This week’s batch of Maul: Shadow Lord episodes are perhaps a high point of what has been shown to critics so far—not just because the show continues its crime noir strengths and continues looking great, but because these two chapters begin to dive into the two most fascinating questions of the show so far.
The first of those questions is probed in episode three, “Whispers of the Unknown,” which picks up from the premiere and Maul’s inquisitive capture of the young Jedi Padawan Devon Izara. Breaking someone out of police custody only to put them in secret-crime-syndicate custody is perhaps not the best way to start out a relationship that Maul clearly wants to see evolve from enemies to partnership, but if there’s one thing we can guarantee about Maul, he’s going to make things hard for himself more often than not (plus, it’s a great echo of his future relationship with Ezra in Star Wars Rebels, where he is at least more open from early on that he mostly wants to exploit people for his own shenanigans).
And yet, the episode is filled with a remarkable tension as Maul and Devon alike probe each other’s senses. First, Maul at least tries putting on graces, testing Devon’s ability to break out of her new cell (well, basically a giant tube in the murky shadows of Maul’s hidden lair; again, they’re doing a great job of showing you that Maul is in dire straits), and then trying to draw parallels between the two as he tries to make her bond over tea. We know this is another mask for Maul, trying to play the quiet master partaking in tea rituals rather than running his lightsabers through someone, and for all his poking and prodding at these connections, Devon is angry, as she should be and as Maul is. Their lives were upended by the same man in Palaptine, their loved ones, their livelihoods, and their futures were lost to the machinations of a generation beyond them that used them up and spat them out.
But really, so does Devon. She is indeed angry, but she’s also angry enough that she’s not going to play into Maul’s game just yet. It’s clear the parallels he makes have some impact on her, but at the moment, it’s only enough to start pushing him away. She goes to partake in the tea, only to nab one of Maul’s sabers and promptly tell him that she’s not interested in whatever he has in mind. But it’s only then that Maul actually really starts to play. It’s a form of Maul we don’t often get to see, wrought from his current circumstances. This isn’t the vengeful warrior lashing out with power anew as he was in Clone Wars, nor is it the crime lord that managed, albeit briefly, to bring chaos to Mandalore as its brief ruler. As Devon flees, only lit by the fiery glow of the purloined lightsaber, Maul becomes, well… a lord of the shadow.
Slinking around her from the shades unlit by the lightsaber, it’s here Maul makes his most tempting case. It’s not that he and Devon have commonalities as people. She’s too angry about everything to find something in that. Instead, they have a common enemy. She wants the power to take down the Empire for what they’ve reduced her and her master to; Maul wants to get back at Palpatine. All of Devon’s frustrations from the past couple of episodes—her bristling at not even being able to beg for scraps, her capture, and her being reminded that she has been made less-than by the Empire. Even as she continues to protest, when Maul finally strikes, constantly berating her for squandering the opportunity she has with her power, we hear it unleashed in a guttural scream as Devon defends herself, her attacks getting wilder and wilder: there is too much rage here for a Jedi.
It’s all Maul needs for the moment. He doesn’t have his new apprentice yet, far from it. But he has that spark, and as he lets her flee, he has a name to put to its wielder—and for a man with very little but grand plans at the moment, that’s certainly something.
The other big question of these two episodes, other than if Devon will team up with Maul, runs throughout both chapters—but really comes into play by the climax of episode 4, “Pride and Vengeance.” Throughout these two episodes, Captain Lawson finds himself on the brink as he tries to investigate Maul’s sudden emergence on the scene in Janix’s underworld. Things have already gotten risky: he’s had officers and security droids taken out in a cell block break that lost him both his key witnesses, he’s had chaos on the streets—chaos that only a Jedi could help stop turning into a massacre, a Jedi that is now showing up even when Lawson is trying to escape the pressures of his job and just be a father. And ticking through all of it is the prim voice of his droid partner, Two Boots, who cannot help but keep asking: why don’t we just let the Empire in?
It’s a fair question, at least from a droid’s perspective. The Empire has resources that Janix’s judiciary forces simply don’t; with the arrival of someone wielding a lightsaber running around the place, they’re also outgunned. But Lawson is still insistent on the old ways, right down to steadfastly calling it a “laser sword,” as if the Clone War is already a distant legend and not something that happened, like, maybe a couple years ago. His playbook is still his as long as he wants it to be, so he keeps shutting Two Boots down, figuratively, and then at one point, quite literally (Star Wars always has an interesting thing to not-say about when a droid is allowed to be a person and when they’re allowed to be an object!).
But things just keep escalating worse for Lawson. First, Master Daki makes his presence to him known, offering a helping hand when it comes to Maul. Then, he gets approval for a risky confrontation between his forces and Maul’s, which a reunited Devon and Master Daki use as an opportunity to try and solve the Maul issue the Jedi way. You just know it’s doomed to go badly, and badly it does: Maul at the very least offers Lawson a way out, to have an arrangement that keeps him unbothered and the Empire away from Janix, just as he wants. But that’s not just what Lawson wants. In his playbook, the cops get the criminals. Devon and Daki have their own playbook, a brief moment as if the Clone War never happened for them, either: one where the Jedi are heroes and, united, they defeat the Sith.
So of course, a harsh lesson is learned. Rook Kast and her Mandalorians, as well as Maul’s Zabrak lackeys, lay waste to Lawson’s forces, and try as they might, Devon and Daki come up short against Maul. When Lawson’s commander, Chief Kylce, shows up to survey the wounded and fallen, she’s relieved that at least Lawson is still standing at the end of it—with neither ex-Sith nor Jedi by his side to show for it. But by then, it’s already too late. Lawson thinks he’s just getting a telling-off and having to apologize for literally shutting his partner down, only to learn that it’s Two Boots who wants to apologize in advance… as the Star Destroyer he’s called for assistance begins casting its own shadow over Janix.
It’s a lesson Shadow Lord wants to teach everyone in this transitory moment between the prequels and the original trilogy, as unwilling as its characters might be to listen: the old ways are over. And everything they want to work out just got far messier and darker than they thought it could be.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
