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

I'd say yes and go even further, Rebels over-relied on "outside" content for its villains period.

All the new imperial villains it introduced are just shallow archetypes. Nothing differentiates any of the inquisitors besides acting and voice, the only difference between Brom Titus and Constantine is one is a captain and the other is an admiral. Instead of building up its own rogues gallery we have big name movie villains like Tarkin and Vader who cycle into the show for a couple of episodes then just disappear despite the nuisance the Spectres are making themselves.

While Thrawn's performance is well done and he has quite a few good scenes, a cynical part of me cant help but note that most of the things Thrawn does could have been done by a version of Admiral Constantine who isn't a complete jobber. Most of the things Maul does could have been done by a new character who ties back to the inquisitors rather than the Sith who can barely appear. The show never needed to be so high stakes that Tarkin, Vader, AND Thrawn AND an imperial advisor all personally step in.

In fact, the show genuinely forgets to actually build up Lothal itself because the show was just a parade of "outsiders" who get the constant spotlight. S4 had the characters come back to Lothal and be shocked at how it has changed and that would have all hit better if the show itself built it up and emphasized the characters' connection to the planet, which would have required focusing on the caste itself rather than on the many ways the writers manage to tie into the movies.

The only decent enough new villains the show introduced was the Saxons, who also have a direct connection to Sabine if only due to their exploitation of her own technology and their exploitation of "Mandalorian Culture". S4 is split between the Spectres helping free Mandalore, and the Spectres freeing Lothal, and in terms of tying directly back to the characters through the exploitation of their homeworld Sabine is ahead by a mile. She has a family who turned their backs on her and she spent a good amount of episodes getting ready to confront them, bringing them to the Rebellion, confronting the mistakes of her past, and learning to accept what happened. All giving her palpable and personal stakes in Mandalore's freedom.

Lothal has some characters from that one time Ezra infiltrated a school, and the old governor of Lothal and his beef with Pryce, who played a role in only four episodes before S4, and most of them were not particularly outstanding. It also has a jedi temple.

It's quite clear that Mandalore was written with more care and love, because its TCW which is what most of the writers actually wanted to write it seems.

 

I’ll take Thrawn getting adapted to screen after 30 years (and all the subsequent storytelling it’s brought with it via books and other tv series) over Konstantine getting a power up. That’s not even a contest in my mind.

 

It really is offputting that the end game of the show is freeing Lothal.

 

That is the way it always goes.

Better to have the actual Vader than your own Inquisitor characters.
Better to have Tarkin than a local moff or even focusing on the actions and personality of a lowly planetary governor.
Better to have Thrawn than some no-name admiral or even any other or your own grand admiral.
Better have the real maul than your own rogue darksider character.
Better have the real Bail and Mothma than some local lowly planetary governor muscled away from his planet by the Empire.
perhaps its even better to have Mandalore than Lothal.

Now you have a revolving door of villains that dont have any actual connection to the main caste, a lack of any interesting dynamics between heroes and villains, and you now have to invent a whole new character in the fourth and third to last episodes of the show to act as the villain

and perhaps it would have been better to have Mas Amedda than Veris Hydan. If only there was any other refined type character introduced by the show who was a darksider assigned to Lothal.

EDIT: I say most of this as someone who enjoyed Rebels, it just has problems that stop it from elevating itself above "ok".

 

I’d say yeah, if you’re going to do an expy of a character then just save us all the time and do the genuine article. That at least has validity and introduces the character back into the storytelling pool.

But also, I like Thrawn. I’m not adverse to new storytelling with the character or seeing a character from book be adapted to screen. Especially since they did actually make the effort to give Thrawn a connection to the Ghost Crew, which has grown into what it is in Ahsoka. And ditto for Maul, frankly. His connection to Ezra was organic and hit harder given what we know of his relationship with Savage.

 

That may have been happening before Rebels. Can we really reconcile the journey of Anakin in CW from start to finish as the same as the Prequel Anakin?

 

Maul and Thrawn certainly work better than most Rebel villains, because the writers care about them more than any of their Rebels villains, which was my main point from the start.

However, the story would have been better if they built up their original villains from the start instead of overriding them with recognizable villains from other stories to replace the very lacking villains they already have.

Anyway I said my part and honestly this discussion of Rebels is probably going on too long.

 

I certainly can, based on what we saw in the opening of ROTS and what Obi-Wan said about him in the Original Trilogy.

 

I can't speak if it would have been better or not, since I have pretty much negative interest in Rebels and its OCs, but it would probably benefit both TCW stories/characters and Rebels. TCW stories/characters needed their own show/book/comic, where they would get proper development and proper runtime, fully devoted to them, and proper conclusions, instead of being glorified cameos, having Ezra Bridger awkwardly shoehorned where he doesn't belong, and not being able to go all in, because this is "Ghost Crew story". I guess they did it to get more viewers, and because at the time Filoni didn't believe he would ever get to finish TCW, so he was throwing bones to the fans - in hindsight, probably to everyone's detriment.

 

All that means that they should have put some actual work in creating original villains for the show and having them be a threat as well has have some depth.

 

Rebels had they great villains in Grand Inqusitor, agent Kallus, Grand Admiral Thrawn and Maul. Rebels had great story arcs for their characters and all

 

Perhaps if the Inquisitors got a better exploration, with a better explanation of why they take the titles of "Number Brother/Sister".

Tarkin is to these small systems what Star Destroyers were to most rebel cells and what Palpatine is to the galaxy as a whole. He didn't take a personal interest in something until the incompetence was too much for him.

Perhaps an exploration of Piett, Veers, Motti, Tagge, Bast, Ozzel and Jerjerrod would've been in order as well.

Maul's survival post-TPM is meh to me.

Rebels was a slight mislabelling as we focused on one group of rebel cells on a distant world far from the Core rather than all cells coming together under Bail Organa and Mon Mothma (and Garm Bel Iblis).

If Mas Amedda's survival post-Endor hadn't more or less being secured by that point, perhaps it would've given an explanation to Sate Pestage's rise to the role of Grand Vizier -- accounting for Sate having a cut appearance from ESB.

 

Is Rebels getting strays now lol

 

The 6 episodes were very predictable. Like, extremely predictable, after the first 3-4 minutes of each arc, for the rest of the Ventress arc and the Cad Bane arc.

They didn't add layers to any of the characters that didn't already exist.

They were also boring. No fireworks. This shouldn't be necessary... but if it's already predictable and shallow, at least have some fun fireworks. Nothing.


As for Ventress...

Spoiler

What did it even mean that she sacrificed her true love? It seems she still loved him. It seems she still could have chosen to see him again. She just chooses to let him go, out of her own free will, at the very end.

Never mind just not explaining how Talzin was even able to do that for her.

I wonder why they never reached out to Morgan Elsbeth in any way.

 

[Link Removed]
Voice actress talks about the redeemed Barris Offee. Talks about Her and Ahsoka understand each other. And it still says she is serverly injured and not dead. So Barris Offee is likely still alive just like Ventress.

 

Squee!

Honestly it wouldn't have been such a terrible end for her if they had left it there, but she has so much more potential.

 

Had she died they would have confirmed it by now. She has lots of potential and i think she will have reunion with Ahsoka Tano. I think Barriss Offee will be part of the Path show they keep teasing. We dont know the timeline of her last episode but i think its in the Rebels timeline era. Thinking about it with the new canon about her species, if Dave Filoni's want to keep her alive she could be around post TROS in the new jedi order era looking like she does in last Tale episode, or little older.

 

Spoiler

I'm imagining a reverse sleeping beauty.
A kiss will send her back to deaths door.

Could make for an interesting story, but I doubt they'll ever go there.

 

False Barriss. The real Barriss died in Order 66 on Felucia.

 

I didn’t much care for ventress’s story

 

I hope we eventually get season 2's for each of these "Tales." But they're new characters. I still think Qi'ra would have been most interesting for Tales of the Underworld.

The Ventress and Bane arcs... didn't really add anything new for characters, lore, worldbuilding, etc. Ventress has already seen a lot of focus. Bane hasn't, but there was nothing surprising or interesting there.

We need more characters with potential that's mostly untapped.

I'm hoping for a "Tales of the New Republic" next, but I'm guessing what's next will either be "Tales of the Sith" or "Tales of the Rebellion."

 

Also I don’t really know if they are setting things up for the future or not.

 

Tales of Mandalore would be possible. Could fill in blanks for Bo-Katan.

 

Depends on what you mean by that exactly - I doubt they are setting up specific projects exactly* but I could see them just throwing out potential plot hooks for future works to pick up and explore at their convenience.

*Though admittedly Ventress' three shorts being parts of a single adventure rather than the usual "snap shots in the life of a character which explains their mindset" does feel a bit more like a back door pilot than usual. But we are going to have the Maul show for a while, and I certainly hope we don't get a third dark time show featuring tcw characters in row after that.

She is likely to appear, but honestly I would rather get Satine - her rise to power and reforming of Mandalorian society seems perfect for this format of three short stories gaps in between - and Jango - who casts a big shadow but hasn't had much of his character explored in this version of canon.

 

I guess more hooks for the future.

Spoiler

Isaac being Bane’s son seemed like a potential thing they can pick up.