Star Wars: Maul: Shadow Lord Ep 9-10 Review
The night before the season finale to Maul: Shadow Lord released on Disney+, I went on Twitter and found something interesting: spoilers were already being posted. Those aren’t surprising, mind you, and it’s possible people on the other side of the world just got to see it early. What was surprising was a moment so unbelievable, I doubted that it was actually real. But as I finished watching the final the next day, on Star Wars Day, I sat in front of phone in stunned silence. Something happened in those last two episodes that can only be described as a fusion of two things: fanservice in the best way possible, and two of the greatest Aura Farmers in Star Wars meeting each other for the first time. What followed was a fight that fans had wanted to see for decades, but never felt possible until now!
Such an Incredible Escape
After spending most of the season incurring loss after loss, Maul’s fortunes finally seem to turn when he gets an offer from Dryden Vos of Crimson Dawn. If Vos gets him and what’s left of his group off Janix, Maul will kill his boss and make him the head of Crimson Dawn, putting them back under the ex-Sith’s control once more. If you’ve seen the Solo movie, you know that this deal will work out in both their favors, so we know this escape succeeds before it even gets started. In addition, it should be noted how Maul respects Vos for how Sith his scheming. Unfortunately for the former Sith Lord, he needs help to get outside the city, forcing him to team up with the Lawsons’ group, also looking to get offworld.
There is a bitter irony to the fact that these two groups have to team up to escape the Empire, if you ask me. Lawson and Daki know Maul will throw anyone who isn’t Devon to the rancors if it helps him survive. But as will become more and more common during the age of the Empire, good people will have to work with unsavory folks to make it in the Galaxy. It’s like how the Soviet Union teamed up with the rest of the Allies in World War II; they didn’t trust each other, but they knew the Nazis were the bigger threat.
Not that this distrust matters until a very crucial point, though, as their party gets dwindled down to a fraction of its original size. Most of it taking place in the first episode, no less.
It Reminds me of The Force Unleashed
The subsequent escape from Janix feels like it was ripped straight from the Jedi games of recent years with how lengthy and tense it is. Though, for someone who grew up with the Old Expanded Universe, it feels a lot more like watching something like The Force Unleashed play out. And I’m not just saying that because Starkiller’s VA, Sam Witwer, now voices Maul. It’s because almost every minute is filled with some of the best fighting sequences out of any Star Wars animated series. Like Maul bringing down an Imperial scout walker in a manner that felt like a shout-out to Starkiller himself. Or the fast-paced duel of Maul, Daki and Devon against the Inquisitors in an underground tunnel filled with acid. I was already impressed by how good the animation was in this series, but I can’t even begin to describe how gorgeous it felt! These were the kinds of fights that we should have gotten in the Sequels, Disney!
But like I said earlier, this escape sees a lot of their party get picked off one-by-one. Almost the entirety of Maul’s remaining minions are dead by the time they make it to Vos’ ship. Spybot gets shot. The Mandalorians die. The last Nightbrother takes some TK Troopers into an acid pool with him!
But all of that pales in comparison to the way Rook goes out. There’s no easy way to explain it, so I’m just going to show you the clip and let your jaw drop to the floor.
IT’S HIM
Now you see why I actually doubted if this was real or not. Darth Vader, the ultimate Aura Farmer of the Star Wars franchise, had arrived!
In recent years, there has been a concerted effort on the part of Star Wars to remind its fandom of how scary Darth Vader is. To the majority of the Galaxy, he’s basically the unholy fusion of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, and the final episode only hammers that fact home. Not once throughout his time onscreen does Vader speak. I don’t know if that was intentional on the show’s part or if Disney was having legal issues with using the late James Earl Jones’ voice, but it made him absolutely terrifying! Thankfully, any fear I might have had was overshadowed by the unyielding levels of hype I was experiencing!
Maul vs Vader! THE FIGHT THREE DECADES IN THE MAKING!
I’m not sure how widespread this is, but I think a lot of fans have always wondered what would happen if Maul and Anakin, or Vader, fought each other. This wasn’t your simple fan-idea, though; the two would have genuine reasons to fight. Keep in mind, Maul killed Qui-Gon, the man who saved Anakin from slavery and acted as the father figure he needed. I’m willing to bet that even after becoming Vader, the Dark Lord would still have an axe to grind with Maul for what happened. In the old EU, Vader did fight some kind of clone of Maul in a comic, but never Maul himself. But now, after almost thirty years, we finally got the fight that we had been craving! And it was absolutely epic!
Predictably, Maul is no match for the likes of his replacement, though I think he pieces together that Vader is Anakin. Not that that helps, though, as despite what Master Daki thinks, Maul is smart enough to know fighting Vader is a lost cause. The Dark Lord is an Aura Farmer parsecs above Maul! So, when the opportunity comes to throw Daki to the wolves to save himself, Maul takes it. However, he also makes sure that when Vader kills the Jedi Master, Devon can see it.
And that is what finally makes Devon crash out and give into the dark side. And this lets the audience know once and for all that Maul was right about her.
Up until now, Devon had not appeared to be that strong in the Force, being only about evenly matched to the Inquisitors. Once she gives in to the dark side, though, we see just how much she had been holding herself back. She’s practically foaming at the mouth as she wants to kill Vader, threatening to tear up the place around her in the process. Maul is barely able to get her to calm down enough for them to run for it, but with Daki gone, Devon eagerly agrees to let Maul train her.
It would be a shame if she were to find out that Maul let her master die, wouldn’t it? And it just so happens that there was a witness: Captain Lawson. The bad news is that he’s MIA.
In order to buy time for his son and the others to escape, Captain Lawson sacrifices himself to help them get away. At first, I thought that he was dead, but then I saw a fan point out how we never actually saw him die. Which means that there is a chance that he might come back in a future season and tell Devon how Maul left Daki to die. And if that were to happen, everything Maul had planned for would go up in smoke. For now, though, we have to wait.
The Birth of Talon?
These two episodes were, without a doubt, some of the best content I have seen come out of Star Wars in a while. It took me several minutes of watching the credits for me to come down from the dopamine high I had just experienced, it was so good! It took me days just to figure out what I wanted to say about this finale because I couldn’t wrap my head around how epic it was. And this is only the first season of the show, with a second already confirmed! The fact that I feel frustrated about having to wait a year or more for season two is a testament to how good Maul: Shadow Lord is. If you haven’t seen it yet, then I recommend you make time this month to do so. It is worth the binge-watch!
