Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld is the third in the series of animated shorts expanding on characters in the Star Wars universe. Done in what we can call the Star Wars animation style that started with Star Wars: The Clone Wars, this show focuses on the dark underworld of Star Wars, focusing on two characters that were made famous in The Clone Wars series: Asajj Ventress and Cad Bane. Like in the previous ones, the series is split into three shorts that tell a whole story for each character.
Ventress, who we recently learned was not dead in the last season of The Bad Batch, we learn some of what she was doing in between the two shows. The other is Cad Bane, seen last in The Book of Boba Fett, where we see his beginnings. Asajj Ventress (Nika Futterman) is one of my favorite characters in the franchise, so I was instantly interested when I saw the initial trailer. Cad Bane (Corey Burton) never stood out much to me as I saw him as being made to be a cool toy to sell, an alien western drifter like the character Clint Eastwood would play in Spaghetti Westerns. I was a bit too old to care about Cad Bane, but I didn’t hate the character either.
The first three are how Asajj returned and continued her path away from the Dark Side and to the Light. They have some cool set pieces in the first three shorts, with Asajj meeting up with a padawan on the run from the Inquisitors and Empire forces. The forced duo has to work together as Asajj struggles with coming out of hiding and helping this kid who is way over his head with Jedi teaching positivity, which gives a nice balance to the stories. A Star Wars show does love to have a Master/Apprentice relationship in there somewhere.
These episodes do well with bringing in some of that cyberpunk aesthetic, especially in the second chapter. Neon lights in a megacity with weird-looking criminals and fights. It’s a different look for a Star Wars show. They finally deal with some of the Trade Separatist stuff a bit, with Asajj telling a person after saying the Separatists were right that both sides were wrong, which, after watching Andor season 2, is pretty much the right idea of the galaxy before Palpatine took over.
The Cad Bane (Corey Burton) chapters are interesting to me because they start out like a 90s hood movie with these two kids living on the streets trying to survive by whatever means they can, but they have each other. Their lives split in significantly different paths after they meet a mysterious stranger who pulls them into his crew. The tone changes to a full-on Western by the third chapter, with that one being clearly inspired by the film High Noon; these three shorts add so much to Cad Bane by giving us his origin story and why he is the way he by the time we saw him tormenting Obi-Wan and Anakin in The Clone Wars.
The animation in this series is pretty much what you’d expect at this point. They’ve been making so many shows in this style that you must be very sensitive to notice their little improvements to lighting, motion, and even shot composition. That familiarity works for me as it’s like the core coalescing parts of Star Wars that all the different looking takes connect to that now makes it all one universe. Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld doesn’t have shocking reveals or new characters but gives the audience good stories with cool characters perfect for May the Fourth.
Score: B
