Barriss Offee becomes a Force healing specialist in Star Wars: Tales of the Empire, and this may be more than a reference to her original incarnation. Barriss Offee, as a character from the Star Wars prequel trilogy, belongs to both the modern Star Wars canon and the original Legends continuity. Like many characters who belong to both timelines, the two iterations of Offee are quite different, with Star Wars: The Clone Wars presenting a vastly different version of the familiar Mirialan Jedi.

Barriss Offee was originally the same age as Anakin Skywalker, with the two (and their respective Jedi Masters) working together on a mission to Ansion shortly before the events of Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. As shown in the MedStar Duology, by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry, Barriss Offee became both a Jedi Knight and a Jedi healer during the Clone Wars, but as shown in the comic adaptation of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, she died on Felucia during Order 66.

Barriss Offee Became A Healer To Put Right Her Old Mistakes

The Clone Wars reimagined Barriss Offee as a Padawan of roughly the same age as Ahsoka Tano, and even more significantly, a terrorist and traitor to the Jedi. Tales of the Empire showed Offee’s brief time as an Imperial Inquisitor before she reclaimed her identity as a Jedi. The show’s final episode reveals that Offee also became a healer, possibly as a nod to her original iteration. Offee may have chosen to become a literal healer after metaphorically healing herself from the dark side’s corruption, but there could also be a far sadder reason for her chosen specialty.

Force Heal Adds A Darker Side To Barriss’ Story

The last episode of Tales of the Empire takes place 10 to 19 years after Barriss Offee left the Imperial Inquisitors, yet she appears to have aged far more than this timeline suggests. This may be due to the modern Star Wars canon’s reimagining of Force healing. In the Legends continuity, a trained practitioner of Force healing simply calls upon the Force to heal themselves or others. What Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker reveals, however, is that Force healing has a Force user transfer their own life Force to another, a selfless act that could even be fatal to the healer.

Barriss Offee’s seemingly accelerated aging could be the result of many instances of Force healing, and perhaps this was by design. Barriss Offee rediscovered her Jedi-like compassion for innocent lives, but now lives with the guilt of having murdered innocents, clone troopers, and fellow Jedi (including her friend) during her time as a terrorist. The crushing guilt of this self-awareness might have led Barriss Offee to become a healing specialist by the end of Star Wars: Tales of the Empire because she viewed her slow sacrifice as a way to compensate for the suffering she inflicted in the past.