Tales of the Empire: Realization
What is it ? : Barriss Offee and the Fourth Sister arrive on a back water planet, and demand of the people there that they reveal where the Jedi is. Offee comments that the village is crumbling and poor, asking how the Emperor could let his people live like this, to which the Fourth Sister tells her that if they were more loyal, it would be rewarded.
The leader of the town tells them there are no Jedi here, but Offee kindly asks a child and they tell her the Jedi is in the mountains. She tells the Fourth Sister and prepares to leave, but the Sister goes on a killing rampage, slaughtering the villagers, but allowing the child to leave.
They climb the mountain, but a rockfall causes Offee to lag behind, and by the time she arrives at the top the Fourth Sister and the Jedi are already fighting. But the Jedi knocks the Sister to the ground and turns on Offee, who only fights defensively. She implores the Jedi to surrender, telling them that there is room in the Empire for them and that they should stop clinging to a fallen order.
The Jedi agrees and lowers his lightsaber only to be struck from behind by the Fourth Sister. Offee tells her that the Jedi was about to surrender and be taken in, but the Fourth Sister tells her she is only there to kill Jedi, to which Offee responds that there is one Jedi remaining, casting her helmet aside.
As the Fourth Sister prepares to attack, Offee force pushes her off the mountain and rushes to the Jedi's side to try to save them . . . .
High Points : All the elements of redemption are here, with Offee witnessing the failings of the Empire as it's people live in squalor, witnessing the murder of Jedi, rather than bringing them in, and the slaughter of people merely for not co-operating.
Low Points : But the short running time of the episodes works against the story here, Barriss Offee hasn't really done anything much to need redemption. She killed a friend, but it was really in self defence, so no worse than any other Jedi. There's no signs that she's turned to the Dark Side, and needs redemption, her becoming an Inquistor seems to be mainly based on their faith that she's turned.
Everything is compressed, as I really wanted to see a Tale of the Empire, Barriss Offee, doing bad things, things she would need to turn away from, things she would regret, things that she would be feared because of. But we don't get any of that, what we seem to get is a person deciding a job really isn't for them on their first day.
So what do you really think ? : While it's watchable enough, the speed that we go from Barriss being a loyal Inquisitor, to turning on her colleague is just too fast. And this version of Barriss just doesn't seem to be connected to the one who turned on the Jedi Order because she felt it had slipped from it's ideals and tried to frame Ahsoka.
Final Words : Everything seems so rushed in this part of the season, we got the Inquisition seemingly set up in a day last episode, and Barriss Offee turning back to the light side seemingly the very next day. Whereas the Tales of the Jedi looked into the characters lives at intermittent parts, sometimes many years apart, as did the Morgan Elspeth part of this season of Tales of the Empire, this story so far just seems set over a long weekend.
And for a series called Tales of the Empire, there's not really that much Empire in these episodes. I think I'd have prefered some non-force user stories, brave Imperial Soldiers fighting for the ideals of the Empire, only for us to know the corruption behind those stated ideals. But alas no.
Score : 8/10
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