A/V Tales of the [Jedi, Empire, Underworld] series

Talzin is has been more plot device than character since her inception, especially since the writers were clearly making stuff up as they were going along but have been implying that she had some deeper secret plan since practically the start. Like even the episode guide for "Monster" where she pawns off Savage to Dooku had this to say.

Taken holistically with the rest of the show and Son of Dathomir in mind the implication winds up being that

1. Talzin knew of her son's survival for over a decade but kept it under wraps for some "long term plan" to get back at Palpatine
2. Associated with Dooku, potentially while he was a Jedi, so that a decade later she can give him a servant
3. MAYBE with her arbitrary omniscience, she also planned for Dooku to get Ventress (which might tie back to the undepicted old association with Dooku i suppose)
4. She either wanted Savage and Ventress to kill Dooku, or she wanted them to fail because she only ever led Savage to find his brother after they failed. If we are being generous the plan was to bring back maul after Dooku was killed so that Sidious takes him back... but even this feels like a weird long-shot
5. she rebuilds Maul so that she can act as his weird spiritual guide in an increasingly complex scheme to force Sidious to reveal himself and even after Maul is captured she acts smug about all the pieces coming together
6. She dies because sidious exploits her sentiment towards her son, even though she seemed to have implicitly allowed him to go insane on a junk world

imagine how much could have been avoided if Sidious simply didnt anger a darksider of seemingly equivalent power just to have an apprentice, or at the very least killed such a risk to his plans.

or if Talzin simply revealed or hinted sidious's identity, we see a Jedi trust her prognostication when Obiwan wished to find Savage afterall.

or even simply lead the Jedi to the surviving Maul so that HE could reveal his master's identity and plans, and maybe not rot for a decade on a dump world, jedi prison is probably better than that.

No doubt Ventress's revival and being forbidden from meeting Quinlan was part of another 10 step plan to mildly annoy Palpatine from beyond the grave in a way that is doomed to have no real consequences except to hype up the writer's pets as "pivotal characters".

 

Lots of ranting here about Filoni vs George from one, lol

 

Well, wonder if

Spoiler

Isaac is going to become a bounty hunter to find Cad and get revenge on him, but will be eventually killed by Jacen Syndulla. And survived Bane will meet his grandson, make amends and finally become the ruler of Duro.

 

talzin had to use dooku to come back once already in son of dathomir i wont be surprised if she comes back but then again if ya look at the lore in Supernatural Encounters it explains why shes "all powerful"

 

Really hope that Ahsoka season 2 will explicitly connect witches with Mortis trio/celestials shenanigans, that would explain a lot

 

well.... about that u kinda vaguely guessed the SE way

 

Maybe I am reading too much into vague wording, but

Spoiler

I do get the impression that Asaji's resurrection is a specific set of circumstances rather than something nightsisters can do at will. At the very least, it seems the nightsister in question must genuinely love and be loved in turn, which given nightsister culture seems...rare for them, then be willing to let go of that love for life, and possibly they specifically need their bodies submerged in the water of life

Pretty arbitrary, but that is magic for you, and at least this means that nightsisters can't just respawn at will.

...though I wonder if Talzin underwent something similar. Yeah, Carib Diss is right about her being a plot device whose motives seem to change with every appearance, and I probably shouldn't overthink her too much...but, I dunno, even in her early appearances there always seemed to be something vaguely undead about Talzin, and the backstory we get of Palpatine promising to rule the galaxy with her before stealing her secrets and son give me some "love turned to hate" vibes

That sounds like a solid guess to me.

Decent odds I think - certainly sounds like the most logical choice in terms of having a title that sounds natural and not overly stilted or convoluted, assuming they keep sticking to each Tales season getting a unique name rather than having any 2s, yet on the other hand, who could they pick?

Dooku was in the first tales, Maul is getting his own show, Palpatine is a character I could see them leaving alone for many reasons, Vader is pretty thoroughly explored elsewhere, and I doubt they are going to open up new eras by showing ancient sith lords in this series. Unless they decide to flesh out Qimir and Plaguesis' stories in animation here, I don't really see any natural candidates for a tales of the sith.

Well, on that note the Mandalorian implies that there is a taboo on turning beskar into weapons instead of armor, and the exceptions to that we have seen have been spears (Morgan and Din's, also the double spear used by the Gangul leader in Young Jedi Adventures)

Spoiler

To double check, is that a reference to Boba's storyline in the Legacy books?

The statues at the end certainly hint in that direction.

 

2017 me was wishing for this so fervently. When Luke's hooded projection appears in the Crait base, I thought it was Anakin's Force Ghost coming to save everyone. But you're right, resurrections like that undermine the entire purpose of the character's original death.

 

Now this is some extraordinary mental gymnastics.

 

The old "they weren't actually dead" retcon. Because that cheapens death any differently.

 

I think some fans just Star Wars too literally. And Star Wars MCU retcons death all the time. No one stays dead

 

Yeah, it does. Context matters. But I guess if you ignore literally everything that's been said, it's totally the same.

 

It is like Maul was dead but you ignore that

 

Resurrecting in narrative and retconing a death to have never actually been a death are effectively the same thing. You've brought a dead character back, quite probably in a cheap way.

 

I have to say I like the bane episodes better than the Ventress ones

 

I headcanon Maul died, since his body was seen colliding with the tunnel wall at least once so its fair to say he continually hit on the way down. His body was recovered and was sent to Coruscant, only for Talzin to send mercenaries to capture it on-route and bring him to Dathomir. But something went wrong with the resurrection and somehow he ended up on Lotho Minor.

 

Again, ignoring context entirely. Go and re-read my previous post. Was Maul coming back a retcon? Yes. No one is arguing that it wasn't. He was originally intended to be dead there. However, was Sith Lords surviving terrible injuries using the Dark Side a thing before? Also yes. Seen it with Anakin on Mustafar. Was Maul even a character to begin with, did he have an arc, actual story? No. Just barely - obstacle with two lines of dialogue. Yeah, guys, this is totally the same and comparable with a fully developed character, with a complete character arc with her death being the culmination of it, who had been dead for months, getting resurrected by another dead character from beyond the grave, thus effectively undoing and destroying the emotional payoff of at least two stories, and jettisoning the entire thematical core and cosmology of Star Wars out of the window. And for what? Was anything new or interesting done with the character in her two post-resurrection appearances? Was she entirely interchangeable with any other Order 66 survivor, with Vos himself, in her Bad Batch episode? Yes. Was boilerplate Lone Wolf and the Cub story that we've had 150 times by now in Tales any good? Nope. Was full blown resurrections ever a thing in Lucas' Star Wars? Nope. Ignoring context entirely and looking at things at surface level of "hurr durr, two characters brought back, totally same!" doesn't actually prove any point - it doesn't even show that you have one. The same way why Palpatine should have never been brought back - not only because Sith living beyond their mortal shells contradicts themes and cosmology of SW, but because his death was the culmination of the entire saga and multiple character arcs. His death matters. Which is why it should not have been undone. Ventress' death also mattered. Which is why it should not have been undone. Maul's original death didn't matter all that much, even within TPM itself, which is why him coming back was deemed acceptable, and while you may make a case that it cheapened Obi-Wan's victory, it didn't radically impact anything else, and it was executed in a way that did not take a crap all over Star Wars' themes and cosmology, and they did new and interesting stuff with him and developed his character.

 

Honestly, the main thing to me is less the excuse for the survival of a character is less the excuse itself and more what we get out of it.

Like, Palpatine came back more or less the same way in both Legends and Canon, but I liked Dark Empire a lot more than Rise of Skywalker, so it bugged me less. (Don't get me wrong Dark Empire is far from perfect and whatnot, but at least Palpatine coming back was the main focus and not just desperate backpeddling after getting rid of one of their major villains and deciding not to commit to the other being a villain)

Maul's survival and the non-explanation for it are...pretty stupid, but honestly I have liked most of the Maul material we have gotten since then, so overall I have made my peace for it.

As for Ventress...jury's still out. Her appearances here and in Bad Batch have been...fine, but nothing another character couldn't have done or have done in similar stories. Course, I have no attachment to Dark Disciple either and wasn't fond of her death there to begin with....so as long as we get something good I will be satisfied

 

I wonder if we'll get a Tales of the Rebellion next year. If we do, I would like Poe's parents to have an arc. "A married couple leave their newborn son to fight in the Rebellion" or something like that.

 

Wish I could agree, for me Maul's resurrection only ever started "returning on its investment" during Rebels, and honestly the more I think about Rebels Maul the more I think he should have been a rogue inquisitor to make him feel a little less like an outsider to the show itself.

- His first two "mini arcs" during TCW were just an excuse to have Obi-wan face off against both Maul and Savage at the same time, winning both times
- the Shadow Collective I already complained about in this thread so it would be redundant
- Son of Dathomir I also already talked about
- Siege of Mandalore... was fine I suppose but the tie ins to episode 3 feel forced and make weaken the movie itself imo
- the Crimson Dawn stuff... yeah already talked about

He basically feels like a bizarre plot tumor and an outsider in the show where he is resurrected. I feel like he is simply carried by his performance and voice, which is undeniably great, but he is hardly the "graeco-shakespearean tragic figure" people try to make him out to be. Everytime I see people hyping him I feel a sense of culture shock because I just don't see it.

 

They got quite a big role in the comics, though it would still be fun to see them on screen as well.

Let's See...if we got a tales of the rebellion who would I want? Hmmm...Ackbar maybe? Not a lot on him between TCW and RoTJ I think.

Fair enough. There are certainly plenty of characters and stories and whatnot where I don't understand the hype, or the hate. And maybe it is just I am so used to stories where Maul is just a living blender with the single personality trait of "loyal" that him showing any hints of his own intelligence and complexity is refreshing, but for whatever reason I quite enjoyed his appearances and am glad he was brought back despite everything, with the final duel with Obi-Wan being one of my favorite lightsaber fights in star wars period = but I can definitely see and understand why other people wouldn't enjoy it.

 

I honestly wonder if Rebels would have been a better show if it had no real Clone Wars connections in it

 

I felt the show's focus away from the Ghost crew when Ahsoka and Rex turned up just made this series acting Clone Wars S7 until we got S7. Ahsoka isn't all that interesting to me and her ongoing survival, well, annoys me.

 

Rebel's was also where they really tried to sell the idea of Ahsoka and Rex being close which was never really something focused on in TCW

 

She’s barely in the show in the grand scheme of things, it’s mostly a couple of episodes in season 2 and then the little cap in the final season. And Rex pretty much assimilated into the cast seamlessly. Show was always consistently about Ezra first and foremost, even when that at times made it diverge from the mission statement of telling the story of how the wider Rebellion formed.

I’d say what Rebels did that was great, was back in the time it was airing Lucasfilm had an aversion to the Prequels and went all in on the OT and that asthetic with the Sequels. You look at the Celebration leading into TFA, there was zero prequel merch being shown, very little mention of those films as the company tried to distance itself and rebrand with the new trilogy. Rebels was like a little life raft at the time featuring prequel and EU holdovers that had otherwise been brushed aside.