1x04 Devoted

[7.4/10] I’ve been itching to learn what happened to Barriss Offee pretty much since we saw her imprisoned toward the end of The Clone Wars show. Would she be killed in Order 66? Would she join the Inquisitors? Would she ever face Anakin again?

Well, turns out it’s no, yes, and yes.

I’m being a little glib there, but this is all to say that there’s not really a ton of surprises in “Devoted”, the first episode of Tales of the Empire that delves into Bariss’ story. Sure, there’s details at the margins, and it’s cool to see how the Inquisitors come to be in their earliest days, but things go about how you’d expect. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’d rather shows tell natural, if predictable stories, rather than conjure up some crazy twists. But despite the undeniable quality here, the answers to those big questions are a bit of a letdown.

Or maybe there’s a big surprise that went over my head. I’ll admit, it’s easy for me to get the Inquisitors mixed up. Maybe Barriss putting on the mask at the end confirms that she’s someone we’ve seen elsewhere in canon that locks something into place. Candidly, I’d completely forgotten the Fourth Sister from the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries until I looked her up after watching the episode, so who knows! I think I recognize one of the two silent Inquisitors as the one who fought Ahsoka in Tales of the Jedi, but I couldn’t swear to it.

(Honestly, the coolest part for me was probably hearing Nicolas Cantu, who played the main character in The Freemaker Adventures, returning to the Star Wars fold as the ill-fated Dante.)

The most interesting part of this one is not the canon connections, no matter how neat it may be to see an embryonic Fortress Inquisitorious or hear Jason Isaacs as the Grand Inquisitor again. It’s seeing how the Inquisitors are made, how they have the compassion wrung out of them, how they have to show a viciousness, and to the point of the title, devotion to the cause, to be able to join their ranks.

The tests that Bariss has to pass to join are interesting. She has to show her ability to follow orders, by sitting in a cell for a long period of time, something she’s become good at after her life sentence in prison. She has to show the Grand Inquisitor that she can use the Force to attack, not just for defense, that she can channel her anger and not fight fair. And when it’s her and Dante in a deadly duel, she tries to show mercy, to show craftiness, but when push comes to shove, she’ll kill rather than die.

The idea that this is how they indoctrinate people, how they weed out their better qualities, is compelling, even if it’s missing the extremes we’ve seen in the likes of Jedi: Fallen Order. (Maybe those methods came later?) You don’t get much of a sense of transition in Barriss. But taking this as her first step toward the darkness, knowing we have two more episodes of (presumably) descent comes, makes this an interesting introduction to the next phase of Barriss’ life. And with Ahsoka’s master staring her in the face by the end of the episode, who knows how long that phase will last.

Overall, this plays out about as expected, but what we get is solid.