Breaking Down the Sithy Secrets of Tales of the Empire’s New Trailer
Today Lucasfilm gave us a surprise first look at the next Star Wars animated series—not an ongoing successor to The Bad Batch as it enters its final run of episodes, but a continuation of the anthology format established by last year’s Tales of the Jedi. This time around, it’s not stories of light, but of darkness… and two very intriguing characters with connections across the Star Wars saga. Here’s all the hints and clues we spotted.
The trailer opens with an immediately arresting sight: three Star Destroyers overhead as Thrawn (the returning Lars Mikkelsen) and a younger Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto) discuss potential alliances. Given the people involved, and given the forested setting of Thrawn and Elsbeth’s conversation, this certainly looks like it could be the planet Corvus, the world that Elsbeth had become magistrate of when we first met her in the Mandalorian season two episode, “The Jedi.”
We then flash back to a world on fire—and legions of Trade Federation droids. “Years ago, my people were all but destroyed,” Elsbeth tells Thrawn as we flash to fleeing Nightsisters and even a glimpse of a young Elsbeth herself, hiding among the fauna of what is clearly now Dathomir: this is a very specific moment in time during The Clone Wars animated series, and its inclusion here reveals that Morgan was present during the events of the season four episode “Massacre.”
A climatic moment in Asajj Ventress’ revenge arc after being abandoned by Count Dooku—and after she had returned home to the Nightsisters to use them in a plot to assassinate him—“Massacre” sees General Grievous and his forces assault Dathomir on Dooku’s orders, razing the Nightsisters’ home to the ground and scattering Mother Talzin and her followers, Ventress included, to the wind. It’s from here that Ventress begins one new life among many she has shared, turning to the path of a wandering bounty hunter—but it’s clear we’re about to learn just what became of Morgan during that fateful event, too.
Thrawn as we see him here is not in the uniform we typically associate him with—meaning this takes place before he becomes Grand Admiral. But his rank plaque, code cylinders, and grey uniform denote at this point in his career Thrawn has risen to the rank of Admiral in the Imperial Navy.
Thrawn is promoted to Admiral during the events of the 2017 novel Thrawn, for his part in quelling a secessionist uprising on the world of Botajef through non-violent methods, safely bringing the planet back into the Imperial fold. The Botajef uprising takes place in 9BBY, so Thrawn and Elsbeth’s first meeting takes place some time between then and 2BBY. (As for that rise to Grand Admiral, he’s promoted after taking credit for ending an insurrection in the Batonn system.)
We cut away from Morgan’s story to focus momentarily on the other half of Tales of the Empire—as an Imperial Inquisitorius shuttle (of a similar design to ones seen in the Obi-Wan Kenobi show) flies towards a small water world in orbit of a larger planet. This appears to be Nur, the Mustafarian moon that is home to the Fortress Inquisitorius.
We cut to an Imperial detention block, as an Inquisitor is flanked by two Clone Troopers bearing the markings of the Coruscant Guard—indicating that this is much earlier on in the rise of the Empire than perhaps the stuff we’re seeing with Thrawn and Elsbeth. That Inquisitor is a familiar one, too: it’s the Fourth Sister from Obi-Wan Kenobi, with Rya Kihlstedt returning to reprise her live-action role in animation.
Material provided by Disney and Lucasfilm alongside the trailer’s release reveals that she was named Lyn before she became an Inquisitor. It’s important to note that Lyn/Fourth Sister is not wearing Inquisitorius gear here, but robes that look very Jedi—suggesting this might be very, very shortly after the establishment of the Empire.
We see that Lyn/Fourth Sister is interrogating a very familiar face: former Jedi Padawan, and prisoner of the Republic (now Empire), Barriss Offee. When we last saw Barriss, she was put on trial and jailed during the climactic events of Clone Wars season five, after staging a bombing at the Jedi Temple to protest the Order’s role in, and continued perpetration of, the Clone War—and attempting to pin the blame on her friend, Ahsoka Tano. Although Barriss was revealed as the true culprit and jailed, we now see she survived Order 66’s Jedi Purge—leaving her able to be swooped up by the Inquisitorius after the Republic’s fall.
Fun, grim note: Barriss is wearing a very similar prison uniform here. It matches one worn by her former master, Luminara Unduli, right down to a similar Mirialan headcover—or at least as a holoprojection of her was seen wearing in Star Wars Rebels’ first season, when Luminara’s corpse was used as a lure for Force sensitives to the Imperial prison facilities on the planet Stygeon Prime.
After the Fourth Sister releases her from captivity, we now see Barriss in dark robes, and flanked by dark-armored Clones. “Just be glad you’re not a Jedi any more,” one tells her—and Barriss is well on her way to joining the ranks of the Inquisitorius.
We cut back briefly to Morgan’s side of things, as we see her taking part in the Siege of Dathomir, slicing down battle droids with a pair of crescent blades and standing dismayed in the burning forests of her home. “I will fulfill my destiny,” Morgan tells someone in voice over, as we cut from Morgan in one burning forest…
…to what appears to be Corvus’ woods on fire, Morgan walking away from a burning ship. Here she’s wearing the magistrate robes we saw her in when she debuted in The Mandalorian, indicating that this particular sequence takes place well after her encounter with Thrawn earlier, in the age of the New Republic. She also has the beskar spear that will, eventually, find its way into the hands of Din Djarin.
Back with Barriss, we see her getting direct training from another familiar face—the Grand Inquisitor himself (Star Trek: Discovery and Baldur’s Gate 3 star Jason Isaacs returns to voice him, as he did in Rebels). “Mercy breeds defeat,” he tells Barriss, “but I will help you overcome this weakness.”
The training room he brings her into features a shelf of lightsabers of various designs—the one he hands Barriss for her to attack him with has a green blade, suggesting that these are the sabers of either Jedi killed by the Empire… or perhaps even the old weapons of Inquisitors from their own time in the Order.
Again, we’re back to Morgan, and again, we’re in the era of the New Republic—in the courtyard from The Mandalorian episode she debuted in, in the city of Calodan, we see Morgan treating with New Republic dignitaries, including several Defense Fleet troopers and, interestingly, another familiar face confirmed in press materials: Wing (Disney Imagineering legend Wing T. Chao). Wing had a brief appearance in “The Jedi,” as the man who replaced Morgan as Governor of Corvus after she was deposed by Ahsoka and Din. “You said the Empire would help to change things,” Wing tells Elsbeth, to which she replies “Everything comes at a cost,” before readying her spear to attack the New Republic officials.
Another flashback to Dathomir, now we see Morgan taking on General Grievous himself, her blades infused with Nightsister magicks to counter his lightsabers. “My world has been burning since I was a child,” Morgan bitterly narrates—given the earlier shot we saw of her on Corvus, as well as a brief scene of the New Republic diplomat being engulfed by their exploding ship, we’re getting a bit of poetry here: Morgan wasn’t responsible for the fires on Dathomir that fateful day, but she is the one who burned the forests around Calodan to solidify her rule.
Back in Barriss-time, we see a hooded female Inquisitor running through fog to a duel between the Fourth Sister and an unknown Jedi, wielding a blue blade. A shot we’ll get to later on in the trailer confirms that this Inquisitor is none other than Barriss herself—but she’s running towards the fight without her own Inquisitorius blade ignited. Whose side is she really on at this point?
We’re left to wonder as we’re thrust back to Dathomir—as a line of battle droids is blasted away by an obscured figure projecting a huge aura of blinding force. Is this what saves Morgan from being slaughtered by Grievous and his forces?
And again, back to Barriss—and seemingly the last step of her transformation into an Inqusitor. Watched by Fourth Sister and the Grand Inquisitor, she is trapped with another candidate in a forcefielded arena… after the Grand Inquisitor has thrown a single lightsaber into it for them to fight, and possibly die over.
We can assume Barriss triumphs, because the trailer climaxes with some very interesting moments. First, we hear the Grand Inquisitor introduce a “new master…” as the black boots of none other than Darth Vader himself stomp into view. He looked very different the last time Barriss saw him at her trial in “The Wrong Jedi.”
We cut to the waiting Inquisitors, which includes Barriss in her Inquisitorius armor—confirming that she is indeed the one we saw running towards the Fourth Sister’s duel earlier. She’s joined by the Fourth Sister and two familiar faces: the crow-like masked Inquisitor, so far unidentified by title, that Ahsoka killed at the climax of her story in Tales of the Jedi—and, speaking of her, none other than Marrok, the iconic jobber from Ahsoka.
Marrok’s presence here is very interesting—and perhaps, given his eventual connection to Morgan during the events of Ahsoka through Baylan Skoll and Shin Hati—a way to link these two different time periods in Tales of the Empire. Who knows, maybe we’ll get to learn how Marrok also happened to become a weird ass fart-ghost thingie here!
No doubt we’ll find out more as we draw closer to Tales of the Empire’s rise—the series begins streaming on Disney+ on Star Wars Day, May 4.