“Tales of the Jedi” exceeds all expectations

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Photo via Lucasfilm

“Tales of the Jedi” premiered with six different shorts on Oct. 26.

After the heartbreaking end to “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” in May of 2020, I thought it’d be the last we’d see of Star Wars’ prequel era. However, two years later, Disney announced it would be making a series of shorts with two classic characters: Ahsoka and Count Dooku. After watching the show, my expectations have been greatly exceeded; it didn’t waste any of my time and focused on exactly what I wanted it to.

Ahsoka’s first short story focused on Ahsoka’s first experiences with the force. Overall, the episode felt lackluster and was definitively the weakest of the six episodes. Her second episode focused on her training with Anakin, which helped her survive Order 66, the order that killed off all the jedis. I loved this episode, since it showed the bond Ahsoka and Anakin had prior to his eventual turn to the dark side. The final episode with Ahsoka was a goodbye to the Clone Wars and a “hello there” to the start of the rebellion against the empire.

The second half of the show included Count Dooku before his eventual turn to the dark side. The writers waste no time showing off his dark side tendencies as a Jedi. Dooku’s first episode mainly focuses on him and his apprentice Qui-Gon Jinn, showing that he was wise and patient beyond his years before the events of “The Phantom Menace.” I loved the deeper look you get in the episode between the friendship of Dooku and Qui-Gon, which you don’t really get to see in the movies. 

In the second episode, the show focuses on his friendship with Mace Windu and the split that slowly grows between them by the end of the episode. Dooku also starts to greatly distrust the galactic senate after he finds corruption within one of the senators during his mission. It was refreshing to finally get more character and backstory to his ideals that we come to see in “The Attack of the Clones.” 

Dooku’s final episode was my favorite in the show as Dooku fully forgoes his connection with the Jedi Order after Qui-Gon’s death. He no longer has any reason to stay with the Jedi; his apprentice died and he feels Mace betrayed him in joining the Jedi Council. It feels really reminiscent of the fall of Anakin to the dark side in “Revenge of the Sith,” since Anakin and Dooku feel the Jedi Council had betrayed them and ultimately were unable to save the ones they cared for.

The show, while having short episodes, packs the light and heartfelt moments into its short runtimes. It gave me everything I could ask for: action, references and foreshadowing. It also brought back the sadness and emptiness that I felt during the finale of “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” and the opening of a new era for Ahsoka. 

If you loved the prequel movies and shows, then you’re going to enjoy what might be some of the last content we will see from that era. It does an amazing job doing justice to what prequel movies built and added on by building a more interconnected story that they have already been building for years.