In the years since his debut—and perhaps often in spite of it, considering he died during it—Maul has developed for himself the image of the cool badass. He’s got a great design; after all, he had the sick lightsaber, and of course, Star Wars loves itself a toyetic villain, even if they don’t actually do much. Even in his return all the way to his second death, however, one consistent characterization that has made Maul more than just an action figure is something almost antithetical to that: we love seeing this character be just a little bit pathetic on the regular.
And that really is the theme for this week’s penultimate batch of Shadow Lord episodes. After the Empire came knocking on Janix last week, this week is all about the Imperial fist clenching ever tighter around the world and Maul’s plans. Really, it does not go well for our favorite failure, because when do things go well for him? Shadow Lord‘s characters are all fractured in their scattered escape from the Empire, as Maul and his subordinates find themselves slowly chipped away at by the Inquisitorius’ forces (with Marrok now joined by the Eleventh Brother—they get some cool dueling with Maul here, but again, if we’re making jokes about characters as action figures, look no further than these two). Devon manages to re-escape his clutches and reunite with Daki, Lawson, and even Two Boots to help break Rylee out of Imperial custody and try to figure their own way off-world, turning down Maul again.
But that’s not enough insult for injury for Maul. About to be defeated by the Inquisitors, his robotic legs failing him, Maul—completely isolated, unaware that his would-be apprentice is ready to flee out of his grasp and that even the loyalty of his minions is beginning to wane—tears down the cave he was fighting in, saving himself but, perhaps more crucially for us, giving him a moment to just really wallow in what a miserable time he’s having.
It’s a fantastic moment, as we see Maul glumly dragging himself through the dark underbellies of Janix and confronting the ghosts of his past as they take everything from him bit by bit: Sidious robbing him of his childhood and electrocuting his new apprentice into submission, the specter of a young Obi-Wan, the most vengeful shade, leaping towards him to deliver the strike that would render Maul in twain. Even when we cut to flashes to Clone Wars, of him in his monstrous form broken and wallowing, and then the still-recent-to-him wound of watching Sidious take his brother from him once more, none of this is Maul the cool guy. This is not the master manipulator Shadow Lord has already given us or the cunning warrior drinking fancy teas and doing lightsaber kata for meditation.
This is what Maul is, has been, and will really continue to be until his death in Rebels: always on the back foot, always rueing his cruel, misbegotten fate, and always clawing from the shadows at the people who have wronged him, never quite able to grab hold. That this is what Maul is, and that he continues on regardless, makes up far more of his contemporary appeal than him being that cool guy with the face paint and the double-bladed lazer sword. Because he doesn’t ever really deny how pathetic his place in the world at this point really is, he snarls and screams and persists anyway.
It’s that persistence that brings Maul back out from the shadows and the reflections of his past and, more crucially here, sees him really begin on his path to something more again. Unsure of whether or not he can get Devon in his grasp again, Maul turns to another plan in the climax of these episodes to bring more allies into the fold: a call to Dryden Vos, Paul Bettany’s criminal leader from Solo, who we know was ultimately serving Maul as the head of Crimson Dawn by the events of that film. He’s ready to fail upwards again and refashion what scraps of a criminal enterprise he still has on Janix into a position of even greater power in the galaxy’s underworld. But again, perhaps “fail upwards” isn’t quite right, with its connotations of a certain level of privilege that comes with it. Yes, Maul fails regularly, but because he uses that hunger, feeds and sustains his anger on it, he always has the chance to find more and more opportunities to keep on existing in spite of a galaxy and a master that would rather cast him aside and forget him.
Janix was just one opportunity, as was Devon—and might still be, if Maul has anything to say about it. Crimson Dawn will be another. Beyond Devon herself, we’ll see him try the same thing over in Rebels with Ezra, another opportunity and one that does bring him to some level of conclusion eventually. But for now, even laid low again, Shadow Lord shows us that Maul will always survive the slings and arrows he’s faced.
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