Somehow Maul Returned…

The recent release of the Star Wars: Maul: Shadow Lord trailer got me thinking (once again) about the state of Star WarsThe modern blockbuster: it's a concept so commonplace now we don't even think about the fact that before the end of the 1970s, this kind of movie -- huge spectacles, big action, massive budgets -- wasn't really made. That all changed, though, with Star Wars, a series of films that were big on spectacle (and even bigger on profits). A hero's journey set against a sci-fi backdrop, nothing like this series had ever really been done before, and then Hollywood was never the same. itself. I don’t think there are many in the audience at this point that would disagree with the statement that Star Wars is past its prime. The Sequel Trilogy did some real damage to the brand, and the constant releases of half-baked shows has left the franchise on its knees, with most works coming out now feeling like “homework”. Audiences don’t want to have to keep up with all the story threads and random continuity whorls, so they generally ignore it all.

I think a big reason for this is the way the franchise has been told, the order that stories have been released. It wasn’t a problem in the early days when you had the Original Trilogy and then, a couple of decades later, the Prequel Trilogy. Six, well contained films that told a whole arc for one character: Darth Vader. Sure, there were small narrative diversions you could wander down, like the brief The Clone Wars animated series (the one made of shorts, not the longer one that came later) as well as all the Extended Universe novels, comics, and the like. But for most fans if you just wanted to see Star Wars all you needed were the six movies and you were done (and if you hated the Prequel Trilogy, all you really needed were the original three films).

The key moment where things started to go off the rails was when George Lucas had the idea to take that series of Clone Wars shorts and flesh them out into a CGI-animated larger series. It started with the Clone Wars animated movie, which then launched the Clone Wars television series, and suddenly we had even more content to watch and keep up with. Even then that might have been fine if we followed a kind of linear logic for the franchise, with Clone Wars acting as our one interquel series that we had to pay attention to. But that show was only the tip of the iceberg, especially once Disney took over the franchise.

Clone Wars led into Rebels, which was a kind of sequel series set many years later. But then The Bad Batch came out which fit between the two. Resistance came along to tie into the Sequel Trilogy, and then later the Tales of… stories started bouncing everywhere. Meanwhile, over in live-action we had The Mandalorian (and The Book of Boba Fett), taking place in the lead up to the Sequel Trilogy, and then Obi-Wan was set before Rebels, with Andor coming along to lead into Rogue One… or yeah, and we can’t forget the movies that bounced around the continuity as well, like Rogue One and Solo…

The point I’m making is that the timeline of the franchise is a real mess. It’s not often that we get something that feels self-contained and apart from everything else (like the early seasons of The Mandalorian or Skeleton Crew). More often the franchise has gone deeper and deeper on the era between Prequel and Sequel trilogies, going back and forth along the timeline until the whole thing is a mess of twists, turns, loops, and whorls. Trying to even figure out where a show takes place in the continuity can be a real headache.

Which brings us back to Star Wars: Maul: Shadow Lord which feels like (at least from the trailer so far) a completely unnecessary series fleshing out of a section of the continuity we didn’t really need to explore at all. That’s not a dig on Maul; that character is awesome. When he first appeared in Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace he stole the show. A bad-ass, fully painted, dark lord kicking ass and swinging a double-ended light saber, he was the greatest dark lord we ever could have expected in the series… right up until he died like a bitch. He got cut in half and dumped into a garbage shoot in probably one of the worst decisions George Lucas ever made.

It was logical for the franchise to bring Maul back in Clone Wars, even if his resurrection felt improbable at best. We accepted he was revived, even if it was pretty stupid, just because he’s a deliciously evil, charismatic character we wanted to see more of. And over time, from Clone Wars through Rebels, we saw enough of the character to give us (and him) a satisfying arc for the character. When he finally dies (spoilers) at the hands of the elder Obi Wan, it felt like we’d gotten his journey. The series had said all it needed to say about the character.

So what, then, can this new series really tell us that hasn’t already been said. Maul is at a place in the continuity now, especially because of his final, second death, where you really can’t do anything with him that will feel interesting. It’s like taking Darth Vader and saying, “hey, in between the films, he went off and had this adventure on another planet.” Like, sure. That’s cool and all. More Darth Vader isn’t a bad thing, per se, but what can this new adventure do to flesh out a character when we already know his full arc from the films. Maul is in the same place, having gone from rise, to fall, to rise again, before meeting his end. Anything that happens in this new series can’t really change what we know. It’s just another chapter simply for the sake of.

Meanwhile the show also apparently is introducing some new Jedi character (because Order 66 really did a shit job, in point of fact, in killing off the Jedi) for Maul to team up with (and, presumably, corrupt). The new Jedi, Devon Izara (Gideon Adlon), looks cool, and it seems like we’ll get plenty of cool action with her in the series, but I have one simple question: why use a new, female Jedi that rides somewhere in middle, grey area of the Force when you already have a character that fits that mold? Namely: Ahsoka.

Not knowing the exact plot of this series we can only speculate on what the story will be, of course, but when we look at the whole of Maul’s story, it does make a certain amount of sense for Maul to team up with Ahsoka again. They’ve met, and battled, before. Enemies to allies is a tried and true storytelling trope for a reason, and using Maul to let Ahsoka explore her place in the Force, and figure out where she aligns between the two sides would give us reason to follow this story. While we might know all of Maul’s arc there are still huge caps in Ahsoka’s story that would be interesting to explore. Devon could be an interesting character, but it feels like (so far) she was invented because… well, so that they didn’t have to use Ahsoka instead, which is odd.

All of this leads me to think that Star Wars: Maul: Shadow Lord isn’t a needed story. The trailer does have plenty of awesome action, and I’m sure it will be energetic as well. At a base, lizard brain level, this series could be great. But as a fan of story, of seeing characters grow and evolve and gain their arcs, this show doesn’t really seem to serve a purpose. Maul had his time, and trotting him out to do his thing yet again feels like a repetitive motion without necessity. Cool as this show could be, it’s hard to get excited about yet another time of Maul showing up to be Maul. He’s great, but his time has come and gone.