Tales of the Underworld (Disney+)

[Jeff]

New Season of "Tales of" starts up on May 4th.  Asajj Ventress and Cad Bane are the focus this time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkywNANueew

[Matt_Fury]

Looks cool.  I've liked the other editions they've done.

[McMetal]

Man, this would have been a perfect opportunity to explain how Asajj survived getting thrown off that cliff by Anakin in the TARTAKOVSKY series. 

[Dave]

I thought the last batch of "Tales" was the weakest of the bunch, but overall have mostly enjoyed these. 

I'd prefer that they focus in on a little more of the core supporting characters in the lore (didn't really care for Mogan's backstory and thought it was a bit uninteresting). 

The Ventress one looks a little more interesting as it appears to have something of a redemption story, but I'll be honest that I really don't have much of an interest in the backstory of Cad Bane.  I'm hopeful its well done either way.

[Nicklab]

I was not expecting this AT ALL!  But I guess maybe I should have been looking out for another animated short series.  Especially considering the impact animation has had on the entire franchise.  It's interesting to see that for this Underworld series of shorts that LFL chose Ventress and Cad Bane as the focal points. 

[Ryan]

I was not expecting this AT ALL!  But I guess maybe I should have been looking out for another animated short series.  Especially considering the impact animation has had on the entire franchise.  It's interesting to see that for this Underworld series of shorts that LFL chose Ventress and Cad Bane as the focal points. 

A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one!

I've really enjoyed the other short series so far, love Cad Bane & Ventress, and am really looking forward to this newest batch. I hope they keep these going, there's a lot of potential with the format. I used to like the old "Tales of..." novels that these series are a bit reminiscent of.

[Jeff]

I used to like the old "Tales of..." novels that these series are a bit reminiscent of.

I re-read those Tales from the Cantina and Tales from Jabba's Palace so many times and still sort of use that for my official head cannon for those characters.   

I'd love to see something like that for this animated series too.  Six short episodes for each location, each showing a little bit about the random aliens from Cantina or Jabba's palace would be really fun.

[GrandMoffNick]

Anybody else watch this? I thought the Asajj arc was really boring and I thought the Cad arc was really good.

[Jeff]

I thought both were really formulaic.   Asajj adopts a sidekick was fine but nothing special. 

On the Cad Bane story, it was a recycled plot but I think it was a pretty good arc.  It felt a little bit rushed since it was crammed into three short episodes.  Would have liked a bit more about the little boy but that feels like a thread that will just dangle.

[Dave]

I’ll be honest, I found both arcs to be fairly uninteresting.  I know it was late at night, but I kept nodding off in the Cad Bane one. 

The only interesting part is Ventress’ reanimation scene made me look up why she had died, etc.  That was a novel I never read and didn’t understand her tie to Quinlan Vos.

They’ve got to find more interesting characters and more interesting plots to drive these around.  Do this with Saw or some of the background characters in Andor/Rogue One.

[Ryan]

I'm sure my view was at least partially colored by the inevitable comparison to the overall quality of "Andor", but even trying my best to separate that, I was definitely underwhelmed with "Tales of the Underworld". They were fine, but neither were particularly exciting or felt very inspired. These two arcs were easily my least favorite of all the "Tales" shows so far. I too, missed the context of Assaj dying in a novel and was a little confused. I don't think my issues were necessarily with the character selection, I did like the choices initially, but rather like Jeff said, I just found the writing to be far too formulaic.

My wife and I both were nodding off too, not something that I ever do during SW, especially during 15-minute shorts...