With exciting showdowns and rich moral dilemmas, Maul – Shadow Lord episodes 3 and 4 took a strong premise and carried it forward in satisfying ways. I really like how this show is dealing with the wrenching tradeoffs that people face in difficult times. I’m invested enough in the characters to cheer when one of them makes the right choice — and to hope that another one does the same.
Seeds of temptation
The heart of these two episodes is Maul’s attempt to recruit Devon Izara to his cause. The end of episode 2 appeared to show Devon on the verge of escaping from Maul’s lair, but the beginning of episode 3 unceremoniously discarded that framing, with Maul’s lackeys immediately cornering Devon and sending her to meet with him. Setting aside that bizarre writing choice, though, I really enjoyed Maul and Devon’s initial confrontation. It’s a thrilling scene that sets the stage for an even more intense showdown later on.
True to form, Maul initially tries to win over Devon with a calm tone and a gently dismissive attitude about the Jedi’s warnings about him. Watching him play the part of the misunderstood antihero — an act we’ll see him use later with Ezra Bridger in Star Wars Rebels — I almost had to laugh. Maul’s theatrics are just barely on the right side of plausibility, a reminder of how his traumatic past has warped his psyche.
Unsurprisingly, Devon doesn’t buy what Maul is selling, which forces him to take a different approach. I love the moment when the switch flips and Maul starts playing hardball with the obstinate Jedi. You get the sense that, in the short amount of time Maul has known about Devon’s existence, he’s put a lot of thought into how he’s going to corrupt her. He wanted to do it the easy way, with seductive words, but if he has to, he’ll do it the hard way — by breaking her through fear.
Maul’s central pitch to Devon is that they should team up because they have a lot in common. And in a narrow sense, he’s right: they’ve both been betrayed by their superiors and discarded by the galaxy. But that’s where the similarities end. When Devon castigates Maul as a murderer, he responds, “We do what we must to survive. Perhaps in the days since the Jedi fell, you can relate?” Except that Devon can’t relate. She might have stolen the occasional piece of food from a market stall, but she’s never murdered anyone. And this is where Maul – Shadow Lord, with its story about a fugitive Jedi meeting a fugitive ex-Sith, starts getting into really compelling philosophical territory.
Devon and Maul’s surface-level similarities pale in comparison to the stark moral divide between them. Maul will gladly kill innocent people to get what he wants, while Devon has been taught to protect innocent life even if it puts her at risk. Maul has devoted himself to revenge, while Devon has devoted herself to justice. Both are Force-users facing similar dangers, but they’re navigating those dangers and the larger galaxy in very different ways. The prospect of exploring that idea further is really exciting to me.
I can understand how Maul’s pitch to Devon — help me defeat our common enemy — might actually appeal to a fugitive Jedi like her. It’s a cool dynamic to explore, especially here, in a situation that’s very different from the one in which Maul tries to recruit Ezra. But as with Ezra, Maul doesn’t want Devon to be his ally. He wants her to be his dark-side apprentice. And with that goal in mind, he’s not merely going to try to convince her to help him attack the Empire. He’s going to put her through an emotional ringer in the hope of breaking her spirit.
The first sign that Maul might succeed with Devon comes at the end of their brief but intense duel in his lair. Devon struggles to hold off Maul’s attacks until she embraces her anger, at which point she’s able to dodge him and push him back. She then literally runs toward the light to finally escape his hideout. I really enjoyed this scene — from the pacing to the choreography to the visual design, it’s a great example of how to advance the narrative and explore a character’s emotions at the same time.
If Devon is defiant in her first confrontation with Maul, she seems to be a little bit less certain in their second encounter, which also features her master, Eeko-Dio Daki. And while I hesitate to try to predict where this story is going, I think the scene where Devon reunites with Daki might have given us a clue about her future.
The clue, I would argue, comes in the form of Daki and Devon’s disagreement about their next move. Daki says they should leave Janix, while Devon says they should stay and confront Maul. This scene nicely reveals how the Empire’s rise has affected the two Jedi very differently. Devon is still trying to be the idealistic Jedi she was raised to be, but Daki has lost that idealism after seeing the galaxy turn against the Jedi. He’s more cautious than she is, perhaps because he feels responsible for protecting her. And I’m beginning to wonder if Devon’s fierce desire to right wrongs and stop harm will, paradoxically, make it easier for Maul to recruit her.
Maul begins laying the groundwork for this strategy in the moments before he clashes lightsabers with Daki and Devon. In a provocative challenge to the Jedi’s ideology, Maul argues that their immense power entitles them to rule over other beings, and that if they’re hiding in the shadows, they’re not truly living. Daki adroitly responds that domination is no way to live, invoking the Jedi principle about the corruptive influence of power. But a brief closeup shot during this scene is very telling: As Maul asserts that the Jedi’s weakness comes from their refusal to exploit their power, Devon stares at the ground contemplatively.
If it weren’t already obvious, that moment makes it clear that Maul and Daki’s real audience isn’t each other, but rather Devon. She clearly wants to use her power to stop Maul, but her master has been advocating disengagement, caution, and retreat. If Maul can convince Devon that he’s not her enemy, can he sway her further with his argument that powerful people should use their power to right perceived wrongs?
We’ll have to see. I could be totally wrong about what the show is setting up here. But I’ll just add one last observation: Devon saving Daki during the duel with Maul is very similar to Anakin Skywalker saving Obi-Wan Kenobi during their duel with Count Dooku in Revenge of the Sith. Will Devon, under Maul’s influence, eventually betray Daki like Anakin betrayed Obi-Wan?
A moral compass and an impossible choice
While Maul is trying to sink his claws into Devon, police captain Brander Lawson is trying to keep the Empire from sinking its claws into Janix. I continue to thoroughly enjoy Lawson’s portrayal in this show — he’s enough of an everyman that we can relate to him, but he’s brave and honorable enough to truly feel like a hero. And that aura of heroism grows when we learn how he really feels about the Empire.
One of my favorite scenes in these two episodes is Lawson’s meeting with Daki at Lawson’s son’s botekin game. Although Daki introduces himself as Devon’s uncle, Lawson repeatedly makes it clear that he doesn’t believe that cover story for a second. And if Lawson doubts Daki’s cover story, Daki knows that there’s more to Lawson’s attitude about the Empire than he’s letting on. In one of the scene’s best moments, Daki tests Lawson by saying, almost offhandedly, that the Empire could really help “clean things up” on Janix if only someone invited it in. That prompts Lawson to drop his guard a little bit — he grimly tells Daki that once the Empire shows up, it never leaves.
I previously thought that Lawson’s objection to the Empire was just about wanting to preserve Janix’s autonomy, but it turns out that his antipathy runs much deeper than that. Lawson hates how the Empire treats people, and he doesn’t want the people under his protection to get hurt. In a conversation with Two-Boots, we learn that politics has torn Lawson’s family apart — his wife went to work for the Empire, while he stayed on Janix, deliberately off of the galactic government’s radar. But as Lawson tells Two-Boots, his problem with the Empire isn’t about some personal grievance. “If the Empire comes in, they’ll take over,” he tells his droid. “I’ve seen what they do. They ruin lives.”
Lawson’s animosity toward the Empire is so intense that he would rather forcibly deactivate Two-Boots, his trusted partner and friend, than let the droid call the Empire for help. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for him to do that, but the show does a good job of making it clear that, while he likes and respects Two-Boots, his first priority is protecting his community.
Maul sees Lawson’s desire for autonomy as an opportunity, and in their climactic confrontation, he offers the lawman a deal: “I will not trouble your city so long as you allow me to operate here, unimpeded. We will have peace without the grip of the Galactic Empire around either of our throats.” It’s a seemingly savvy move, but Maul has misjudged Lawson — the latter has too strong of a moral code to let Maul run rampant, so he rejects Maul’s offer.
One of Maul – Shadow Lord’s best qualities is how effectively it connects the viewer with Lawson. You really get a sense of his state of mind, whether he’s on the job or with his son. At the end of episode 4, he faces an impossible choice — continue confronting Maul and risk attracting Imperial attention and injustice, or turn a blind eye to Maul’s schemes and permit smaller-scale injustice — and it’s easy to sympathize with him as he wrestles with it. The show does a great job of conveying the strain of that situation.
That escalated quickly
When Lawson tells his boss that the Empire would ruin Janix if it showed up, she responds, “What’s worse? The city under attack by a madman, endangering innocent lives? Might as well turn it over to the Empire.” I really like seeing this perspective, because that’s a reasonable argument to make if you’ve never encountered the Empire’s brutality. But as episode 4 ends, Two-Boots’ unsanctioned call for Imperial help might have guaranteed Janix a crash course in that brutality.
The arrival of a Star Destroyer in the sky above Janix ratchets up the threat level on the show considerably, and I’m eager to see what happens next. Star Destroyers are supposed to be visual symbols of the Empire’s overwhelming might, but they rarely feel that way on a visceral level. This time, they do. The show is already doing a great job of making the Empire feel big, powerful, and scary — a force of nature whose very presence can completely change people’s lives.
If the goal is to stop Maul, it does sort of make sense to call in the Empire. After all, as Daki warns Lawson, Maul is “something you’ve never dealt with before,” and the only people who have any chance of defeating him are the Empire’s Force-wielding Inquisitors. But there are two other people on Janix who will be of interest to the Inquisitors, and I suspect that the Empire is about to confirm Lawson’s worst fears.
Miscellaneous thoughts
- I don’t love the show’s painted-backdrop aesthetic. I understand the argument for things looking a little rougher in a Maul show, but it just looks too stylized to me.
- There are some really good shots in the sequence where Maul taunts Devon in the dark, especially the one where he appears behind her and then vanishes the instant she spins around.
- I’m not totally clear on how Maul gleans Devon’s name from her burst of anger. The Disney+ captions imply that Maul’s lightsaber learns her name in that moment and somehow conveys it to Maul. That’s fittingly creepy!
- Showing a sports stadium and surrounding greenery in the middle of Janix’s urban landscape is a nice way to distinguish the city from Coruscant.
- At the botekin game, when Rylee says that his friend’s parents saved Lawson a seat, Lawson says that he prefers to stand near the field to get a better view. Rylee’s dismissive response makes it clear that he knows what’s really going on, presumably because it’s happened before: Lawson wants to be close to the exit in case he has to leave for work.
- The “overworked dad misses his son’s big game and/or big moment” trope is pretty overused in media, but this kind of strained-parenting dynamic is rare enough in Star Wars that it’s still refreshing to see here. Lawson missing Rylee’s big scoring moment because he’s turning around to address Daki is the perfect metaphor for his experience of being caught between his family and his job. The show handles it really beautifully — you feel for both father and son.
- What’s interesting about the Zabrak whom Maul uses as a decoy in his attack on the Pyke headquarters is that he doesn’t really move like Maul. Yes, he’s fast like Maul, but he’s also unsophisticated, darting from target to target without any finesse. I like how the show uses that subtle choreographic cue to foreshadow Maul’s ruse.
- It’s silly that a handful of washed-up Mandalorians can outmatch a planetary police department’s “strike force,” particularly when those Mandalorians are just shooting blasters from fixed positions and not using any of their Mandalorian skills or gadgets. (Okay, fine, Rook Kast uses her flamethrower at one point.) Lawson knew from Daki that he was facing a kind of threat he’d never encountered before and he still didn’t bring enough officers to overwhelm Maul’s ragtag band?
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