TV Discussion The Temple Bomber (And Why I'm Not a Fan of the Twist)

Sorry if I'm dredging up an old discussion, but someone brought this topic up on Twitter and I'm curious what the consensus is here (I'd also love any insight someone has about the reaction at the time of the initial airing of the episode).

The whole "Wrong Jedi" arc in TCW is one of my favorite pieces of SW content ever; The writing is insanely good for the most part, the visuals and animation are beautiful, the mystery/tension is intriguing throughout, and the way it develops both Anakin and Ahsoka is wonderful. However, I do think the arc fails to stick the landing with revealing its "villain", and it has bothered me ever since I gained clearer context surrounding the character.

Basically, nothing in the prior seasons of the show led me to believe Bariss would hate the Jedi Order at all, much less enough to resort straight to large-scale violence; She hatched a psychotic plan that involved acquiring explosives, feeding them to an unaware civilian, blowing him up, killing/injuring dozens of innocent people, then blaming it on her best friend, who had been nothing but loving to her, and impersonating someone else in order to kill her. Like, that goes well beyond disagreeing with the Jedi Order. She's basically a full-on, insanely evil murderous psycho out of nowhere.

It felt like a cheap twist done purely for shock value, like Filoni had pulled a named character out of his cowboy hat at the last minute then wrote a pathetically flimsy justification for it after the fact. It also took one of Ahsoka's few unique relationships off the board and it feels like a terrible thing to do to fans of Bariss without at least building it up properly.

I could be wrong though, I'd love to hear what everyone thinks/thought about the situation. It's just something that's been on my mind for a long time now.

 

I would have liked some subtle setup earlier in the show. Something simple like Bariss expressing doubts about the Order's role in the war. It would have to be handled carefully though because, if it was too heavy handed, it would spoil the reveal. It would have to be something that you didn't think too much of at the time, but then when you went back and re-watched the show, knowing she was the bomber, things would start clicking. And, honestly, maybe there was a moment or two in the show that I forgot about.

I really do like the reveal though. I don't think it was cheap shock value so much as getting the audience to sympathize with Ahsoka. The first part of the arc is a mystery and the last part of the arc has Ahsoka feeling betrayed by Bariss. Neither of those would have worked as well if we knew Bariss's turn to the dark side was coming.

As for Bariss devolving quickly from a normal Padawan into a homicidal maniac, that seems to be the dark side works. There are a lot of characters who change very drastically, very quickly once they fall to the dark side. I think it helps when you think of it as involving more than simple human psychology. The dark side amplifies fear and hatred, causing dark siders to fall down the evil path quicker and more dramatically than an average person would. That's how I think of it at least.

 

I don't dislike the reveal. I'm more mixed to leaning positive. I do wish we had more subtle build-up throughout the seasons, and I especially wish we learned more about Barriss after her arrest. It's been 9 years since S5 of TCW ended and we still don't know what happened next. Barriss might've been in prison for the rest of her life. Maybe she got out and lived a life of solitude. Maybe she joined the Empire or was sympathetic to rebels (maybe even the Partisans). I doubt she joined the Inquisitorius. The Seventh Sister is the same species, and Lucasfilm tends to like a variety of species of Inquisitors

Oh, and nitpick time, but Barriss did get knighted before her attacks. It's never mentioned on-screen (and for some reason she calls Anakin master), but it's confirmed in a canon source.

 

This is what I'm saying, the Bariss reveal was so jarring because she wasn't even in the show enough to have formed a character arc like that.

And it's bizarre because the show goes through great pains to show that Anakin is being slowly chipped away at from a hundred different angles, yet Bariss just flips straight to pure evil at some point offscreen. She's not a main character so I wouldn't expect as much detail on her turn, but man, that was just too much.

Part of what upsets me too is that I really enjoyed the friendship between her and Ahsoka, and that didn't get explored nearly enough after they did a solid job in a short amount of time bonding them as sisters who went to hell and back together on Geonosis. This also makes it doubly jarring because (if I'm remembering this correctly) not only does she frame Ahsoka for the bombing, which is already nuts, but she then tries to KILL her without hesitation when she finds out (like, why not make that a little more complicated and have Bariss try to divert Ahsoka in subtle ways, but Ahsoka is just too determined and so Bariss feels she has no choice?).

That just felt wrong to me, and I guess the idea is for Bariss to be a microcosm/mirror type thing to Anakin, but it just didn't feel earned at all and to me they wasted a character that could've been used to further develop Ahsoka throughout more of TCW.

 

You nailed it with this.

 

Weird that a pupil of such a fundamentalist Jedi turned out to be a radical.

 

Huh. I didn't know that. It makes sense though because in AotC Barriss looked closer to Anakin's age than Ahsoka's.

That's a good point. Barriss's whole thing was that the Jedi were becoming corrupted by the war and it makes sense that a traditionalist Jedi would feel that way. What makes it interesting is that Barriss isn't exactly wrong in principle, but it's her actions that make her a villain.

 

I definitely prefer it over how she’s just a generic Jedi in Legends.

 

I said mixed. This was a hard choice for me

 

I hate it. Not only for making no sense in the context of the show, but also trashing Bariss in general.

 

That entire arc is one of my favorites in all of TCW, but the Bariss reveal does come out of left field.

Interesting that they made a Jedi the one behind the bombing, but I understand why a lot of Bariss fans were upset with her being the one.

 

The whole arc was contrived and nonsensical in many places.

 

When I watched the Ahsoka Fugitive arc for the first time the Barriss reveal was somewhere between straight out of the blue and ultimately predictable. Many on the forum were already calling it was going to be Barriss and condemning Filoni for going somewhere so radical with her. That jump to Barriss making her statement about the Jedi Order by bombing the temple and framing her friend for it was a problematic casualty of TCW's anthology-style and massive scope which often took a very long time to come back to things or ultimately never did.

In rewatching I've appreciated there are some small breadcrumbs as to what happened to Barriss.The earliest discussion in the series about what will happen after the war is in "Brain Invaders" where Barriss can only regurgitate what Mace Windu has said about the Jedi as peacekeepers. Ashoka has trouble separating peacekeepers from warriors. How would they keep the peace after the war without being the latter?. Barriss brushes that off without giving much of an opinion but is interested in hearing what Ahsoka has to say about Anakin's thoughts. This soon gets interrupted. It's always interesting how Ahsoka seems to try not to kill the possessed clones. Barriss doesn't hesitate to gut them despite being friends moments earlier.

My personal interpretation is going to trigger people. I think Luminara has some blame for this. The Clone Wars basically portrayed her as an especially orthodox Jedi even compared to Mace Windu but she comes off as only modestly emotionally aware and intelligent. Nevermind her arrogance helped Gunray escape custody once and nearly made her the first victim of the brain invaders.

I always look at how Luminara just serenely falls on her knees and offers a prayer for Barriss and Ahsoka when the Weapons Factory falls on them. She writes off their survival as impossible much to Anakin's dismay which did him no favors. But it's worse for Barriss who discounts rescue. She surrenders her life hopelessly to the many lives that will be saved such as her master and the clones. As I mentioned, she puts her lightsaber to the gut of a clone in the next episode and ignites it. This stands in contrast to Ahsoka whose green lightsaber blade becomes a metaphoric light of hope in the tank. Ahsoka saves Barriss in almost back-to-back episodes but "Legacy of Terror" happens between that.

Honestly with how Barriss seems to not like clones that alone may give the character milage and grounds to appear in The Bad Batch to explore. I have always wanted to get more of a perspective of what the clones really thought of the whole fugitive arc, particularly the outcome. The 501st seemed to welcome Ahsoka back with open arms in SoM.

I can imagine Barriss at Luminara's side when she approached the just orphaned Rafa and Trace to tell them, "I had to make a choice but not to worry, the force will be with you." then seemingly leaving them to whatever fate this "force" intended. Is that Jedi peacekeeping? Barriss fought in a costly, confusing war with Luminara and by hint Mace as the poinst of guidance. Padawans are young learners with their emotions not yet in check. Ashoka by contrast had Anakin and so many people she could confide in until Barriss' betrayal.

 

These are genuine questions since I fail to undestand the logic of the argument: how is her "orthodoxy" to blame for Barriss's actions, when said actions are a betrayal of all the teachings Luminara imparted to her? And how is her emotional awareness and intelligence only modest?

 

That's some bs, Barriss knighted before Ahsoka? That Jedi council, man.

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I think it was done well enough, teaches Ahsoka much about people, and is ultimately her pivotal arc. It's a great arc in general, though I agree they could have handled the Bariss reveal better. Like others have said, hinting at it for multiple episodes throughout the show would have been better. Signs of small disagreements with the Jedi Order but never too on-the-nose. Then again, Clone Wars was far too expansive and ensemble-orientated to ever really give a character or sub-plot that much foreshadowing.

 

I didn't like it and it did come out of nowhere but even more wasteful is we never see what happens to her.

that type of story could have given Ahsoka a rival in force that she never gets at any point. Something that should at MIN been beginning of something.

if you went that road, go full on in.

 

Barris was one of my favorite characters and I hated this reveal. If they were going to do this, they needed to give Barris an actual story arc. Show us her becoming more disillusioned with the order. Give her a real reason to turn after being such a good girl.

 

I was shocked at this and didn't like when first watching it. But I come to like it after rewatches. She was Ahsoka Tano's best friend and Barris Offee betrayed her friend. I know Filoni has mentioned he has plans for this character. Now is the time with either The Bad Batch or The Ahsoka show. Show us how Barris Offee survived and her going trough a redemption arc.

 

I hated it but I always figured it was just me because I’m fundamentally against the concept of taking a character who is unambiguously a Good Guy in the main story and turning them into a villain in the supplementary material. In general it feels disrespectful of minor characters to me when major aspects of their original design are altered solely to facilitate pumping out more content.

 

I think there was subtle setup because Barriss knew things that only the bomber could know. After all, she told Ahoska where the materials could be found in the under-levels. I think she was a very effective villain. I accept this characterization of Barriss because I was not attached to the old EU version of her. I feel that it was interesting and frightening to show Jedi like Barriss Offee and Pong Krell fall to the dark side. As far as I'm concerned, Season 5 is Ahsoka's season as much as Season 7 is. I like how we get to see her save Anakin and help him with a case before Barriss messes everything up. It's an unusual sort of story and one I did not anticipate that I would see when I first watched it. Just as Krell is a dark reflection of Anakin, I consider Barriss a dark reflection of Ahsoka.





I also like Barriss' speech because she's not wrong. The Jedi were too attached to the Republic and they shouldn't have been generals. Having said that, bombing the Jedi Temple or any building is not the way to handle a situation like that.

Barriss somewhat reminds me of Atris in the EU. Atris was obsessed with fighting the dark side, but she fell to the dark side in order to do so.

 

Bariss was last seen in Season 2. Came way too out of left field for my tastes.

 

IT felt like natural prosess to me with the character. Though i dont have the EU in mind with her. We see few jedi fall to the dark side and few who were coming close.

 

Yep. In my experience, it's mostly the EU people who had trouble with it. But the EU isn't really relevant to TCW all that much. Or, people who weren't paying enough attention

It was telegraphed in her S2 appearance, with how easily she killed the clone troopers, how inflexible was her thinking when encountered with Ahsoka, who was trained by Anakin, and how Luminara never even bothered showing up to her after what they had experienced with the brain parasites. Ahsoka and Barriss also questioned the Jedi being peace keepers vs soldiers in that episode. So the seeds were definitely planted there. Not unreasonable to assume that she would develop some doubt and resentment. It's not exactly uncommon for such quiet, introverted, kind types to do something radical, especially when encountered with injustice and what goes drastically against their ideals and beliefs. And she didn't do it, because she was evil all of the sudden — that's not what happened, at all. She did it, because she felt like it was the only way she could make herself heard, she did it to make a statement. As Padmé once said: "What this war represents is a failure to listen." Barriss specifically targeted a military hangar inside the Jedi Temple, a hangar with weapons of war and death, that was placed in a sacred place of life, knowledge, peace. Unfortunately, the Jedi were killed in a blast, which made her feel very bad, as she clearly did not mean it. She knew she was doing wrong, there was a clear regret and self-loathing in her actions and words. It's just that she could no longer reconcile with the paradox of being trained her whole life as a peace keeper and diplomat, but having to act as a soldier, using the Force not for knowledge and defense, but for attack. Having to deal with military bases and weapons of war at the Jedi Temple — a sacred place of life, learning, peace, enlightenment and tranquility. So she acted the way she's been acting for the last three years — as a soldier, attacking and destroying her enemies.

Her betrayal is also meant to mirror Anakin's betrayal in Revenge of the Sith, which also came out of the blue to all the people who loved him. Everyone thought Anakin was a good person, who just cannot do such things, it's incomprehensible. Of course, we as the audience know, that the signs were always there, and that he must become Darth Vader. But no one else did.
"It can't be. It can't be. I can't watch anymore." — Obi-Wan Kenobi
"You lie. I know Anakin. Your vision is flawed." — Ahsoka Tano
"You're wrong. How could you even say that? Not Anakin. He couldn't. I don't believe you. I can't." — Padmé Amidala
Barriss' betrayal is meant to be as painful, unexpected and devastating from Ahsoka's POV.

There was also a short comic called Paradise Lost, which elaborated on that matter.

But it's not really required, because it can be easily deduced from the series alone.
It was a brilliant arc, and one of the best stories Star Wars has ever done.

 

A generic Jedi?? She was one of the best. I loved the MedStar Duology. (Even if it was kinda weird how Bariss just declares herself a jedi knight, but I guess Luke did it.)