This article contains spoilers for “Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld.”
There is good “Star Wars,” and there is bad “Star Wars,” and sometimes, you can get both in just a couple days. Right now, “Andor” season 2 is in the middle of its run, earning unprecedented critical praise for the franchise. At the same time, Lucasfilm has just released the third season of its “Tales” anthology — a short-form animated show focusing on a different corner of the universe and pair of characters with each installment.
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Following “Tales of the Jedi” in 2022 and “Tales of the Empire” in 2024, this year’s Star Wars Day (May the 4th) brought “Tales of the Underworld,” with three 15-ish-minute episodes each for Cad Bane (Corey Burton) and Asajj Ventress (Nika Futterman). And while those are two characters with plenty of room for development and expansion, the new series is almost completely inert. Where past “Tales” seasons have used the shortened episodes to tell more aesthetic, vignette-style stories, “Underworld” only seems interested in reminding you that there is better “Star Wars” elsewhere, and by the way, did you know that samurai movies and Westerns exist?
The devout treatment of those two genres in particular permeates “Tales of the Underworld” in a way that longtime watchers of “Tales” creator Dave Filoni’s “Star Wars” projects will be used to. At times, it’s worked. After all, George Lucas was largely ripping off Westerns and Akira Kurosawa when he made “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope.” But in “Underworld,” the homages feel more like childish pointing at better things, all while the actual material of the animated series offers absolutely nothing of its own to compel you.
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Star Wars might need to lay off the Western/Samurai bit for a while
As soon as you turn on the first episode of “Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld,” you’re greeted by a beautiful new suite of music from the Kiners, the longtime composers of the animated side of the “Star Wars” universe (and “Ahsoka”). Unlike the traditional John Williams-inspired sound of most “Star Wars” projects, this show’s soundtrack takes cues from East Asian musical traditions, with a particular focus on what, to my untrained ear, sounds like a Chinese erhu during Ventress’ episodes. The sound is lovely, but I quickly grew frustrated with it after seeing that “Tales of the Underworld” is yet another cheap samurai homage from Filoni.
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Ventress is the ronin, hiding from her old violent life. She encounters a young Jedi on the run from the Empire and spends three episodes trying to get him to safety. While the erhu is not a Japanese instrument, it’s clear what kind of cinematic tradition Filoni is trying to conjure here — the same one he aped through multiple episodes of “The Clone Wars” and “Star Wars Rebels,” “The Book of Boba Fett,” the entirety of “Ahsoka” season 1, and now again.
Cad’s episodes suffer from the same genre fatigue, only from the Western gunslinger side of things. We see Cad as a boy living on the street, joining a gang, and eventually turning on his childhood best friend, who becomes the marshal of their old town. These aren’t inherently vacant arcs, but they are so deeply trite and overdone that the show simply doesn’t make time in its blink-and-they’re-over episodes to pull anything new out of them. And more to the point, through all six episodes, we spend hardly any time in the actual underworld the season claims to be about. Even when the story declares itself to be a wholly different genre, the Western/samurai “influences” refuse to leave.
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Cad Bane and Asajj Ventress deserved better than Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld
Releasing this series in the middle of “Andor” season 2 only draws attention to its flaws — not because I want “Tales of the Underworld” to be some gritty spy drama, but because I want it to have the same interest in “Star Wars” that I do as a fan. Many accuse “Andor” of stripping the sci-fi fun out of the franchise, but the truth is the opposite. Every detail is treated with sincerity, from the layout of a Coruscant bodega to the industrial practices of an agricultural commune.
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Meanwhile, I could not tell you the name of a single character in “Tales of the Underworld” (save the two we already knew), and I know even less about where they live or what they want. At the end of Ventress’ arc, the boy she’s been protecting chooses to stay with her rather than go into hiding with the Rebel Path group. Why, exactly? Other than it’s supposed to deliver some kind of vague emotional hit? We don’t know this boy or the girlfriend whom Cad Bane abandons, and I certainly don’t need an origin story for why the blue bounty wears a big hat. If “Tales of the Underworld” can’t be bothered to show a modicum of interest in itself, then why should I care in the slightest about what happens on the screen?
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To be fair, there are parts I liked here. The Kiners’ music is strong, Cad’s old friend and a particularly cool bounty-hunting droid make for interesting cast additions, and Lucasfilm Animation’s aesthetic continues to be absolutely stunning, with the lighting in particular blowing past projects out of the water. But overall, this still feels like a show that embraces the worst parts of Filoni’s “Star Wars,” including inadequate mimicry of the same classic genres, Easter egg origin stories with zero emotional content, and so much wasted time for characters who, frankly, deserved better.
“Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld” is now streaming in its entirety on Disney+.
