Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. The season finale of Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord dropped on Monday, and I watched both episodes that night, but I wanted to give it a day to simmer in my brain before I wrote about it. So, here's my review of the first season of Maul: Shadow Lord. There will be some spoilers for the end of the season, so if you've been watching the show and haven't watched episodes 9 and 10 yet, this is your warning. Let's get into it.
I'll admit that I was a bit on the fence about this show when it was announced, and even as the marketing campaign for the show started up and trailers came out. Mostly because, as you all know by now, I'm not a fan of shows or movies about villain characters. This comes from the fact that I was born in an era where villains were evil, without any kind of redemption or morally grey elements to them or anything like that. Nobody was writing them or portraying them as sympathetic. Especially in animation. However, I was also interested because, of course, it was produced by the same team at Lucasfilm Animation who did The Clone Wars, Rebels, and The Bad Batch, and I knew they'd do Maul justice in a show focused on him. Plus, I love Sam Witwer as an actor, particularly as the voice of Maul. Even then, I didn't start watching the show as soon as the episodes started coming out, mostly because I kinda wanted the hype for the show within the Star Wars fandom to die down a bit before I started watching it.
It was a really good show. I liked the characters, especially the characters of Devon (a Twi'lek), Two-Boots (a Tactical Defense Droid), and Brander Lawson (a human). Devon and her master, Eeko-Dio Daki (a Mosyk, an alien race new to this show) are survivors of Order 66, and have been in hiding from the Empire for the last however many years since the end of the Clone Wars. Lawson is a law enforcement officer on the planet Janix, which is a new planet to this show. They all become embroiled in Maul's schemes to take out local crime lords so he can use Crimson Dawn's resources to take out Palpatine and Vader. It doesn't happen obviously being that this takes place years before Maul's appearance in Rebels, but at least he has a goal in mind for revenge against Sidious.
I haven't seen any of Maul's appearances in The Clone Wars, so I don't really have any context for where Maul is at this point in the timeline. But, that didn't diminish my enjoyment of the show, because like so much of Star Wars, you don't need to have seen a previous show or movie to enjoy the current one. Having said that though, I'm sure there are some nods to The Clone Wars that I didn't pick up on since I haven't seen anything past the halfway mark of season 2, but they weren't all that obvious.
With a show like this it's difficult to talk about individual episodes because they all lead into one another, however, my only real complaint is that the last two or three episodes of the season was basically just one long lightsaber duel between various characters. Not that that's a bad thing necessarily, because it was Maul, Devon, and Daki against two Inquisitors, First Brother and Eleventh Brother for some of it. But, then Darth Vader shows up, and without a single word he attacks Maul and the two Jedi survivors. And when I say Vader doesn't speak, I mean doesn't speak AT ALL, like no lines of dialogue. Not even to taunt Maul. Both Lawson and Daki are killed by the Imperials and Vader, but that's not why I have a problem with this lightsaber duel. My problem with it is that Vader showed up at all.
I get it, Vader was Palpatine's enforcer, but I kinda feel like he was unnecessary in this show. The two Inquisitors were more than a match for Maul and the two Jedi, as was shown in earlier episodes of this season, so Vader just made them a bit too overpowered. Plus, it just feels like the story people were just repeating what was done in the season 2 finale of Rebels, right down to Maul trying to turn Devon to the Dark Side, much as he tried to do with Ezra in Rebels. Or would try to do with Ezra in Rebels depending on whether you wanna look at it from the real world perspective, where Rebels in 2018, or look at it from the in-universe perspective where the events of Rebels haven't happened yet. And not in the "it's like poetry. It rhymes" way that George Lucas crafted elements of the Prequel Trilogy either. It's more like Filoni has wanted to see Maul and Vader duel each other for the past 27 years, even though there was a story where Vader and Maul dueled in a comic book story called "Resurrection", which was published in Star Wars Tales #9 back in 2001.
My favourite part was the dynamic that Lawson had with his son, Riley, as well as with Two-Boots. I'm not a huge fan of police procedurals, the fact that Lawson's storyline feels like a police procedural, where the cop or detective is also a single father, it makes the Lawsons more relatable and makes their story more familiar for the audience. Well, except for the fact that his ex-wife, Riley's mom, works directly for and with the Empire, believing strongly in its ideals and policies. Which makes me really wonder what kind of person the former Mrs. Lawson is, given what kind of entity the Empire actually is.
Overall, this was a great season of television. Despite the singular problem that I have with the season finale, it was really fun. I thought Maul's status at this point in time was interesting because it gives a bit more context for his appearance in Solo: A Star Wars Story, since he was the head of Crimson Dawn, with Dryden Vos as his lieutenant. I loved all the new characters though and am excited to see where Devon and Riley go in season 2 since of all the new characters, they're the only ones, besides Two-Boots, to survive the season.
That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with another review. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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