Star Wars animated has proven yet again that it is the best medium for telling stories in a galaxy far, far away. The penultimate and final episode of season one of Maul – Shadow Lord gave us everything we could have wanted from a finale. Everything throughout the season had been built up perfectly and gave us a payoff that had us clapping our hands. Is Darth Vader sort of used as fan service at this point? Maybe. Who cares though? If you were ever thinking who would win between Darth Maul and Darth Vader, we’ve finally gotten our answer.
The last two episodes of Maul – Shadow Lord featured not only the return of the character Dryden Vos (who was first played in-person by Paul Bettany in the Han Solo film), but some of the coolest lightsaber fights to date. This was touched upon in a previous review, but the Inquisitors are so cool in this. They add a delicious creepy factor to everything and can hold their own in a way that was not previously explored in any other piece of media that they were in.
Speaking of lightsaber fights – while this show is about Maul, it does show how powerful Darth Vader is. We know that Maul is a strong force user and a very deadly warrior, but against Vader, he looked like a youngling who just got his first lightsaber. This was a good thing to show – to not have them be even, but instead to show that even someone like Maul is having a hard time going up against Vader.
And what was also very cool about this finale, was that they didn’t soften Maul. While he had willingly aligned himself with Jedi and law enforcement, this is still Maul. Still full of anger, hatred, and an unquenchable thirst for revenge. The audible gasp that I had when Maul force shoved Devon’s Jedi Master forward, knowing this meant death for him; was deafening. Sure, he probably did mean to see the Jedi to safety, but when the opportunity arose to push Devon towards anger and fury, by witnessing her master slain, he took it. Now, they can have their revenge.
And it just has to be said – Devon’s fall to the dark side (or at least her willingness to tap into her anger) was done in a much more natural way than in The Acolyte. This show felt more Sith-aligned than the very show that was supposed to follow the Sith. Anyway, let’s not compare apples to oranges. There was just something so exciting about seeing episodes nine and ten deliver what we, the fans, want. And there will be a second season, which is so exciting.
As this will be the last review of season one, we need to revisit just how gorgeous this show is. We hope that Lucasfilm continues to use this art style in their shows and if the Maul show looks this pretty and is this much of an improvement on season one Clone Wars style, we can only imagine what future projects will look like.
What did you think of episodes 9 and 10 of Maul – Shadow Lord?
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