The Law Comes to Town

The Star WarsThe modern blockbuster: it's a concept so commonplace now we don't even think about the fact that before the end of the 1970s, this kind of movie -- huge spectacles, big action, massive budgets -- wasn't really made. That all changed, though, with Star Wars, a series of films that were big on spectacle (and even bigger on profits). A hero's journey set against a sci-fi backdrop, nothing like this series had ever really been done before, and then Hollywood was never the same. universe is one that’s ripe for exploration. While we do seem to continue getting stories connected, in some way, to the Skywalker Saga, occasional other tales come along that flesh out sections of the universe not seen (or at least rarely seen) in other works. You can point to Skeleton Crew as a key example, with that show focusing on a planet we hadn’t seen before, a story far removed from the main business of the New Republic, with a cast of kids not related to anyone we’ve previously been introduced to.

You might also look over at Andor which, while yes, does eventually dead end on a film far more closely connected to the main universe, populates itself with characters never seen before, telling stories about the Rebellion from an entirely new perspective. These kinds of stories are not only possible, but also generally well received by audiences because we’re finally getting something new and interesting from the Galaxy Far, Far Away when, all too often, that universe really hates stepping outside its comfort zone.

In theory the Tales of stories should be able to do the same thing. Here is an anthology series focusing on showing us time periods and stories from the perspective of characters we hadn’t really explored. While the first two seasons were focused on Force users, with season one giving us Tales of the Jedi and season two providing Tales of the Empire, season three steps even further away, focusing on the time between the rise of the Empire and its eventual fall with characters that are neither Jedi nor Sith… mostly. This perspective should provide new ideas and let us really see more of the world than we’ve had before… but in practice it doesn’t feel like this season really goes far enough.

Like previous seasons of Tales of…, this third, Underworld focused season is broken up into two arcs of three episodes each. The first arc is all about Asajj Ventress, the former Sith apprentice who turned her back on the ways of the Sith, and then Empire as a whole, after she was betrayed by her master, Count Dooku. Now, years later (and after having been brought back from the dead). Ventress works as security at a spaceflight ticket booth, defending the business from hoodlums. When a young man, clearly in possession of Force powers, comes to the booth, he brings with him trouble as the Empire is looking for him, wanting to drag him off for whatever nefarious plans they might have. Ventress steps in and aids the kid, deciding to help him find “The Path of the Jedi” so that he might get the safety, and she can go back to not caring about people again.

There are parts of this story I like. Ventress was always a more complex character than The Clone Wars really seemed capable of dealing with. A Sith that had her own agenda, her own way of doing things, she worked as an interesting dark mirror for Ahsoka Tano, making her eventual turning away from the Sith and becoming a neutral force user all the more interesting (since that’s also a path Ahsoka took). This story seems to say that you don’t have to be a Jedi or Sith to be a Force user, and that there is no right or wrong “path” when it comes to finding your way. I like that kind of nuance, and I think using Ventress as a vessel for that story is smart.

With all that being said, it is attached to a story that is basic and predictable. The second the young Force user, Lyco Strata, shows up, it’s pretty clear that, one, she’s going to help him escape; two, he’s going to teach her how to trust people again; and three, he’ll eventually become her apprentice on the path of being a “grey Jedi”. I could see this coming a mile away, as I’m sure anyone else watching this series could as well. As they say in this franchise, “there’s always two, a master and apprentice.” The show follows those beats to a tee.

Worse, though, is that it’s all in service of a story we don’t actually get. Putting these two characters together so they can become master and apprentice is fine, but then we need to see what happens next. Instead, after three episodes setting up this dynamic their story ends with them riding off into the sunset and that’s it. No continuation in the next arc, no plans for another series for them (that we know of). It’s the start of an adventure, not the whole of it, and it’s really annoying that we don’t get anything else to make this whole “pilot episode” worth watching. Give us this, but with the promise of more, or don’t do this to us at all.

The other half of Tales of the Underworld focuses on Cad Bane, the Old West-style bounty hunter from a number of Star Wars properties, although we don’t necessarily know it’s him at the start. The story begins with two children, Colby and Niro, roaming around the backstreets and alleys of Duro. They’re orphans, both having lost their parents long ago, and they’ve grown together, like brothers, living on the streets and scraping by. When an outlaw comes along and sees promise in the boys, he offers them a job and promises to pay them well. The job goes off, but the police are quickly called in, and while Colby is able to escape, Niro gets pinched. Years later, though, when Colby comes back to Duro to avenge the death of the outlaw who helped raise him, he finds that Niro is now a lawman, one that stands against Colby, now going by Cad Bane, and his interests.

This story is an odd one because the creators clearly felt like they needed to give Cad Bane some background. In the past we’d seen him as this swaggering outlaw, a lone rider coming in to kill and then disappearing into the shadows. He was mysterious and dark, and he worked solely because we didn’t know much about him and, frankly, didn’t need to. Giving him a backstory is an odd choice, in large part because it does so little to really inform us of who he was as a person. He lived on the streets as a kid and did what he could to get by. How does a seemingly okay, if rough around the edges, child go from that to a nasty outlaw? The series doesn’t say as it skips past years of development until Cad Bane is all we get.

It’s also strange to put this story out after we last saw Bane get (seemingly) killed over in The Book of Boba Fett. Like, I get it, he’s a cool character, but this kind of development for a character, hero or villain, is usually done before they get some kind of major arc. You want to know about them so you can care what happens to them in the end. Bane, though, is a shadowy figure who worked best when you didn’t know anything about him. Adding color to his character after he’s dead leaves us caring less about this story because it’s not anything that’s ever going to affect the villain in the end. He’s dead, case closed. How he got there seems less relevant now.

Additionally, the story is just… okay. It’s a Western riff with an outlaw and a marshall, duels and gunfights, and all the rest that goes with it. While the concept of it is fun, it doesn’t really add much to the world or color in things that need to be colored. It’s a fairly shallow riff that does give us plenty of gunplay but not much reason to get invested in it. The more we see of Bane, the less interesting he gets, and once the series builds to its final gunfight, you already can tell exactly what will happen. It’s too staged, too obvious, too hard to give a damn.

I want to like Tales of the Underworld. I want more stories that aren’t so focused on time periods we’ve seen, characters directly tied into the Skywalker Saga. I want to cheer this show on for shifting gears and looking elsewhere. But when it does it in service of stories that feel very basic and unnecessary, that leaves me feeling underwhelmed. This show could be cool, but this third season of Tales of… decidedly is not.