antianakin - Tumblr blog

[antianakin]

Dave Filoni has an anti-Jedi agenda. Pass it on.

[antianakin]

You know, I wanted to make a post about how I'm glad that Galen Marek/Starkiller from the Force Unleashed got de-canonized. Because having a godlike force user whose neither Jedi nor Sith pop up to jump start the Rebellion out of nowhere really cheapens the Original Trilogy and Luke Skywalker's whole journey therein...

Then I realized Ahsoka's basically the same thing at this point.

[antianakin]

"no attachments" in SW literally just means "don't be selfish and possessive". that's it. that's all there is. doesn't mean jedi can't have friends and loved ones. they can. just. don't be possessive and selfish about it. don't murder thousands of people in an effort to save one.

[antianakin]

Tumblr Top Ships Bracket - Round 1 Side 2

This poll is a celebration of fandom and fandom history; we're aware that there are certain issues with many of the listed pairings and sources, but they are a part of that history. Please do not take this as an endorsement, and refrain from harassment.

[antianakin]

I really like the Ahsoka show, but for the life of me, I can't understand why Dave Filoni decided that Sabine needed to use the Force. She was such a cool and complicated character in Rebels and the fact that they shoved some Force-sensitivity in there really bothers me. She doesn't need the Force!! In Rebels, her backstory was made to compliment Ezra's. Where Ezra lost his loving parents, Sabine still had hers, the lack of love haunting her during the series. Ezra had to learn how to fight while Sabine had to learn peace. Ezra was a Jedi and Sabine was a Mandalorian.

They were supposed to be friends despite all the differences.

Now, its less of "they trust that the other one has their back and they rely on the other's skill set to cover their own weaknesses" and its more like "they both have have the access to the same skill set but one of them can barely use it so now there's added drama of one feeling inadequate."

She didn't need the Force to be cool. She was cooler without it.

[antianakin]

The Mando fan instinct to see any random clone act the bare minimum level of friendly towards a child and go "OMG it's the Jango Fett Mando Adoption Genes" is so funny to someone who remembers that Jango Fett is someone who intentionally created several MILLION offspring just so he could sell them off as weapons. He gets ONE CHILD out of that bargain. I'm not sure I'd count that as an instinct towards adopting tons of children, personally. The enslaving of like 99.99% of the children he could claim as his sort-of outweighs the acquisition of the one.

[antianakin]

You know what annoys me? Like every former Jedi that gets shown bashes the Order. Show me a former Jedi who left not because of some BS ‘Jedi are wrong’ reason. Have some who left because they acknowledged that they weren’t fit for it or because they fell in love and understood they couldn’t be fully dedicated to both their spouse and the Order. Show me former Jedi who are still fond of other Jedi and the Order.

Yeah I feel like there's maybe been one or two in comics or something? I feel like I remember seeing panels where someone was discussing their grandmother who had once been a Jedi and left because she wanted to start a family, but there was never any animosity or hard feelings or anything like that.

I feel like the reason we don't see it very often is because, like I've been mentioning in my post about Pong Krell recently, former Jedi often end up being FALLEN Jedi who are always then utilized to showcase the theme of selfishness and greed. The Jedi are a symbol of selflessness and compassion within the narrative, so it can sometimes I think be difficult to write a character who has left that behind and NOT have them sort-of... becoming a symbol of the opposite. It places the characters in this strange limbo where they AREN'T part of that symbol of selflessness and compassion anymore, but they aren't a symbol of the opposite either, so what is the point of this character within the overall narrative? We see the problem this causes with any story involving Ahsoka these days.

There seem to be three places where we see these characters go.

First is the fallen Jedi route, obviously. They've left the Order and since gone down a path of darkness. This is where characters like Anakin, Dooku, Barriss, Pong Krell, and all of the Inquisitors end up. Pretty obvious storyline.

The second is where the character leaves the Jedi for any reason and then ultimately has to find their way BACK to being a Jedi as part of their journey. They probably never were fully fallen or anything, but they do lose some part of themselves when they lose their identity as a Jedi and regaining that identity allows them to grow into a healthier, more compassionate and selfless person. This is where characters like Kanan, Cal Kestis, Cere Junda, and Obi-Wan Kenobi end up.

The third is the Jedi critical route and the only one I know of who is on this particular journey is Ahsoka, but I'm assuming that The Acolyte might end up with at least one of their characters in this category. This is where the characters leave the Jedi Order and they don't explicitly end up FALLEN, but they're not at all on a route BACK to being a Jedi either. Or, if they are, it's explicitly NOT a Jedi like they were before and this is what makes them BETTER than the other Jedi.

The point is that there's usually a JOURNEY that is involved in characters who have left the Order or lost their identity as a Jedi in some way. Characters who have left the Order but bear no animosity towards the Jedi and are still fond of them have less room to grow in terms of their identity. You could presumably do a story of a Jedi that ENDS in them leaving the Order. We kinda sorta got that with the Grogu storyline in TBOBF where he attempts to go back to training with Luke and ultimately decides it's not the path for him anymore. It was arguably done for the wrong reasons and this storyline was rushed because it was put into the wrong show, but the concept behind it is actually quite similar to what you seem to be looking for. And it gave me some more complex feelings about that storyline because you're not wrong that it's not a BAD thing to see a story where a Jedi character leaves the Jedi simply because they've decided it's no longer the right path for them and not due to anything negative. This particular version of it might not be the greatest example of this story ever done, but I didn't hate it, either. I appreciated the novelty of it and the overall way it was handled even if I also had some issues with its placement and the motivation behind it.

So it's not like it CAN'T be done, but I think it just feels less compelling to most people because of what the Jedi tend to symbolize within Star Wars. It'd be interesting to see more people attempt to tackle this story for other characters, but I'm also cognizant that there's a LOT of bad Jedi content out there right now and they keep killing off the Jedi or having characters be Jedi critical and all of that, so having more stories of Jedi who LEAVE the Order isn't perhaps what we need more of. I want more stories of Jedi who are happy to be Jedi first, THEN we can look at stories about Jedi who leave the Order amicably.

[antianakin]

You know those posts that are like "it's so hard to be a Jedi fan who also loves Luke/Anakin/Ahsoka/etc"? Here's mine.

It's so hard to be a Jedi fan who also loves the clones sometimes. And I do love the clones, I genuinely think the only good thing to have come out of TCW was the way it changed the characterization of the clones for good.

But damn so many clone fans just really hate the Jedi and can't STAND when we Jedi fans dare to just talk about the Jedi instead of the clones in any given situation.

[antianakin]

What are your favorite and most hated tropes?

In general?

I don't know that I've thought about it that much, honestly. I personally believe that tropes are (mostly) neutral and any trope can be either really incredible or really awful depending on the context of the story and how well executed it is.

The only ones I hate are the blatantly offensive ones, all of the sexist, racist, antisemitic, homophobic, and transphobic tropes that we all tend to know about.

In Star Wars specifically, I obviously hate the trope of blaming the Jedi for everything unironically. I don't mind looking at how the Jedi were turned into scapegoats by Palpatine and the galaxy and how regular people might often end up blaming the Jedi for things because they genuinely just don't know any better (a galaxy is a big place and misinformation is obviously quite rampant). But I don't care for the trope that's starting to show up WAY too often where the narrative SUPPORTS that the Jedi are to blame for the things that happened to them and to the galaxy. I particularly hate all of the Jedi survivors scapegoating themselves (and again here, it's one thing when it's an Inquisitor who's been broken and tortured into thinking this way or a Fallen Jedi like Bode and Malicos who are explicitly already evil says something like this, but it's another thing for Cal to agree with them or for Yoda to blame the Jedi for the war).

I'm also starting to get really tired of the clones and Jedi just getting killed off for pathos over and over again when it isn't actually necessary and actually probably makes the story worse sometimes. I dunno if that counts as a trope or not, but whatever, I'm putting it here.

Other than that, I feel like I'm generally fairly neutral on tropes. Any trope can be done really well or really serve a particular story, there's no trope (outside of the ones that are based on prejudice and bigotry) that is inherently bad all the time or inherently great all the time. A trope I might really love in one story might feel really corny in another, and vice versa. It's almost never the trope's fault that it doesn't work. "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn this way" and all that.

[antianakin]

The real punch to the gut is how the narrative uses to that to reduce her from hero to sounding board for the men around her. Rey spends the entirety of The Last Jedi as a surrogate mother to men: first Luke, then Ben. She is there to be an emotional sherpa, a plot device with a lightsaber and good listening skills[…] You could wipe Rey from Episode IX with little fallout to the narrative. Another Force user could step in to take her place; either another lost Jedi such as Mace Windu or Ahsoka Tano or another “nobody” with Force powers. Had Luke died during the original trilogy, the story would’ve hit a wall from which it could not recover. The same with Anakin in the prequel trilogy. So who is the main character of The Last Jedi? Whose removal would cause the wheels to come off and the narrative to grind to a halt? Kylo. Fucking. Ren. When Ben says Rey has no place in this story; he’s kind of right. The Last Jedi made Rey superfluous in her own hero’s journey. She deserved better than that.

Donna Dickens, ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Fails Rey On Every Level (via handmaidensofnaboo)

[antianakin]

Listen. LISTEN.

I have zero plans to watch TOTE. I thought TOTJ was pretty shit and I don't trust Filoni near Barriss with a ten foot pole and I don't care about Morgan or Thrawn at all. I HATE the way he relies on nostalgia bait and fan service and cameos instead of good writing and consistent characterization and development.

But if Reva shows up in TOTE I'd consider watching her episodes JUST for her. No guarantees because good lord I don't want Filoni touching Reva at all, but just the CONCEPT of bringing Reva into Barriss's story would be enough to get me to think about wading into the cesspool that is going to be this show.

What are your thoughts about fans who say that Vader killed Fox for Ahsoka (in one of the comics) or Vader will brutally kill Barriss in the upcoming Tales of the Empire because of what she did to Ahsoka?

Vader didn't offer Ahsoka to join him in Rebels (been a while might be wrong), or offer any of his other jedi friends to be spared. Or any of the younglings. It seems fanfic-y for Ahsoka to get through to Vader more than his own son. Anakin obniously stopped giving a fuck about anyone but Padme, yet he still gets along-ish with the stormtroopers.

I feel like "getting along' with the stormtroopers is a stretch, personally, but I can't say I'm familiar enough with stuff set in that time period focusing on those characters to really speak to it with a lot of authority. I feel like he just doesn't care about them enough to bother them or actively try to kill them, but that doesn't equate to getting along.

As for Ahsoka, I feel like the claim that he killed Fox (I assume this is referencing that comic where he snaps Fox's neck shortly after O66) for Ahsoka is kind-of ridiculous. I haven't read it myself, but I've seen people discuss it and seen some of the panels and my understanding is that he kills Fox because the clones shot at him when they saw his lightsaber, not understanding that he wasn't another Jedi or whatever and Anakin just... kills Fox to demonstrate power. I dunno, this is what Anakin just... DOES. He chokes people who bother him in the OT all the fucking time, we see him get close during TCW all the time too. Anakin leans towards violence as a coping mechanism for a LOT of things, and the immediate motivation is the insult of being shot at by the troopers as an enemy and the disrespect he interprets it as, so he uses Fox as an example. COULD you choose to interpret it so that part of his motivation is that he already hates Fox because of what happened to Ahsoka during the Wrong Jedi arc? Sure. Is it the actual stated motivation within that storyline? No.

Honestly, I find the entire concept that people might be angry at FOX for the Wrong Jedi arc immensely ridiculous just to begin with. Like I get anger aimed at the Jedi Council and Wolffe/the 104th FAR more than I get anger aimed at Fox or the CG. Like Fox and the CG barely have anything to DO with the entire incident, they put her in a cell after a prisoner dies with no other obvious cause immediately after the sound is cut on the recordings, and then they try to recapture her after she does in fact literally break out of her cell and go on the run. Like she's under suspicion and then leaves without permission after a second incident happens, OF COURSE they're trying to get her to stop and come back. They're not HUNTING her. You know who DOES hunt her down? Plo Koon, Wolffe, Anakin, and Rex. All of them go out with squads of men to literally hunt her down and recapture her. And it's WOLFFE who ultimately finds her at the warehouse and stuns her. Fox has NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF THIS.

As for what Anakin will do with Barriss, I honestly can't say. I wouldn't put it past Filoni to have him kill Barriss simply because we know Filoni doesn't treat Barriss well and that sounds like something he'd find compelling and meaningful. I'm not planning on watching TOTE for exactly this reason, I'm waiting to see what everyone else says about it since it's bound to be bad no matter what happens.

[antianakin]

I didn't even open it, because it's Screenrant, but I'd just like to say the Jedi Council didn't need to be redeemed because they didn't do anything wrong. Thank you and good day.

[antianakin]

I am uninformed about the director of the acolytes and their takes. Could you inform me?

Per her Collider interview, the show reportedly "won't be kind" to the Jedi. Which would have been bad enough but this show is specifically set in the High Republic era.

You know, that period they've been exploring where the Republic and the Jedi are actually functioning in harmony and working together and the fandom generally agrees that it's a golden age for everyone?

The show takes place towards the end of that era, 100 BBY, so what I'm expecting is a lot of leaning into the ever pervasive and irritating idea of "Oh the Prequel Jedi Order LoST tHeIR wAy!", especially since she seems to think Lucas was telling that story with the Prequels. (AKA the perpetually annoying "The point of the Prequels!!!!" talking point.)

Also per the Collider interview, Kathleen Kennedy loved her idea and I don't think I need to tell you how much fandom does not trust that woman's judgement.

Additionally! Her IMDB credentials are pitiful (directing a season of the The Bachlorette does not qualify you for speculative fiction) and another interview there reveals that she wrote Star Wars fanfiction when she was younger, which is first of all cringe to bring up in any kind of professional context and always always a crapshoot when it comes to hiring writers because you can't guarantee that the writer hasn't 1) marinated too long in their own personal fanon interpretations of the characters and world, 2) subscribed to some of the popular but wrong fanon ideas pervading the fandomsphere (see aforementioned "The Jedi lost their way!") or 3) brought some of their bad writing habits with them into the professional world.

So we have an inexperienced director with a potential head full of bad fanon tropes and misinterpretations about the source material put in charge of a project because the unpopular boss lady liked her personally.

Yeah. I'm hard-passing this show and I'm probably going to have to blacklist it because the discourse is going to be insufferable.

[antianakin]

What are your thoughts about fans who say that Vader killed Fox for Ahsoka (in one of the comics) or Vader will brutally kill Barriss in the upcoming Tales of the Empire because of what she did to Ahsoka?

Vader didn't offer Ahsoka to join him in Rebels (been a while might be wrong), or offer any of his other jedi friends to be spared. Or any of the younglings. It seems fanfic-y for Ahsoka to get through to Vader more than his own son. Anakin obniously stopped giving a fuck about anyone but Padme, yet he still gets along-ish with the stormtroopers.

I feel like "getting along' with the stormtroopers is a stretch, personally, but I can't say I'm familiar enough with stuff set in that time period focusing on those characters to really speak to it with a lot of authority. I feel like he just doesn't care about them enough to bother them or actively try to kill them, but that doesn't equate to getting along.

As for Ahsoka, I feel like the claim that he killed Fox (I assume this is referencing that comic where he snaps Fox's neck shortly after O66) for Ahsoka is kind-of ridiculous. I haven't read it myself, but I've seen people discuss it and seen some of the panels and my understanding is that he kills Fox because the clones shot at him when they saw his lightsaber, not understanding that he wasn't another Jedi or whatever and Anakin just... kills Fox to demonstrate power. I dunno, this is what Anakin just... DOES. He chokes people who bother him in the OT all the fucking time, we see him get close during TCW all the time too. Anakin leans towards violence as a coping mechanism for a LOT of things, and the immediate motivation is the insult of being shot at by the troopers as an enemy and the disrespect he interprets it as, so he uses Fox as an example. COULD you choose to interpret it so that part of his motivation is that he already hates Fox because of what happened to Ahsoka during the Wrong Jedi arc? Sure. Is it the actual stated motivation within that storyline? No.

Honestly, I find the entire concept that people might be angry at FOX for the Wrong Jedi arc immensely ridiculous just to begin with. Like I get anger aimed at the Jedi Council and Wolffe/the 104th FAR more than I get anger aimed at Fox or the CG. Like Fox and the CG barely have anything to DO with the entire incident, they put her in a cell after a prisoner dies with no other obvious cause immediately after the sound is cut on the recordings, and then they try to recapture her after she does in fact literally break out of her cell and go on the run. Like she's under suspicion and then leaves without permission after a second incident happens, OF COURSE they're trying to get her to stop and come back. They're not HUNTING her. You know who DOES hunt her down? Plo Koon, Wolffe, Anakin, and Rex. All of them go out with squads of men to literally hunt her down and recapture her. And it's WOLFFE who ultimately finds her at the warehouse and stuns her. Fox has NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF THIS.

As for what Anakin will do with Barriss, I honestly can't say. I wouldn't put it past Filoni to have him kill Barriss simply because we know Filoni doesn't treat Barriss well and that sounds like something he'd find compelling and meaningful. I'm not planning on watching TOTE for exactly this reason, I'm waiting to see what everyone else says about it since it's bound to be bad no matter what happens.

[antianakin]

"So essentially what Star Wars to me was, a boy who is stuck at home and dreams of joining a war. And so it's like, let's tell a story of a girl who is stuck in a war and dreams of going home. It was like a mirror." - Gareth Edwards, 2023

[antianakin]

sure dave filoni might not be a particularly careful planner, or respect the works of people that are not him, or care about lore or character consistency, or think about the implications of his worldbuilding on the wider franchise. but at least he doesn't respect the characterization of his own ocs either

[antianakin]

I also don't disagree that the Umbara arc is about the clones, nor have I ever said otherwise. I'm focusing on the Jedi because Krell is, in fact, a Fallen Jedi. You might notice the original ask was about Krell, what he was like prior to having fallen, what his feelings about the clones may or may not have been and whether they were always negative or if they changed over time. The whole point of this post, from ask to answer, was about speculating on Krell AS A JEDI. So yeah, I'm focusing on the Jedi portion of who Krell was and the impact that his being a Jedi that Fell has on the overall story of Star Wars.

TCW has an episodic structure but people often treat it like it isn't. It's clearly built, in many ways, to be a bridge between AOTC and ROTS. And a show with this episodic of a structure quite honestly doesn't work very well as a bridge. The characters seem to sort-of evolve and develop and change over time, but there's zero references to things that might have changed them or caused this development because all of those things are stuck within the vacuum of their episode or arc.

As someone who likes the Umbara arc and wants to focus on the clones to the exclusion of everything else, I'd imagine you find it a little frustrating that there's ZERO reference to Umbara and Krell in the Zyggeria arc even though it seemingly immediately follows Umbara and puts Rex in a position of being a slave which presumably would be a VERY difficult situation for him to be in so soon after Krell. You'd think that recent experience of being treated like an object without worth might be sort-of meaningful in an arc focused around slavery and where Rex is in fact enslaved. But there's nothing. Somehow it just... has zero impact on Rex's experience in Zyggeria at all.

So yes, I do find TCW's episodic structure frustrating and a bad choice for this particular show. It doesn't mean an episodic structure is bad IN GENERAL or that I dislike it every time, it just means that there is a time and a place for it and this wasn't it. A structure that's more like Rebels or TBB where it's more of a happy medium between episodic and serialization probably would've suited TCW better in the long run.

This is why I'm refusing to budge on saying that my analysis of Krell in this post is coming from looking at this character through the lens of his place in the GREATER storyline being told in Star Wars which actually ISN'T about the clones. It's not about the Jedi, either. It's about selfishness vs selflessness, it's about fear and pain twisting people into monsters if they can't control it. And Star Wars OFTEN uses Fallen Jedi and dark Force users to represent these themes, starting with Anakin himself. But you can also look at characters like Dooku, Ventress, Maul, and Barriss. If I extend beyond TCW and the films, you find characters like Reva, Trilla, Cere, Malicos, Bode, and Dagan. Kylo Ren is meant to be this character in the Sequels. I cannot emphasize enough that Fallen Jedi characters tend to be used to represent this theme OVER AND OVER AGAIN throughout Star Wars. One of the very few who isn't used this way is Krell.

And yes, he's there for a specific purpose in this story because it IS hyperfocused on the clones and the story being told through them, but that doesn't mean that the Umbara arc or Krell exist within a vacuum either. TCW ISN'T Visions, the arcs in TCW aren't intended to be completely disconnected from the rest of Star Wars, quite the opposite actually. So while I hear your point about the part Krell is intended to represent within this specific story, I'm not going to accept your argument that his being a Jedi simply doesn't matter when analyzing him as a character within Star Wars as a whole.

Maybe if I'd been asked about the way Rex or the other 501st clones felt about Krell after the Umbara arc, I would've had more to say about the story that clearly is more compelling to you, but I wasn't.

If speculation about this character through this lens isn't interesting to you, then that is of course your prerogative.

Pong Krell. It’s universally agreed that he deserved worse than what he got and I get that. I just wished we got to see what he was like before he Fell. Did he always hate clones, was it gradual? Did he suspect something off and went over paranoid?

I’ll say this one and I’ll say this probably a thousand more times but I wished the creators focused on more details with characters. It’s absolutely fascinating that they created a Jedi that Fell but did nothing with it besides outright evil.

How other Jedi reacted to learning that a fellow Jedi betrayed everyone? How did the Republic?

I just wished they did more with him than just, yeah that dude was a dick and killed clones.

Yeah, it's one of the things I don't like as much about TCW, the extremely episodic nature of it means that there really is never any build-up to anything or lasting impact from anything. Unless it's happening within one of the 2-4 episode arcs, we RARELY get to see any kind of build-up or fallout. It's one of the major issues with Barriss, too, we see her ONCE in season 2 and she's calm, kind, methodical, and selfless. And then three seasons later in season 5 she's suddenly ruthless, selfish, doubting everything and everyone, merciless, etc. There is NO BUILD UP to that radical 180 to her character and there's no real exploration of how Ahsoka really feels about that particular betrayal afterwards, the focus in later episodes after the Wrong Jedi focuses only on Ahsoka feeling betrayed by the COUNCIL and her feelings about that. Nothing since TCW has ever touched it either (Rebels, Mandalorian, the Ahsoka show). Satine's death never really comes up again after it happens aside from Bo-Katan being an asshole. Obi-Wan goes from being totally fucked up about Maul coming back to being chill enough to take on Maul and Savage alone and winning without us getting to see him actually deal with those emotions.

Pong Krell and the Umbara arc IN GENERAL falls into this category easily (so do the Zyggeria and the Deception arc tbh). Krell is such a basic evil character, there's so little nuance to him and we never get to see the Jedi react to the revelation that one of their own turned at all. Dooku turned after he had already left the Order as far as any of them really know, but Krell was still IN the Order when he decided to betray them and it would've been really interesting to see the impact of that on them. It would've been ESPECIALLY interesting to explore that more during the Wrong Jedi arc in particular in how the Jedi feel like they can't trust their own people not to betray them anymore after Dooku and Krell.

Krell is presented with like. Zero nuance. He is just unequivocally evil and despite Anakin greeting him in a friendly way at the beginning, the visuals tell you this dude's no good right from his first appearance. There isn't really any chance that he's going to be a good guy at all. So all we are left with are headcanons.

And I remember discussing my Krell headcanons somewhere, but I think it might've been on a Discord server I've since left, so I unfortunately cannot find them again. So I'll try to remember them and immortalize them here, I guess.

Here's the thing about Krell. NO ONE suspects him. So he cannot be overtly acting like a bigoted asshole from the jump at any point, he HAS to be acting in such a way that it's not trickling out to the other clones and to the Jedi themselves that Krell is an absolute monster. Even Fives takes a moment to decide that Krell is suspicious and only brings up Krell's casualty numbers after he sees Krell's behavior for a minute and combines that knowledge with what he's now personally experiencing and is starting to come to conclusions based on that. He doesn't go into the relationship thinking Krell is worse than any other Jedi already.

And based on what we know of EVERY OTHER FALLEN JEDI (Dooku, Anakin, Barriss), they didn't start out as monsters. Dooku was a highly respected Jedi Master who seems to have had a really positive relationship with Yoda and Qui-Gon and simply became disillusioned with the Senate and his care for the people of the galaxy got twisted into something darker over time. Barriss was kind, selfless, compassionate, brave, and resourceful, and it was the war that caused her to start letting her fears and pain consume her into turning on the Jedi. Anakin was kind and spent years having his fears and doubts twisted into selfishness and greed and darkness that allowed him to justify murder and genocide for power. So it wouldn't make sense to me that Pong Krell wouldn't fall into the same pattern where he was once kind and good and selfless and brave, but that the circumstances surrounding the war caused him to lose faith and fall.

My headcanon is that he lost an entire battalion early in the war, much like we see happen to Plo Koon during the Malevolence arc and that that loss and failure just BROKE him. Krell DID care about the clones, he cared about his men, and he FAILED them all. And I think that he saw all of these clones dying by the dozens in all of the other battalions and instead of choosing to let go of his pain and fear and lean into his compassion, he chose to distance himself from them entirely to make it hurt less. If he didn't care about the clones, if he just saw them as the cannon fodder that the Senate treated them all as, then it would hurt less when they died. Maybe the Senate itself even dragged him over the coals for that initial loss. Or perhaps it was the opposite, maybe most of his battalion was killed, but it ultimately ended in a victory anyway because they were forced to just keep going despite the consequences. And so Krell decides to enter this mindset where he is disillusioned with the Senate and just CANNOT allow himself to care about the clones, because it won't change what the Senate is going to do to them anyway, so he may as well just treat them the same way.

And this wouldn't have happened overnight. It wouldn't have been a sudden 180 where he decided he was just going to treat them like shit. But he maybe decided to put some more professional distance between himself and his new battalion, not get close to them, not use their names (although he still knows them, still remembers them all). Maybe one day they're in a tricky situation and all of his options are bad, he HAS to sacrifice some of his men in order to salvage the situation at all, and it's a choice between a full retreat that he KNOWS the Senate won't take well, or sacrificing the men to achieve the victory. So he sacrifices the men. It's not an entire battalion, it's not even a whole company, but it's more than it would've been if he'd retreated. Maybe next time, there's a choice between going back to save some of the men even if it poses a risk to his own life or the mission or something, and he chooses not to go back for them because the mission is more important, or he rationalizes that his life is more important as the Jedi General. And it's just more and more little decisions like that that add up over time to being able to see the clones as nothing more than tools.

The disillusionment with the Senate leads to him sort-of agreeing with things Dooku and the Separatists have said and he can look at the war and realize that it's entirely possible that the Republic is going to LOSE, and he CANNOT be the one who loses again, so maybe he starts bouncing around the concept of maybe switching sides. And of course initially he rejects the idea. He's a Jedi, he won't just abandon the Republic, he can't be a traitor, who in the Separatist side would ever trust him anyway. But once that seed is planted, it doesn't go away and it keeps coming back up and he keeps finding ways to rationalize why it might be a good idea and then deciding not to do it over and over again. Until one day, he can't convince himself that it's a bad idea or that it wouldn't work. He tells himself it's the ONLY option, if he doesn't change sides then he's dead. But Dooku WON'T trust him unless he can prove that he's not on the Republic's side, so he has to come up with a plan to gain their trust. And what better way to earn that trust than to ensure a Separatist victory in an important campaign by double-crossing the Republic.

And once he's chosen to go down that path, it's even EASIER to stop caring about the clones because, well, they're all dead anyway. The Republic is going to lose, the clones are all dead men walking no matter what, so why bother caring about them or trying to keep them alive? He can't lose so often that the Jedi or the Senate become suspicious of him, of course, but it's REALLY easy then to get to Umbara and treat the clones like crap and turn them against each other and intentionally try to get them all killed. They're dead anyway, he's not the one killing them really, is he, the Senate is, the Jedi are, the war is. They were dead from the moment they were created in that test tube because they were created for this specific purpose. It's not his fault.

And much like Barriss turns against the Jedi in part because she did LOVE the Jedi and was devastated by what she saw happening to them and the pain of seeing her people forced to become something they were never supposed to be, as much as her actions were intended as some kind of message to try to sort-of save the Jedi from a course of action she saw as their downfall, I think that Krell turns on the clones because at some point he DID care about them. A lot. And that care became his downfall, the pain at what was being done to them just absolutely gutted him and it threw him down a path that ultimately led him to turn against the very people whose deaths had hurt him so badly just a few short years ago.

Krell might not have been the most effusive or emotional person prior to the war or anything, he might've been a more reserved person similar to Mace or Dooku or Luminara, but I think he probably was a perfectly good Jedi who was kind and selfless and compassionate once upon a time.

And none of the headcanons above have even touched what his relationships with other JEDI must have been like. It's just as possible that he did have friends and people he considered family among the Jedi. Maybe he had a padawan once at some point. And maybe all of those people had died by the time we get to Umbara. Maybe he had to watch a lot of the people he was closest to just fall like flies, and so it starts feeling like nothing matters. Maybe one of the Jedi who died on Geonosis was a former padawan of his, but Krell himself obviously wasn't there and the pain of THAT loss and the guilt he feels at not having been there (even though this padawan had been knighted for a while and there was a good reason Krell wasn't there that day) just sticks with him, too, and he never quite manages to let that go, either.

I think a lot of people choose to just headcanon Krell as having just always been kind-of an asshole even when he was a Jedi, but that doesn't work for me. If Krell was always an asshole, I feel like the Jedi would've stepped in at some point before the war even HAPPENED and tried to manage that situation. And it doesn't match up with the way pretty much every other fallen Jedi has ever been written, where they were GOOD PEOPLE once upon a time who saw awful things happen that they couldn't stop or had an awful thing happen TO them that they couldn't stop and the pain of that experience consumes them to the point that they spiral into darkness as a result. Krell should be the same way, which means he likely was a perfectly good normal Jedi before the war. He would've been kind, he might've been good with younglings (he's tall, maybe he was the one the younglings went to all the time for piggy back rides, maybe he often taught dual wielding to padawans who asked because of how clearly proficient he is at it), he might've taught a student of his own successfully, he would've been wise and selfless and compassionate, he would've loved the Jedi and the people of the galaxy.

Like, to be frank, if Tales of the Jedi HAD to explore a fallen Jedi story, they should've explored Krell instead of Dooku. Dooku has been explored before, we know quite a lot about him and his motivations and his backstory, but Krell, as you noted, is left a mystery and is stuck in the realm of being just purely evil for the sake of the story they were telling in this one arc. Krell needed more nuance in a way Dooku just did not.