I was tempted to put this and the next two TV reviews into another trio of mini-reviews, but I just couldn’t, especially not with this. I loved Maul: Shadow Lord, it was the right combination of Star Wars wonder and action with a more mature edge and some interesting layered characters. It truly is weird just how much they’ve done with the Maul character, especially as I remember rolling my eyes when I heard he was being brough back… Let’s take a look!
The entire series is set on a new planet called Janix, which has a very Bladerunner-y vibe to it, and has several crime syndicates in its underbelly. Maul (voiced as ever by Sam Witwer), who if you follow the expanded media timeline you’ll know had a syndicate of his own that pretty much dominated all others before he was captured (and then recently escaped), starts the show looking to essentially kill all the crime bosses who betrayed him and then reform his group. He has his own small band of loyal followers as well, but obviously it’s still early days. He also wants to get revenge on Darth Sidious as now the Jedi are “all dead” he has to focus his rage on someone, but he knows he’s not powerful enough to face his old master so is on the look out for a new apprentice, and this is where our, I guess, main protagonist comes into it? Maybe our POV character? Either way, it’s Devon Izara (Gideon Adlon), a Jedi who is hiding out on Janix with her Master Eeko-Dio Daki (President Palmer himself, Dennis Haysbert!) due to the whole Order 66 thing, but due to her relative inexperience the idea that the Jedi Order is gone and the tough life she’s living makes her ideal for Maul to manipulate, showing her how unfair life is and that she needn’t follow the code of the Jedi anymore. Obviously for most of the show it doesn’t work, but slowly but surely you begin to think Maul is getting to her, her Master worried about the potential dark influence as well. Some of my favourite scenes are of Maul casting a literal shadow of Izara and trying to calming talk her to his side, only to occasionally lose his patience.
An unlikely team up!
The other main characters are local policeman Brander Lawson (Wagner Moura), his son Rylee (Charlie Bushnell) and his best droid friend Two Boots (Richard Ayoade, who if I had to criticise anything it would be that he sounded too much like Richard Ayoade that it sometimes took me out of the show…) who do the other thing relevant to the “just a year after Revenge of the Sith” time period and show us how some planets free from the newly established Imperial army would fear them coming in “to protect them” because it would mean losing all control to them. When Maul starts killing crime bosses Brander is worried about the Empire finding out, but Two Boots (who for the record does indeed wear two boots) is a logical droid and keeps going to call the Empire because he think they’re just going to do their job and leave again like the Republic used to do, he doesn’t have the free will to see them for what they are. This leads to friction between the two, and sadly for the people of Janix, eventually leads to the Empire arriving and things going to Hell as they bring with them two Jedi Hunting Inquisitors, specifically Marrok from the Ahsoka series (where he’s seemingly dead already) and that plague doctor/ bird skull mask looking one from the Tales of the Jedi series, where he was easily cut down by Ahsoka (after this, I guess!)
Wow this picture makes Brander Lawson look like villain. I can assure you he’s not!
As the Inquisitors start pressing down on Brander the two Jedi and Maul and his gang have a few more confrontations until the Jedi Hunters arrive and Maul ends up injured as the rest flee. This led to a sequence where Maul looks back on his past, being forced into his position of apprentice to Sidious, being unable to save his brother Savage from the same Sith’s deadly hands, and generally breaking down emotionally so he can gather himself back together and move forward. It was great because it didn’t make him suddenly a misunderstood soul or anything, he’s still very clearly a cold and calculating villain with anger and revenge-obsessed issues who we know will eventually die to Obi-Wan on Tatooine due to that very same revenge obsession, but it still made him a bit more well rounded. Eventually things get so bad that Lawson, his son, Two Boots, the two Jedi and Maul and what’s left of his gang all have to band together to escape the planet and the two pursuing Inquisitors with the help of Dryden Vos (Scott Whyte, not Paul Bettany…) and his Crimson Dawn, which will play nicely into what we see in Solo: A Star Wars Story, but before that the escape goes anything other than smoothly…
I’ll also say this: I LOVED the art style they went with here, stylised and yet still felt within that Clone Wars-Bad Batch-Rebels CG animated series of shows. Animation was super fluid as well, lots of great lightsabre duels, and the voice work was top notch as well. It really was an overall great package top to bottom. Hell it’s only been a couple of months but I already want to watch it again after assembling this review!
Overall Thoughts:
This moment in the middle of a five-way lightsabre duel where all five clashed at the same time absolutely blew me away. Amazing fight choreography.
Maul: Shadow Lord was a small triumph. A mix of more mature storytelling and the still fun and action-filled world of Star Wars was good enough but throw in fluid and satisfyingly stylised animation and great voice work and you have a real winner here. I can’t wait to see where it goes with Season 2.
As the group approaches the escape point Maul starts losing more and more of his men until he’s the only one left, but they manage to escape the Inquisitors… long enough to run into Darth Vader, who here is treated like a silent slasher villain, and played to perfection I might add. Seeing Vader against Maul is definitely “fanwank” but the very best kind, and it made sense story-wise that when the Inquisitors reported struggling with Maul and the two rogue Jedi that Sidious would send his apprentice to deal with it. As Maul and Daki take on Vader Maul intentionally pushes the Jedi Master and gets him killed by Vader, then reports to Izara about her Master’s death, fuelling her rage and anger further by goading her on. Interesting Lawson sees that happen, and I say interestingly because the cop stays behind and gets shot a few times as Maul, Izara, Rylee and Two Boots escape on Vos’s ship, but they wouldn’t go to all the trouble of having Lawson see that happen to not use it in the storyline, so I assume he’ll show up still alive, spill the beans and Izara will focus her rage on Maul instead.
This somehow ended up actually happening outside of Star Wars: Battlefront! Wait, did it even happen there? … No, they’re both villains, so… Anyway, Vader vs. Maul!
That being said, as Rylee tears up about losing his Dad Izara stews next to him, not really showing full Sith red-eyed evilness but willing to learn under Maul nonetheless. I’m really interested in seeing where the show goes for Season 2. Will it timeskip a bit to when Maul was the head of Crimson Dawn as we saw in Solo? Will it go even further forward than that and actually show us how Maul ended up going mad stranded on a barren Sith world as we see in Rebels? Or will it just pick up pretty much straight from here and the whole story with Izara is just a self-contained thing that happened to Maul shortly after the Clone Wars? Either way, if it’s as well told, animated, and voiced as this was then I’ll be happy regardless.