TV Review: Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord
Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord brings back the badass former Sith apprentice turned crime lord in a new ten-episode animated series. Set a year after the events of The Clone Wars and Order 66 on a Mid-Rim world called Janix, Maul (Sam Witwer) aims to regain the power of the Shadow Collective with the help of his loyal Dathomir brothers and Mandalorian followers. He’s kept receipts and is ready to seize power from the gangster underlings that betrayed him, but is intrigued by an exciting new possibility: a disgruntled Jedi padawan with significant potential in the Force.
Maul - Shadow Lord looks amazing and certainly delivers epic action scenes and blistering lightsaber battles. Lucasfilm Animation continues to visually improve with each iteration. We’ll preach their virtues, but let’s first address where the series struggles. The premier episode, titled "Chapter 1: The Dark Revenge", introduces Janix, a behemoth metropolis set inside a large crater, and several new characters. We meet a seemingly homeless pair, an older alien (Dennis Haysbert) and a young Twi'lek girl (Gideon Adlon), who are hungry. She wants to steal to eat, but is taught by her mentor that kind strangers will help them. Something she doesn’t believe and leads to serious trouble.
Meanwhile, detective Brander Lawson (Wagner Moura) and his android partner 2B0T, affectionately called Two-Boots (Richard Ayoade), hear rumblings of local gangsters ignoring criminal boundaries and attacking each other's business operations. This is all part of Maul’s insidious plan and the beginning of a greater scheme. Chance and circumstances put the young Twi’lek on Lawson’s radar. She refuses to identify herself for a very important reason that will take several episodes to reveal, but the audience already knows and can easily deduce from the opening scene.
This is the biggest problem with Maul - Shadow Lord. It’s obvious the girl’s a padawan and her master a jedi hiding from the Empire. Their names were released with the press material, so they’re no mystery. But the time it takes for Lawson and Maul to uncover the truth takes too long to develop. The first four episodes are a slow burn trickle of exposition that should have been more succinct. Your patience will grow thin waiting for the lead characters to catch up. The time spent world building and establishing the primary arc is initially mishandled.
There are also issues with naming Maul’s minions and the secondary cast. Die-hard fans who’ve seen The Clone Wars season 7 will be familiar with Maul’s lieutenant Rook Kast (Vanessa Marshall). Newbies and casual viewers won’t have a clue who she is, and the show doesn’t properly explain her backstory or clearly state her name. There is also thin exposition about what happened to Maul after his encounter with Darth Sidious (aka The Emperor). Creator Dave Filoni, now the president and chief creative officer of Lucasfilm, incorrectly assumes the viewers don’t need a proper recap.
Maul - Shadow Lord hits its narrative stride in "Chapter 4: Pride and Vengeance" when the plot finally heats up. Everything comes together and the incredible action scenes dramatically ramp up. Maul is an elite lightsaber fighter who shreds his enemies without scratching a horn, but isn’t a merciless killer. He needs allies and can sense the padawan’s internal conflict. This is the crux of the season’s best arc and sets the stage for potential strange bedfellows. Is the enemy of my enemy my friend?
Fair criticism aside, Maul - Shadow Lord will kick your butt and break a foot doing it as the plot thickens. The Empire has just started to show their true colors and those ignorant or blind to the signs of oppressive fascism learn a hard lesson. The second half of the season is spectacularly done with epic set pieces. There is no shortage of pulse-pounding adrenaline and CGI eye-candy as chases, duels, and aerial combat kicks into high gear. Lucasfilm Animation does a great job with depth of field and moving the action through different levels of Janix. This city isn’t Coruscant and has a different production design with tremendous detail.
Journalists were provided with the first eight episodes for review. So there could be something out of left field and unexpected in the finale. That said, fans will embrace the show because Maul is a beloved and complex antagonist. But it’s not nearly as well-written as Star Wars Rebels or the vastly underrated Star Wars: The Bad Batch. You can watch solely for the killer action. It’s just a waiting game for cool spinning lightsabers and Maul truly unleashed. Spybot (David W. Collins), Maul’s clever droid, almost steals the show with mischievous villainy.
Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord is a production of CGCG, Inc. and Lucasfilm Animation. Episodes 1-2 debut on Disney+ on Monday, April 6th. Two episodes will premiere each week, with the finale airing on May the 4th.
