two people upon it.
Ex-Jedi, ex-Nightsister
Like TotJ, TotE is promising a central focus on two familiar SW characters. This time, they’re both villains: Morgan Elsbeth, Nightsister turned Imperial warrior turned witch, and Barriss Offee, Jedi turned terrorist turned… something yet unknown.
Morgan Elsbeth is an interesting choice to parallel Barriss. She’s certainly an intriguing character, and her novelty has grown with time. From her ability to hold her own with Ahsoka in The Mandalorian to the exploration of her Nightsister heritage in Ahsoka, the potential for a fascinating backstory is abundant. Elsbeth’s arc has been concluded in canon, marked by her death at the hands of Ahsoka and Sabine in the former’s titular show. But there are still many gaps in her history that make her a strong character to be expanded upon. Unlike Dooku, who had his own book prior to TotJ, Elsbeth only exists within two series, having come to life in one and dying in the other. Learning of her origins, her family, and how she came to be so loyal to Thrawn makes TotE worth watching.
And then there’s the other star of the show. Barriss Offee.
When season 5 of The Clone Wars was released, the original plan was for Barriss to kill herself by setting off an explosion in her jail cell after the events of the trial. This path was altered, with Barriss intended to play a part in the future of SW.
However, when TCW was canceled in 2013, Barriss’s fate became ambiguous. She hasn’t reappeared in any movies or TV shows for eleven years. Finally, we’ll be seeing her again – and I’m terrified.
So, let’s get some backstory on Barriss.
Who Barriss was
Barriss’s character first appeared in Attack of the Clones, as one of the many Jedi fighting at Geonosis. However, her true introduction came in season 2, episode 6 of TCW, “Weapons Factory.” Her somewhat detached master-Padawan relationship with Luminara Unduli mirrored Anakin and Ahsoka’s own bond, challenging their closeness and reliance on one another.
In this batch of episodes, Ahsoka and Barriss interacted many times. “Weapons Factory” and “Brain Invaders” focused on the two of them and their developing friendship. Despite their different teaching styles from their respective masters, the girls found a strong camaraderie and trust in one another. They held hands underground, worked together to fight off zombie brain worms, and Ahsoka refused to kill an infected Barriss even when Barriss begged her to do so.
I still love these episodes. Aside from Lux, Barriss was one of Ahsoka’s only friends her age. Their relationship was adorable, and I could see them one day becoming a cute couple. Jedi-Jedi romances are so fun, after all.
Then season 5 threw me for a loop, and suddenly the Barrissoka ship was far less fluffy than it began.
In the final episodes of this season, an unknown person bombed the Jedi Temple and killed both civilians and clone troopers. Anakin and Ahsoka investigated the case, but Ahsoka fled when she was framed for the crime. She and Anakin kept searching for answers, and finally the truth was uncovered. It was Barriss, Ahsoka’s own friend, who was the culprit. Arrested, Barriss announced that she did so because the Jedi had become corrupted. The shock of this reveal and Ahsoka’s temporary expulsion from the Jedi Order resulted in Ahsoka walking away from them for good, leaving Anakin behind. And to this day, she has never seen Barriss again.
For a frequently recurring character, Barriss’s sudden and intense actions came as a massive surprise. Here was a young Padawan very much like Ahsoka, who developped such an undercurrent of hate for the Jedi that she was willing to murder her own in a desperate attempt to end a terrible war. Whether or not you want to call Barriss sympathetic, she’s unquestionably fascinating.
Who is Barriss now?
My avoidance of the trailer is showing here. For a long time, the theory prevailed – and still does, in some circles – that the Seventh Sister from Rebels was actually Barriss herself. After all, Seventh Sister was Miralan too, and Barriss being turned into an Inquisitor wouldn’t be too strange. But I’ve never liked this theory. In characterization, Seventh Sister acts very differently from Barriss, and I don’t think they look that much alike. The face tattoos don’t match up either, in my opinion.
Also – and here’s the cincher – in canon, the Seventh Sister is dead. While a dark-side-turned Barriss ultimately being killed by Maul isn’t entirely uninteresting, this fact just makes the theory hold little water. If TotE confirms that Barriss is the Seventh Sister, then that means her entire future is already determined and ruined. There’ll be no chance for redemption, no internal struggles, no potential. And wow, this would really ruin Rebels for me. If this is the path TotE sends Barriss down, I’ll just mentally block it all.
But Barriss doesn’t need to become the Seventh Sister to turn to the dark side. She could still very well become an Inquisitor or something Sith-adjacent. I always read her character as someone who wasn’t leaning towards the dark side but rather claiming it because she couldn’t accept the light. She’s always been a complex character, after all. So Barriss picking up red lightsabers and letting the last of her inhibitions drop away would be a strong, realistic arc for her to take.
However… there’s every possibility that Barriss’s story will be much more different than any of these outcomes. After all, when she framed Ahsoka for the Temple bombing, Barriss made a powerful enemy, one who’s still around – Anakin turned Vader.
And has he ever been merciful to those who harm his loved ones?
This is the TCW aftermath I’m dreading. I can absolutely see Barriss rejecting the dark side and regretting all of her past actions, only to be killed by Vader in the end. After all, remember Yaddle in TotJ? She was a previously established character who was heavily built up to appear in the show alongside Dooku, only for her to die at his hand within the same episode. Horrifyingly, Barriss could face the same fate.
It would be such a let-down for Barriss’s return to be delivered in the same breath as her death. So much for fantheory and speculation – all of those eleven years of waiting would be for naught. At that point, wouldn’t it just be better to keep Barriss’s story unknown and leave the fanbase free to imagine?
But I digress. Hopefully, if Barriss has been kept alive this long, she won’t be squandered the moment we lay eyes on her again. And despite my fears for her ending, there are other compelling elements of her story we could receive in TotE.
Who will Barriss become?
I hope with all my heart that we’ll see Luminara Unduli in here. Though emotionally distant and sometimes cold, she was Barriss’s master all her life. And we know from Rebels that Luminara lived for a little longer after Order 66. She was captured by the Grand Inquisitor and imprisoned before he finally killed her.
This means that there was a time frame where both master and apprentice were alive – and very likely in similar circles. If Barriss has been taken in by the Inquisitors, after all, she’d have prime access to Luminara. And what road would that lead her down?
Ugh, and here I go getting queasy again. If TotE decides to let Barriss fall fully into the dark side, then her reunion with Luminara will be messy. The darkest timeline consists of Barriss being the one to end her former master’s life – be it through coercion, torture, or her own blossoming dark side potential. Will this be the result of a scared girl who still wants to survive, or a broken Jedi taking out her anger on the woman who was supposed to protect her?
Maybe there’s a reality where Luminara sacrifices herself in some way to help Barriss, either by aiding her escape or keeping her former Padawan from darkening her soul. Remember that theory going around after TFA that Han activated Kylo Ren’s lightsaber himself so as to prevent his son from having to kill his father? Yeah, I’m imagining something like that with Luminara.
What path will TotE take?
Let’s get back to the main focus of this show – after all, Barriss won’t be the only star. She’ll be sharing the screen with Elsbeth. TotE will take after TotJ in one of two ways – it’ll be what the original show was, or what it could’ve been.
I won’t stop complaining about how TotJ ruined its potential. It focused on Ahsoka and Dooku, two ex-Jedi who took very different paths. But instead of directly paralleling their arcs, it gave us two separate storylines that never interacted. Ahsoka’s episodes felt especially disconnected.
This is the first possible route of TotE. Following the formula of TotJ, it could give us three episodes about Elsbeth and three about Barriss. We’d receive some half-hearted parallels and occasional cameos, but not much else.
And then there’s the second option – becoming what TotJ could’ve been. TotE could directly parallel Barriss and Elsbeth’s arcs, showing the causes that push them both to the dark side.
(I was going to add that it’d be nice for the two MCs to meet each other this time around, but I don’t think the timelines would match up. Barriss’s story will like take place immediately following TCW, and Elsbeth isn’t a viable threat until season 2 of The Mandalorian, almost thirty years later. However, since Elsbeth is in her mid-to-late 50s during her screentime, a younger version of herself might be around post-TCW. But she likely wouldn’t be in the same environment as Barriss.)
However, I’m having a hard time finding a strong connection between Barriss and Elsbeth’s stories. Dooku and Ahsoka came easier. If Barriss is fully forsaking the light side, then this could work. Or Barriss could find a dark side mentor, the same way Elsbeth finds Thrawn. (I doubt it’d be Vader, though. He’d probably Force-choke Barriss pretty quickly.)
Whichever direction TotE takes, I’ll certainly be watching. Since Elsbeth is already dead, her episodes can only be curious looks into her life, but there’s far more riding on Barriss’s return. Can we truly receive a proper reintroduction to one of the best TCW characters?
My ideal result of this show is for Barriss to either become Sith-like or reject the dark side and run away to some planet – in any case, not dying. Then she can appear in the next season of Ahsoka and reunite with her former friend. I’ve been dying for these two to meet face-to-face again, especially with so many years between that trial and today. And Ahsoka sensing the dark side in Barriss and becoming determined to save her, the way she was unable to save Anakin, would be fantastic.
I know this is a distant hope, but I’m clinging to it regardless. Isn’t that the crux of Star Wars, after all?
We hope and keep hoping. And when that fails, we turn to fanfiction and determinedly ignore canon while rewatching SW’s greatest hits. Let’s hope I won’t have to take up the pen again after Tales of the Empire!
