Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord

I’ve been consciously avoiding Star Wars shows for the past ten years and I only watched the first six episodes of this series because I was bored and felt like killing time. My former Star Wars nerd instincts have left me with nothing but cold indifference. The truth is that I just don’t care about any of it.

We have a pair of Jedi living underground in a big city on a backwater planet struggling for survival. I don’t care about either of them. We’re introduced to Devon, a Padawan who opts to steal from a fruit cart instead of beg, is clumsily caught, and petulantly refuses to cooperate with law enforcement. Later, when she and Maul are in a lightsaber duel, they banter about Jedi ideals. There’s a lot more to being a Jedi than lightsabers and telekinesis, and neither she nor her master has done anything to prove to me that they live up to any Jedi ideals. They mostly just hide, talk and do nothing because either they can’t, or because no one needs them for anything, and that is the biggest waste of their talents.

Our hero is a law enforcement officer who is trying to find and bust the crime bosses in his town. I’m sure he’s a very competent and caring guy. I want to care about him, but I don’t. The narrative uses little flourishes to flesh out his character: he’s divorced from his wife because she now works for the Empire. He has a teenage son who plays lacrosse but work keeps Dad too busy to spend any time with him. There’s a kooky droid at work who provides minor comic relief, and the man drinks way too much coffee. The problem is that while he is carrying out his investigation, he can’t really make progress for one reason or another because of bureaucratic obstruction and lack of cooperation. He would rather stop crime himself rather than get the Empire involved because he knows the Empire is bad for people and cities. And yet, I still don’t care.

Even Maul, who is supposed to be cool, complex and compelling, just isn’t. He commits impressive thefts and is a talented lightsaber user, but while he talks about power and influence, he lives underground, content with a life of austerity. He steals a whole shipment of gold bars from crime bosses just to tick them off and play them off each other, and then doesn’t spend the money on anything; only threatening to drop it on a criminal as an empty threat. If there’s any downstream effects of crime in the city threatening the people, I don’t see it. At least Jabba the Hutt was a gangster who knew how to show us a good time. I think Maul’s true end goal is revenge on Darth Sidious, but we know full well he’s not going to get it. We’re supposed to think bad guy Maul is part good guy because he talks patiently and wants to kill the evil Emperor. I still don’t care.

For now, I would say that it’s not a bad show, but it feels like a boring prologue to something that should be happening but isn’t. People stand around and talk about things that sound important but they don’t support their ideas with concrete actions that put those ideas into practice. Action scenes are exciting but they mostly just kill time rather than accomplishing anything. I used to love Star Wars because it was bright and colorful; a mythology of adventure and heroism. Star Wars has been stuck in the Dark Times for so long, left barely scraping by for survival, that I think they’ve forgotten what heroism looks like. All they have left are boring people in a boring city not really doing anything interesting, with the occasional cheap gag or ploy meant to trick me into caring or being impressed, except I’ve grown so cold and desensitized to it that I have no emotional attachment to any of it.

UPDATE: After watching to the end, I have to amend the woke score much higher. It’s not for a blatant and obvious reason, but a perniciously subtle moral one.

Star Wars used to have clear moral boundaries between good and evil. Evil wasn’t more powerful; only easier and more seductive. Maul teaches that evil is stronger because good is impotent. Good guys who play by the rules will always be at the mercy of others, they will never accomplish their goals, and their sacrifices will likely be in vain. Bad guys, on the other hand, essentially believe that if you want something, you just go and take it. There are no downstream negative consequences. Steal money, food or vehicles? The owners are likely criminals anyway. Kill people with impunity? They’re probably just as bad as you are. Take over the city and put it under lockdown? The Empire is bigger, badder and they’re the law, so they can do what they want. Dump corrosive toxic waste underneath the city illegally? Sure, no one is going to report you for that. So, why not go to the Dark Side? It’s so much easier, and the Light Side has no positive case to justify itself.

Maul is a show where there is little good to protect, evil is everywhere, and nobody really gets ahead. It’s boring and meaningless with a few emotional traps set here and there, but it doesn’t provide enough character development or stake to make me want to care. It’s just bad guys clashing lightsabers with other bad guys over nothing but looking cool for fans.