Veronica, do you have a thing about galra? First Keith, now Acxa. Silly but at least they look cute together(? I’m surprised...). And will probably be good for each other based on this conversation.
Going to be whiny and a little negative for a moment about the upcoming Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi series leaks so please feel to scroll by if that’s not your vibe haha. Do not let me quash any excitement you have, I mean it!
Just watched the trailer and am a bit apprehensive right now of whatever they’re doing with Dooku (although I am more than willing to eat my words when it comes out if my initial thoughts end up wrong because I really want it to be good). It looks like it will take more from Master & Apprentice than Dooku: Jedi Lost, especially since young Qui-Gon is a big a feature. So, I think in theory that should be good but I worry that since Filoni tends to be a bit ham-fisted with these things they’re going to push Dooku into a cartoonishly villainous figure from the get-go rather than allow him to be someone who struggles to maintain the light and is on a slower fall than say, Anakin. That combined with some other stylistic choices, has me worried.
Putting the rest of this under the cut to save you from my rambling...
The Design
I know it’s Corey Burton (at least I think that was confirmed) but however they tried to de-age his voice for younger Dooku is just not hitting right for me - he sounds like an off-brand Professor Snape and I do not like it lol. They should have gone with Euan Morton from the Dooku: Jedi Lost audio play, in my opinion. Also I do not like the character design at all. I’m sure they’ll do some goofy BTS where they’re like “we gave him this hair because vampires and Christopher Lee lolololol” but it looks weird as hell in their art style and I’m not getting the nods to young Christopher Lee (for which there are hundreds upon hundreds of image references for) that this character needs. I mentioned this in a comment earlier but the overall design is reading very Nicolas Cage to me. I think what happened is they shot themselves in the foot with the anti-semitic caricature Dooku was made into for the original TCW series and then were stuck with that stupid ass inhuman nose when having to design young Dooku. It just looks nothing like “young” Dooku to me and the longer I look at it the more it frustrates me lol.
Granted I suppose all that can be forgiven (sort of) by the fact it’s TCW animation style that I already know I’m not a fan of - I really think the only character that looks “good” in the style is Ahsoka and tbf she continues to look great in this trailer. So all that said I’m probably just biased against the character design from the get-go and that’s a matter of personal preference, I guess.
Plot Speculation
But onto the weird plot vibes I’m getting. Caveat that it’s a grainy, leaked trailer and there’s nothing else to go off of as of right now, but I’m really nervous they’re going to lean into him being a loose canon constantly flirting with the Dark Side which Dooku very rarely is in his younger years. He gets pushed to the edge in several instances, where we see his mask slip and his control lessening, but I’m hoping that the series doesn’t try to insinuate that’s all he is. That would really cheapen what Dooku is as a character which, at the end of the day, is a skilled strategist, political orator, and Master Jedi.
I mean the guy convinced half the galaxy to join him in the separatist revolution. He’s pointedly not an Anakin-like loose canon (most of the time). I guess maybe that subtlety is hard to do in a children’s cartoon you’re only giving three 15-minute episodes to, but that’s what makes Dooku a compelling character. His anger built over the years and he felt no one was listening to the writing on the wall that the Sith were returning. His trust in the Order continued to degrade as, time after time, his and Sifo-Dyas’s warnings were ignored. It’s what makes him such an intriguing parallel to Anakin - they both fall in the end but the speed at which it happens is extraordinarily different. There are hints of that near the end of the trailer, which give me hope, but again I think more than likely his fall will be rushed for the sake of time and then do a disservice to the people who don’t follow the supplementary Star Wars materials by trivializing his character as “bad from the start” rather than a person who was corrupted by their own flaws and ideals.
The main hints in the trailer that give me this worry are what I assume to be him betraying Qui-Gon (looks like he pushes his padawan away when Qui-Gon tries to stop him from doing something on the battlefield), Mace telling him to stand down in another scene, and the fight between him (bearded/older) and Yaddle. Going to call it now that I think they’re going to insinuate that Yaddle got in the way of him erasing Kamino in the Archives... it looks like there is a funeral scene in the trailer with him as well and I’m hoping the two aren’t linked. I might turn off the series for good if that happened (him killing Yaddle) it would just be way too out of character for someone who struggles to personally kill a lot of people he has close relationships with - but who knows, maybe that doesn’t even happen, maybe they do it in an interesting way (like a “can’t turn back now” moment). We also have the scene of Qui-Gon stopping Dooku in Master & Apprentice but this one in the trailer seems different than that, proposing then that Dooku going “too far” was something more consistent than a one-off. Further, while I’m really excited to see Mace I think his “stand down” comment goes against the subtextual friendship the two have in Attack of the Clones and I’d hate to see that done away with. Though, I suppose I would be open to exploring the idea that Mace seeing Dooku’s eventual fall is what leads to him being more skeptical of Anakin - I think that has the potential to be done well. I don’t know... right now these elements all together just give me pause.
Conclusion
Will I still watch it? Of course, and I am excited to see them doing more with Dooku’s story because I really think it is one of the most compelling Jedi stories out there and I see a lot of myself in him (don’t worry lol mostly in the supplemental materials haha). Am I Dooku fanboy who has built the character up in my head? Totally and I completely recognize that is driving some of my apprehension 😂 .
Things I’d be excited to see:
We have that hideous model for Sifo-Dyas from his mini-arc in TCW, I wonder if they’ll pull him back in. Even though I think TCW design for him was absolutely egregious, it would be awesome to have him featured more and he’s a huge part of Dooku’s character.
Rael - already mentioned this but if they are leaning into Master & Apprentice I’d really like to see Rael make an appearance because more people need to know about him. I just have a feeling though they’d somehow make his design shockingly bad too lol.
Wonder if they’ll show us hints of from Darth Plagueis and how Dooku meets Palpatine. I guess that’s Legends now, though. In that case it’d be interesting to see political revolutionary Dooku run into Palpatine at some function. We, the audience, would know that foretold meeting spells the end for Dooku’s disillusionment and the beginning of his full descent to the dark side, so it would be a cool moment.
Dooku’s speech to the Senate from Dooku: Jedi Lost. It’s such a good scene where he’s lowkey spitting some facts and, for me, it really adds to the tragedy of Dooku, where you can see this is a character who wants to fight for justice but grows so frustrated with the lack of progress that he loses himself in the process.
Political Dooku just in general - again it makes him so uniquely different from Anakin. Dooku’s darkness stems from ambition and pride, but he’s also extremely clever and this exacerbates his worst two traits. His calculating nature is different from Anakin’s brash one - and yet they both fall. Dooku still loses the game at the end of it all, but he plays it well and, combined with the fact we know he “thinks” his actions are noble, it makes you (at times) want him to succeed and outplay Palpatine.
Dooku being a menace of duelist. One of my favorite scenes from TCW is when he skillfully wipes the floor with Anakin and Obi-Wan - it’s just so fucking good. You get such a sense of “this is a Jedi MASTER” and it’s terrifying. Boss level music every time Dooku’s on screen lol.
Dooku and Yoda. Please, give this to me. Canonize some aspects of Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, one of the best Star Wars novels with some raw ass quotes I think about all the time. Yoda wanted to bring Dooku back to the light so badly and Dooku is famously an awful Sith lord lmao who constantly teeters on being convinced back into the Light - it’s an excellent Star Wars tragedy.
Oh also goes without saying but I am pumped as hell for Yaddle and Tera Sinube being in the trailers.
Anyways - what even is Star Wars if we’re not immediately complaining about getting the things we’ve been asking for 😂😂😂
Again, all in good fun though I know bitterness isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I’ll get over it just like I eventually got over TBOBF spitting on one my other favorite characters, don’t worry. And who knows it might be awesome and I might be able to look past that character design!
Now we just need a Grievous anthology that further decanonizes his cool ass backstory to get announced so we can round out the trifecta of my favorite Star Wars characters being assassinated in the mainstream hahaha.
