TV Recap / Review: "Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord" Episode 1 - "The Dark Revenge" Introduces the Major Players

Today marks the series premiere of Lucasfilm Animation's new series Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord on Disney+, and below are my recap and thoughts on its first episode, entitled "The Dark Revenge."

"The Dark Revenge" begins with a bank heist on the planet Janix (fans who have been paying attention to the lead-in Marvel Comics miniseries Star Wars: Shadow of Maul will already be familiar with this world and at least a few of its inhabitants). Those doing the robbing are members of Maul's alliance of criminals known as the Shadow Collective, here made up of Mandalorian commandos and Dathomirian Nightbrothers. In an exciting action sequence, the Shadow Collective makes off with a transport vault (basically an armored truck) full of credits, but notably they prioritize taking a bank droid, leaving lots more money behind-- more on that later. A subsequent police chase ends on a landing platform, where the bandits' leader, the former Sith Lord who dropped the "Darth" and is now simply called Maul (voiced by Sam Witwer, reprising his role from Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels), reveals himself to their pursuers and emerges victorious in a scuffle against their blasters thanks to some very fancy lightsaber moves.

After the title card, we meet exiled Jedi Padawan Devon Izara (Gideon Adlon from Blockers) and Master Eeko-Dio Daki (Dennis Haysbert from 24), who are evidently more survivors of Order 66-- as this series takes place in the wake of the rise of the Galactic Empire-- and are hiding out on Janix. Devon is arrested for attempted shoplifting when she tries to steal from a fruit cart, and her master warns her not to make a scene, so she is taken to the police station. In the aftermath of the bank heist, a local police detective named Brander Lawson (Oscar-nominated actor Wagner Moura from The Secret Agent) investigates the scene of the crime along with his droid partner 2B0T or Two-Boots (Richard Ayoade from The IT Crowd and The Mandalorian). It turns out that the bank is under the control of a crime lord named Nico Deemis (John Carroll Lynch from Fargo and Zodiac), who we then see calling for a meeting with a rival mob boss called Looti Vario (Chris Diamantopoulos from American Dad! and The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse) to accuse him of orchestrating the heist. Vario is of the Aleena species-- the same as podracer pilot Ratts Tyerell in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. At the police headquarters, Lawson and Two-Boots run a scan on an image of Maul recorded by one of the droids at the scene of the massacre, and the result comes back classified. Two-Boots is insistent on reporting this to the Empire, as per the official instructions, but Lawson doesn't want to involve them just yet.

At the Shadow Collective's headquarters, Maul has been having visions of a new apprentice, who he believes to be on Janix. His plan to pit those who wronged him against each other becomes clearer as he discusses his strategy with Rook Kast (Star Wars Rebels star Vanessa Marshall), one of his Mandalorian loyalists who we previously met in the Star Wars: Darth Maul - Son of Dathomir comic book miniseries and the final season of The Clone Wars. Back at Nico Deemis's den, he and Looti Vario sit down for a dinner and are served the bank droid's head on a platter. This causes all manner of chaos to break out between the two crime lords. This skirmish ends with Deemis dead at Vario's hands, and Vario taken into custody by the Janix police. During his interrogation, he spills the beans on the Shadow Collective and asks for protection from Lawson and Two-Boots, who place him in a holding cell across the hallway from Devon Izara. This sets up the final action sequence for the episode, which sees Maul and his warriors invading the police station, taking out a bunch of security droids, and springing Vario, who manages to have his life spared in exchange for information on the Pyke Syndicate, on whom Maul is also seeking revenge. But before he leaves, Maul sense Devon's presence in her cell and opens its door. She immediately recognizes him, utters his name, and the episode ends as she is consumed in shadow.

My first thoughts on watching this debut episode of Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord is that it is immediately the best-looking animated series that Lucasfilm has put out since its animation department launched 20 years ago. The painted backdrops on Janix are absolutely gorgeous, and the animation itself feels much smoother, with far less of the physical overacting from the character models that we've seen in The Clone Wars, Rebels, Resistance, and The Bad Batch-- although improvements in that area have been incremental across all of those series. The voice cast is also stellar, particularly the leads Witwer, Moura, and Adlon, each of whom bring a believability and gravitas to their roles and consequently the galaxy around them.

By the end of this first installment, all I could think is that the once-distinct dividing line of quality between animation and live-action is getting much blurrier with each new series, and that's a great thing. As far as the story goes, I'm already invested in what's going on here, and I'm especially enamored with the police-procedural aspect featuring the characters of Lawson and Two-Boots. In a lot of ways they feel like the opposite of the character Syril Karn from Andor-- they're competent and doing their jobs well for the right reasons, a stark contrast from what we saw of the Preox-Morlana Corporation in that show. It's just another example of the complexity and nuance possible when you flesh out a fictional universe like this. All told, I'd say that Maul - Shadow Lord is off to an excellent start, and I can't wait to see where it goes from here.

The first two episodes of Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord are now available to stream, exclusively via Disney+.