By George & Josh Bate
The Lucasfilm Animation panel at Star Wars Celebration took a look back at the storied 20 years of history of the company, but also peaked ahead at what’s to come. Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld, a new animated series, was recently announced and is set to debut on May 4, 2025. The series will feature six shorts – three focusing on Asajj Ventress and three focusing on Cad Bane. Tales of the Underworld follows Tales of the Jedi and Tales of the Empire in the ongoing Tales of… series of shows.
Fans present for the Lucasfilm Animation panel at Star Wars Celebration Japan were surprised when Lucasfilm Chief Creative Officer Dave Filoni presented an entire episode of Tales of the Underworld to the crowd. Keep reading for our reaction to the episode (with light spoilers).
The episode is titled “A Way Forward” and begins concurrent with the events of the novel Dark Disciple. Readers of Claudia Gray’s novel will know that Asajj Ventress and Quinlan Vos fall in love in the book, but their love is interrupted when Ventress dies at the end of the novel. Ventress’ death in Dark Disciple meant that her return in The Bad Batch Season 3 shocked everyone and posed a number of questions, namely ‘how did Ventress survive?’
Well, the first Asajj Ventress episode of Tales of the Underworld certainly explains that. The opening moments depict Ventress’ funeral, attended by Quinlan Vos and another Jedi we will not name here.
The episode then flashes forward a number of years and follows Ventress as she works a low-level job, a stark contrast to the assassination work she did as Dooku’s lead assassin and in the criminal underworld. Ventress is thrown into the mix of chaos again though when she encounters a young Order 66 survivor in need of her help. Despite it endangering her, Ventress protects the padawan from stormtroopers and, eventually, an ominous and never-before-seen Inquisitor.
The episode was breathtaking, both in the emotions it evoked and the cinematic nature of its quality. We don’t think we have ever been moved so quickly by a Star Wars story before. Mere moments into the episode and the emotions were hitting hard as Ventress was laid to rest. The animation is gorgeous and just continues to improve project after project. The plot of Ventress taking a young Jedi under her wing feels a tad tried and done before at this point, although there is still time for this particular relationship to distinguish itself from other mentor-mentee bonds in Star Wars. The episode also enticingly hints at where this arc is going and we couldn’t be more excited to see how that pans out. We also loved a connection to a live-action Star Wars series that makes logical sense and will seemingly explain slmething that series didn’t have a chance to get into. All in all, we were impressed.