"Maul: Shadow Lord" raises the bar even higher for Star Wars Animation

Añadido: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Now, welcome to another Let's Talk some Star Wars, where this time the question simply was, "What did you think of Maul Shadow Lord?" And I will be getting to some comments in just a minute, but we will kick it off right away with the results of the poll where 65% of people, roughly 2/3 said it was excellent, another 25% said it was good. Then there was 7% who said it was just okay, and 4% who said it wasn't very good. There were also 1.4,000 people who clicked on my comment down there who said they didn't watch it, which translates to roughly 15% of the people who voted or parttook in the poll said they didn't watch the show at all, which is to be expected.

[00:00:44]Not everybody watches the animation for one reason or another. Though, some people won't watch it because they don't watch cartoons. And as I always say, you should try to get over that and give it a chance or give Star Wars animation in general a chance. There is some good stuff to be had there. really good stuff, especially in the case of this show. So, if you're one of those people who says, "I don't watch cartoons or whatever," just try them. You might be surprised. All right, and I'm right away just going to move on to the comments here. But not before, once again, just got to say thank you to everybody who votes for comments or watches these or any of my videos across both the channels. Thank you so much for being a part of what I try to do here. And a big thank you to those who support the channels over on Patreon and make my Discord server, in my opinion, the best place on the internet to talk some Star Wars. Anyway, we will kick it off as we always do with the top rated comment on the poll. And this time it came to us from Skull Leader who said, "Some of the best Vader dialogue in years."

[00:01:44]Now, considering he doesn't speak in the series, this could be taken a couple different ways. It could be a criticism of some of the Vader dialogue we have got over the last few years, or it could just be saying he was really good, not saying a word. And I will agree that it was kind of terrifying that he didn't speak. He was kind of like a horror movie villain, just constantly after his prey. I thought it worked very well, don't get me wrong. Though, at the same time, I do wish he would have talked especially to Maul and had a bit of a conversation with him. He does know who Maul is. Maul almost ran him over when he was a kid. He certainly would have known Obi-Wan's story about defeating Maul. He knew Maul came back during the Clone Wars. So, he knows who this guy is. He has an indirect history with him.

[00:02:32]You could say this is the guy who killed Qui-Gon, who likely would have been his master and kind of sent him down the road with Obi-Wan, the duel of the fates that led to what eventually happens to Anakin. Not that he necessarily puts that all together. Anyway, yeah, I would have liked to have seen these two have some sort of conversation. My guess is that it's going to happen later on down the road. There's a really good chance Devon and Maul will encounter Vader again in a future season of Maul Shadow Lord, and they're saving the conversation for then. And Dave Fona did try to explain this by saying that he's kind of this force of evil, and anything that reminds him of Vanigan, he just wants to destroy. that he's almost devoid of being a character, that Darth Vader just doesn't care. And yeah, I get all that, but I might have to disagree just a little bit based off what we see in the original trilogy. Though that is years later, so you could say this is just pure angry Vader or Anakin, former Anakin, and he's not in the mood to talk to anybody. But we do know years down the line, again, in the original trilogy, he talks quite a bit. He doesn't come off as like a pure monster.

[00:03:40]Yes, he is monstrous and does monstrous things, but especially in A New Hope, you don't get the impression that he is just this mindless monster who goes around like a horror movie villain and kills people. In Empire Strikes Back, they do kind of take it to the next level. He's choking out his own men, his own officers. And then in Return of the Jedi, he's having kind of casual conversations with Luke. So, at no point in the original trilogy do you really get the sense that he's just this mindless, angry monster. I don't know. I get what Fona is saying. I get what they were going for. And I don't dislike it or anything. I thought it was pretty good. But I kind of disagree with it.

[00:04:13]You could again make the case that we're so close to Revenge of the Sith after everything fell apart that he just can't deal with it. So, anything that reminds him of the Anakin days, he just wants to destroy without thinking. I don't know.

[00:04:24]Vader talking was both somehow really good and genius and really bad and a poor decision. All right. And now on to this comment from Solo who said, "Possibly the best start to a Star Wars animated series so far. They did an excellent job taking the work already done with Maul with Clone Wars and Rebels and making him even more compelling and tragic while never taking away from just how monstrous he is.

[00:04:48]And yeah, for better or worse considering once upon a time he did kind of die in the Phantom Menace. But he has become one of the best characters in all of Star Wars just in terms of depth and complexity and interest too. He's an intriguing character even if we already do know his ending. He was excellent in this show. I know some people say he wasn't in there enough, but I was fine with that. I think he was used enough to justify the name of the show being Maul Shadow Lord being named after him, and I do agree that he is still a monster.

[00:05:18]They didn't try to say, "Oh, he's like this anti-hero now. He's actually a good guy. He's misunderstood." I'm glad they didn't go that route. Yes, they do have that episode where he is reliving all the traumatic events of his past, and you do sympathize with him for sure. It is a tragic story, but they don't again try to make it out to be, oh, we should be rooting for Maul. He's actually the good guy all along or he has the heart of gold or anything like that, which they sometimes do. So, I like that they did yes, to a degree, make him a sympathetic villain, but not to the point where we're supposed to really be rooting for him. We may root for him because we like the character and we understand he's bad, but we're not supposed to be on his side, if you will.

[00:05:55]We're not supposed to be hoping he wins and takes over the galaxy, even though we know he isn't going to. And moving on now, we have a comment here from Blazer Mastermind who said, "I really liked it a lot, but it never really did anything that blew me away. The plot was kind of predictable. I wish it did something more interesting or unique with the premise. Like, I would have liked to see Maul do more with the crime syndicate and develop Rook and the supporting cast more or him trying to establish a legion of darksiders like the one Sith to destroy the Empire, or make Janx a world I cared more deeply about. This isn't to say the show isn't good or great. It's more to say it's kind of generic and I would have preferred something more. If you're going to give Maul a show when we already know most of his story, I feel like the story should be something the fans don't expect and something unique you wouldn't expect but love from the show.

[00:06:48]And first of all, I really really really enjoyed this show overall. But I do agree with a lot of the points you're making. In fact, if we go back to the review or my review for the first two episodes, I had a lot of people really upset at me and saying I hated the show because I was saying I wish there had been a little bit more development early on in those first two episodes to kind of set up Janx, which we never really care about as you pointed out to set up some of the other characters, the Night Brothers, Rick Cass, to give more depth to just everything around Maul because that is what is going to elevate the show in the long run. We know him all is going to be exciting. He's going to do cool stuff. We know his story, so we can't be too surprised by that. So, we need to be surprised by some of the other things that happen and we need to care when they happen. And I do feel like the show lacked a little bit there.

[00:07:39]Like when the Night Brother sacrifices himself, it's like, "Oh, that was a cool death or when Rook is killed in the most gruesome and cool way." We don't really care that much about Rook and she's a character that has been seen elsewhere in the comics and even in Clone Wars, she was in there. So, it is unfortunate that they couldn't have built those other characters up just a little bit more. Like I even said in the review for those first two episodes, even two to three minutes in every episode extra where you kind of just develop things a little bit more would be nice. And I understand this is animation. Every minute of animation, every second of animation actually costs you money to do. It's not like a film or a live action series where you can just film something a little longer and do a scene that way. Even though, yes, that still costs you money. But I understand to animate something costs them a lot of money. So they do probably cut some corners here out of necessity to save some money. But even still, a couple more minutes in every episode, I think could have elevated the show to even another level beyond being a really, really great show. Okay. And now on to this comment from Jedi Pyro, who said, "Please surprised that Disney Star Wars was able to pull off a fantastic animated story and a believable narrative of a Jedi falling to the dark side.

[00:08:51]And yeah, one of my favorite parts of the show was that Devon's turn to the dark side was done very well and done believably and not done Jedi bad. So, of course, she has to turn to the dark side. It actually kind of argued Jedi good, but not good in this situation. As I said in my video kind of comparing this show to the Acolyte or the fall of OSHA and Devon, the Jedi ways are great for maintaining peace, but they're not soldiers. They're not warriors. They're not good at taking peace back. They're not good at reclaiming it. And that's exactly what this show showed. When the galaxy falls apart and they are hated by a lot of people for the Clone Wars and all the propaganda that Palpatine is no doubt shoving down their throat about the Jedi, it's not easy for them to operate and to be the good guys when they have to worry about hiding and not being killed by the Empire or turned on by any random person on the street. So, I really enjoyed the complexity there.

[00:09:42]Again, there were other aspects, like I said, in relation to the last comment that maybe could have been done better, but Devon's turn was done very well.

[00:09:51]Showing the struggles of being a Jedi right after Order 66, right after the Clone Wars, when the galaxy has turned on you, was done very well. Very happy with all of that.

[00:10:00]Moving on, we now have this comment from Joe Mahoney, who said, "I think the difference between this show and a lot of the other animated shows is that there was no filler. In Bad Batch, for instance, there would be an occasional good episode amongst the bad episodes, but in this show, the whole season was on par with the very best Bad Batch episodes. Also, it was so great to finally get something about dark side characters. 9 out of 10. And yeah, I love the fact that this wasn't episodic, that this wasn't adventure of the week style, which The Bad Batch was. Yes, it does have an overarching plot, and season 3 was kind of more serialized than the previous two seasons, and it was the best season probably for that reason, but I do think this needs to be the model for animation going forward. I don't mind episodic shows. If they did another one, that would be fine. But I do think you need to lean into the serialized show. I think that's what people want and expect out of shows these days anyway. one good solid story and however many episodes it takes to tell that one story instead of just dropping in filler episodes for the sake of inflating things. There is a fine line between again what I was talking about before building up the side characters and everything around them and giving context of the story and just giving us episodes for no particular reason other than to give us an episode.

[00:11:17]All right, and one final comment here, and it comes to us from Crusader Legacy, who said, "After a long LOL, nothing exciting, this was a breath of fresh air. Gorgeous animation, no overly cheesy moments, great action, and some of the best depictions of Maul and Vader ever. This feels very much like the later seasons of Clone Wars in a good way. And I hope they don't mess it up as they progress the story.

[00:11:42]And yeah, overall this was a fantastic show and I'm hoping the fan response to the show tells them that, hey, we want more like this. Not necessarily more Maul, though. Yes, we are getting a second season and who knows how many more seasons. And I'm confident they'll be good. My guess is the show ends with Devon somehow abandoning Maul on Malachor, which is where we find him in Rebels or something happens with Devon where he eventually will end up there.

[00:12:07]I'm pretty sure that at some point Devon will hear from Lawson who clearly survived in that final episode. He's going to tell her that Maul betrayed Master Docky and that's going to cause a rift between them and then again Maul ends up on Malachor. But anyway, like I was saying, I hope Lucasfilm is paying attention to the response and seeing fans really like this. We like a serialized animated show that is a little darker, a little grittier, a little more mature, if you will, and that we get more like this going forward. Yes, I have said before that the animation, Star Wars animation should be an entry point to the younger audiences, but maybe they can do multiple shows because this was really good and I don't really think this was for younger audiences. So maybe they can do a bit of both. A bit of very expensive looking great animation serious stories like this and maybe some episodic stuff that is a little less animationheavy or looks not quite this good that is for the younger audiences.

[00:13:05]I don't know. I understand you want to get the younger generations into Star Wars and animation is a great way to do it, though. Maybe anime is an even better way considering how much younger generations love anime and older ones, too. Anyway, I'm rambling and I'll just say that this was a fantastic show. It looked amazing. It sounded amazing. Yes, I have some nitpick complaints. I think you could have done a little bit more with the background characters. You could have done a little more with Janx to make us care that the Empire had come in and taken the thing over. But overall, I was very happy and I hope we get more like this in the future.

[00:13:38]Well, that is going to be all I got for you this time and now it is your turn.

[00:13:42]Take to the comments below and tell me what you thought about Maul Shadoword or what you thought about what I or anyone else had to say in this video about Maul Shadow Lord. Whatever the case may be though, leave your comments below. Let's talk some Star Wars. And until next time, thanks for watching.