Finally although, all these points come right down to a singular query: is Tales making efficient use of the anthology format, 4 tales in? The reply feels more and more like “no.” A part of this would possibly simply be a personality choice problem—of all 4 characters in both Tales collection to this point, Barriss is absolutely the one character we didn’t know the long run destiny of (Ahsoka in Jedi, in fact, we knew would go on and on throughout Star Wars continuity, however we nonetheless knew the course she was entering into across the context of her episodes), and Barriss is in the end the one character the collection did one thing significantly attention-grabbing with.
However no matter that, every character Tales focuses on will get about 40 minutes of airtime, and even that needs to be parceled between three delineated episodes of 10-Quarter-hour every. The window to successfully talk a person story in every of these slots, and have them construct an arc over all three of them, is an extremely fraught tightrope to stroll—and it’s debatable that past Barriss in Empire, the collection hasn’t actually successfully been in a position so as to add one thing significant to the tales of the opposite character’s it’s performed with.
Not each Star Wars story needs to be strictly definitive. The collection is usually at its greatest, maybe, when there are gaps left open for brand spanking new tales to be informed, for interpretation on the a part of its viewers. However there’s a distinction between that and a vagueness led to by ineffective use of kind and pacing. There’s additionally one thing to be mentioned that whereas it’s good that there’s room for extra to be mentioned about these characters, Star Wars solely actually will get one likelihood to inform these tales for the primary time—and in the event that they’re so hampered by the shape they’re being informed in, have been they actually value telling like that within the first place?
It’s not like Star Wars doesn’t work in an anthology format, both—Star Wars Visions is an ideal of instance of the collection taking the thought and working with it. But when Tales goes to turn out to be an everyday entity for Star Wars animation, whether or not it finds new establishments to construct tales round past the Jedi Order and the Empire, or returns to revisit these settings with extra characters, it must discover a higher approach to make use of its time—whether or not that’s specializing in only one character as an alternative of two, or releasing itself from needing to be quasi-episodic, or going for depth reasonably than breadth. No matter it decides, with Jedi and Empire now beneath its belt, one thing wants to alter.
Star Wars: Tales of the Empire is streaming on Disney+.
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