Targeting two of "Star Wars"' most notorious outlaws, "Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld" launched on Disney+ May 4, 2025, to help celebrate Star Wars Day. It's a six-episode anthology examining these nefarious denizens of the galaxy far, far away: Count Dooku’s former apprentice, Asajj Ventress, and Duros bounty hunter Cad Bane.
This is the third outing for Lucasfilm Animation's "Tales Of" animated series that began with 2022's "Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi" and continued with 2024's "Star Wars: Tales of the Empire."
Created by Dave Filoni with lead writer Charles Murray, each season follows a similar dual-pathway arc for a duo of second-tier characters from the "Star Wars" timeline. "Tales of the Underworld" focuses on a pair of fan-favorite bounty hunters, voiced again by Nika Futterman (Ventress) and Corey Burton (Bane).
Lucasfilm's Alex Spotswood is well-versed in the fine details of "Star Wars" animation, having started out working on "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," then "Star Wars Rebels," and eventually rising to a producer level on "Star Wars: The Bad Batch." Now here on "Tales of the Underworld" Spotswood has added the title of Senior Producer.
"We have used the 'Tales' series as kind of proving grounds for a lot of technology and testing various ways of producing episodes for our normal core shows like 'Rebels,' 'Bad Batch,' and 'Clone Wars'," Spotswood tells Space.com.
"There's not a lot of noticeable differences visually between the series, but there's definitely some things we tried to do in the Cad Bane arc in color correction to give it more of an old world vibe. It covers decades, and you're seeing the creation of the ultimate gangster and Cad Bane is one of my favorite characters. I thought he was so cool and super noir-ish and I was really excited about the possibility of producing something that was Cad Bane-focused. Corey Burton voices him, and does in the live-action as well. But we can do a lot more in animation than you can do in live-action so it's an interesting thing."
Both Asajj Ventress and Cad Bane are indelibly tied to their distinct voices and getting Futterman and Burton in the studio to record their performances was a true highlight.
"Corey speaks for himself," Spotswood adds. "There’s no other person. If you'd watch "The Bad Batch" episodes, you hear Cad Bane before you see him. Corey is a huge talent. He's played hundreds of voices, but hearing that Cad Bane voice is just so iconic. When it comes to Nika and Ventress, the same thing is true for her. We've had the opportunity to play with that character a couple times before. You hear that voice, you go with it, and everyone knows it."
Standing back from the decidedly dark deeds of Ventress and Bane, we asked Spotswood to define what it is about the appeal of these two characters for "Tales of the Underworld" that lures fans to their criminal ways in the vast "Star Wars" universe.
"They are undoubtedly villains," he notes. "They murder people in cold blood. It's not any shades of gray. Ultimately, they have very clear motives. Usually, they're killing other bad guys and people who had it coming, as it were. One of the things that Star Wars does great is make these iconic interesting characters, and especially in animation, where we get to really explore them, that allows you to feel for them a little bit and have some compassion despite the fact you wouldn’t be friends with them in real life.
"Specifically for Ventress, we get to see an assassin who's been murdered, and we get to tell a bit of that story of where she comes from and why she abandons a part of her life. It gives a sense of who these people are. Good villains are complex. Ventress has this great foil to play against too. You've got this badass Separatist assassin, and now she gets paired with this young, terrified Padawan Jedi, and they have to co-exist somehow. Just to see that is so wonderful and exciting. There's a lot of humor there."
"Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld" is now streaming all episodes on Disney+.
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