What Happened To Barriss Offee After ‘The Clone Wars’? Will She Be in Season 7?
There are many moments in Star Wars media that hit you deep in the gut. For some, it’s when Luke finds out Darth Vader is his father. For others it’s Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker’s battle in Revenge of the Sith. But for many, one of those moments is when Ahsoka Tano was framed for the bombing of the Jedi Temple. And as many can recall, that falls on the shoulders of Barriss Offee. But viewers never see her after Season 5 of The Clone Wars. What happened to her?
Barriss Offee is a sour spot for fans of ‘The Clone Wars’
As mentioned above, Barriss Offee is not a well-liked character. On the list of grievances against Barriss is as follows: she bombed the Jedi Temple, enlisted a citizen and her unsuspecting husband to do it, and then framed Ahsoka for it all. This resulted in a long hunt for Ahsoka through Coruscant and had her name dragged through the mud because of it. Ahsoka was stripped of her Jedi title and banned from the Order. Barriss did all this to someone who considered her a true friend.
Her reasoning was rooted in some sanity, though. She saw the Jedi as the villain of the war, choosing a side and continuing the fight even though innocent people were suffering. While the Jedi were complicit in certain aspects of the war, the bombing and framing were a bit much.
There is nothing in canon that tells us of she died or survived Order 66
But being liked and being intriguing are not mutually exclusive. So while many fans might hate her, a lot of people still want to know what happened to her. After she admits to her crimes, she is led away from the trial room, and the story goes into what that aftermath looks like for Ahsoka and the Order. Barriss is never seen again.
Even though the Expanded Universe of Legends tells her fate, that’s not canon. There is nothing that explains where she went after the trial. Did Tarkin seek the same death sentence for her that he did for Ahsoka? Did she become an Inquisitor like many believed she did? Supervising Director Dave Filoni gave an interesting answer to IGN in 2014 that sort of addressed both of those instances.
He said that it wasn’t out of the question that some Jedi would barter their life and turn to the Dark Side. He then said that “Barriss Offee in some ways was a walk into that on Clone Wars,” insinuating that maybe she is a bit darker than we know. And he said that she wasn’t executed.
Dave Filoni has bigger plans for the character, but could she be in Season 7 of ‘The Clone Wars’?
Even though Barriss never showed up in Rebels or Jedi: Fallen Order like some thought she would, Filoni teased there may be more of her in the future. During the “Untold Clone Wars Panel” at Star Wars Celebration in 2015, he and Pablo Hidalgo of the Lucasfilm Story Group, gave a presentation on how The Clone Wars was supposed to end. And when speaking about Barriss, Filoni shared that originally she was going to blow up her own cell after her conviction, but that didn’t happen. “I didn’t want that fate for Barriss, so I cut that part. I had plans for Barriss.”
It’s not clear whether those plans could result in Barriss showing up in the upcoming Season 7 of The Clone Wars. But it would be interesting if Ahsoka dwells on her former friend, the reason why she’s not in the Order. She does a lot of this a year after Order 66 and Revenge of the Sith in the Ahsoka novel. Not just about Barriss, but everything. “[Barriss] had a point about the Republic and the Jedi. There was something wrong with them, and we were too locked into our traditions to see what it was,” Ahsoka thinks in her book.
So while Barriss Offee’s fate is still unknown, she had a lasting impact on the Jedi Order, on Ahsoka, and on Star Wars as a whole. With Filoni still working his magic at Lucasfilm, fans will probably get an answer someday.
