Master and Apprentice

Having now sat through the first season of Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord, I’m left with one key question: what is the point of all of this? Don’t get me wrong, Darth Maul is a cool character. He stole the show in the lead up to Star Wars: Episode I: Attack of the Clones, and while that movie, in the end, basically wasted him after one excellent fight, that didn’t stop fans from continuing to embrace the character. He was dark, he was cool, and he had a double-saber. What more did you want from a Sith Lord?

His was popular enough that, years later, Lucasfilm brought the character back so he could appear in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, despite his rather conclusive death at the end of the first prequel (getting cut in half and then falling down a steep, steep shaft should kill just about anyone). And since then they’ve trotted out the character in any project where he can be crammed in, including Star Wars: Rebels where the character met the end of his story at the hands of Obi-Wan Kenobi (bringing a nice loop of closure for both characters).

Which then brings us back to just why do we have a series all about Darth Maul? It’s not that he isn’t cool, but we’ve effectively had check-ins with the character at just about every major milestone of his life. We’ve seen him as a Sith Lord, the favored pupil of the Emperor. We’ve seen him at his low point living in the sewers of Naboo. We’ve watched him rise back up to lead one of the great criminal syndicates of the galaxy. And then we’ve seen him at the end of his life, searching for the last meaning of his existence, before finding his end gracefully at the hands of an old nemesis. That’s pretty well his full arc so… why do we need a television show about him in the middle of this story?

Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord, after one season, so far doesn’t have an answer for that. Hell, at this point the series, despite having his name in the title, isn’t really even about Darth Maul (as voiced by Sam Witwer). He’s a major character in it, but the arc of the first season is less about Maul and more about a Jedi padawan, Devon Izara (Gideon Adlon). It’s about her finding a sudden, unexplainable connection to Maul in the Force and, ever so slowly, getting tempted over to the Dark Side as she and her Jedi master, Eeko-Dio Daki (Dennis Haysbert), are pursued by Imperial forces.

I’ve got to be honest, that story isn’t that interesting. Devon is introduced as a headstrong padawan who gets herself into trouble simply trying to keep her and her master alive. She falls prey to the police on Janix (a planet that isn’t Coruscant even if it looks a lot like Coruscant) but is saved from Imperial capture by Maul and his crew. They escape, and are forced to work together on more than one occasion as Inquisitors, the Imperial Jedi hunters, show up on Janix to investigate Devon, Maul, and all the goings on planetside. And then there’s just a lot of running around and stalling for time until the season comes to an end right where you expect it to. I won’t spoil what happens but, honestly, I’m sure you can already guess the story beats.

What this Darth Maul show is missing is a reason for existing. Ostensibly it’s a series about Maul looking to get an apprentice. That’s an interesting idea if we effectively hadn’t already seen a similar story from Maul over in The Clone Wars. There it was him working with his brother, Savage, but the storyline was effectively the same. We’ve swapped out characters, yes, but that doesn’t really change how the story works for Maul. An apprentice is a means to an end for the character, with Devon as it was for Savage. People are pieces the character moves around his board, and that doesn’t seem to be any different now than it was before.

It doesn’t help that Devon isn’t an interesting character, not yet anyway. She’s the archetypal headstrong padawan, a character type we’ve seen in just about every 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. show that’s focused on Jedi so far. Devon is Anakin, or Ashoka, or any one of a number of other Jedi that don’t quite fit the mold of what Jedi are supposed to be (making you think, hey, Jedi Council, maybe train your people better). Devon doesn’t get a lot of time to develop here, in this show. We don’t learn about her past. We don’t find out her desires or what she wants next in her life. Her story is boiled down to survival before Maul shows up, and that means that when she’s offered a chance to flip to the Dark Side it doesn’t have the weight it needs because we don’t even understand if it’s a major decision for her or not. She hasn’t been developed enough for us to understand how Light or Dark she really is.

The entire time I was watching the series I was sitting there going, “this story would be far more interesting if it was Ahsoka in the lead Jedi role instead of Maul.” That’s because she’s a character we know, that is already well developed and, at this point in her life, she really was struggling to balance the Light and the Dark (before choosing to, effectively, become something of a Grey Jedi). Her having to work with Maul, someone she’s fought before, only to realize that his offer is tempting, would actually suit her character, her story, and make this series more interesting.

Of course that still wouldn’t make the show any more interesting in general. That’s because we still don’t have an explanation for why we needed this series. Maul wants to consolidate power and become an even more powerful criminal leader. That’s his goal, but the show doesn’t really do much to further that objective. He wants Devon for his own personal reasons, but he never explains what those are beyond, “yes, an apprentice would be useful…” Nothing about his story really comes into focus here, and his goals aren’t furthered, making you feel like this whole story is just wasting time.

There is one thing he does say he wants to accomplish: getting his revenge and bringing down Darth Sidious, his former master. But, as we know from the franchise, Maul has no hand in that, and his actions never get him close to getting his revenge so… well, again, what is the point? This is supposed to be a motivating factor but we already realize he’ll never get his revenge. This is the problem with inserting a story like this into the middle of the franchise: answers for Maul’s questions have already arrived, and nothing he does here will change that or have any effect on the overall franchise.

Instead what we mostly get is a solid performance from Witwer (which, okay, that man can act and his Maul performance is fantastic so I’m not going to complain there), plus a lot of Jedi action. The action is solid, and there are some surprising character reveals late in the season that up the action quotient. But none of that really amounts to much in a story that doesn’t yet have a clear reason for existing. This series is all style, no substance, and it has yet to justify why it was even made.

Could Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord eventually become an interesting series? Sure. But as of right now it’s a show still searching for a reason to exist. And until that arrives, this series is going to feel slight and insubstantial. Certainly that’s how this first season felt, anyway.