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I was very surprised by LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special, considering it was very clearly aimed at children, because I think the writing of it was clever on both a storytelling level (considering it was a LEGO special) and especially a comedic level. Its ability to poke fun at Star Wars, but not in a disrespectful manner at all, made for a really fun and interesting watch. That being said, I was then very eager to check out its “sequel,” Terrifying Tales.

When it comes to its storytelling approach, it is very similar to Holiday Special in that it retells a lot of stories from the past, but in a sort of “alternative history” kind of way. The way it does this is definitely different, because instead of Rey, the main character in that one, using this device that allows her to go back in time, Poe is the main character this time around. After an encounter with some remaining First Order TIE Fighters left over from the defeat of them in The Rise of Skywalker, Poe crashlands on the planet Mustafar, where he finds Darth Vader’s castle (Fortress Vader) being rebuilt into some sort of luxury hotel by one of the Hutts. Eventually, he runs into Vaneé, who was Vader’s servant that we briefly saw in the Fortress Vader scene in Rogue One (how he is still alive, I have no idea - but who cares, it’s a LEGO special after all). Vaneé then tells Poe, as well as a new character, a kid named Dean, and the Hutt some of the stories of the past, but with a very obvious twist to them.

And admittedly, just like the first one, these made for some really fun sequences. I’ll talk about pretty much all of them, as they were included in both the marketing and posters, and because I think I kind of have to in order to make a more fulfilling review. There are a bunch of fun action sequences here, though not as many as there were in the Holiday Special, as this special definitely isn’t as fast-paced, but still enough to make this engaging. We get alternative origin stories for Maul’s return from his defeat at the hands of Obi-Wan, Luke Skywalker (which was probably the least interesting), Ben Solo’s induction into the Knights of Ren, and my favorite by far, a little taste of General Grievous’s origin story, which Disney Lucasfilm, for some reason, still hasn’t explored whatsoever. These made for some really cool lightsaber fights, though, again, nowhere near as many as the Holiday Special. By the way, I’m not saying that these types of specials necessarily need a bunch of action, it’s just that this one in particular doesn’t have as much going for it story-wise like the previous special.

The reason LEGO Terrifying Tales doesn’t really compare all that well to LEGO Holiday Special is that I felt that the humor was a lot less effective here. There are still plenty of funny moments, don’t get me wrong, and a lot of neat and surprising nods to different fan favorite horror films, but a lot of the bits outside of that are very much more geared towards children. I felt that the Holiday Special’s sort of self-awareness, so to speak, was a lot more effective and, well, funny, than what we got here. Yes, I know it might be weird to review things like this the way I do, but like I said in my review for The Ewok Adventure, it really is just for the fun of it, as this is something I deeply enjoy doing (plus, if anyone was reading these reviews, it would most likely be people over the age of what specials like this are geared towards).

In regard to outright negatives, Dean, one of the characters I mentioned earlier, is a kid sort of trapped on this planet with the Hutt (named Graballa by the way), and is given what could have been kind of a neat little character arc about fear and courage, but most of it was kind of just thrown in there, it felt like. It establishes what his character’s “journey” is going to be towards the beginning of when we first meet him, but the special completely sidelines it until the very end, which I found a bit odd. In retrospect, I’m not sure how they could have really done any better than what they did, because most of the story is focused on the “alternate history” shenanigans, but still, it probably could have been done at least a little bit better.

Anyways, I’m nowhere near as high on Terrifying Tales as I was Holiday Special (the LEGO one, definitely not the original one), but it was still entertaining enough.