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While we’re waiting for the release of the next Star Wars film – The Mandalorian and Grogu, launching later this month – Disney quietly launched one of the best Star Wars stories in recent memory: a new animated series called Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord.
While you’re probably used to seeing the Star Wars universe through the lens of the Jedi order, or at least some swashbuckling rebels, in Shadow Lord we follow Maul – the former Sith apprentice to Dark Sidious, now on the dark, gritty planet of Javix with an eye to taking over its underworld as a force-empowered crime boss. If that doesn’t sound awesome to you, I don’t know what to say.
Thankfully, initial reviews are quite positive: with many critics praising the show’s mature tone, beautiful animation, and surprisingly deep characters – though many had problems with Maul himself. Here, we’re going to break down what critics liked, and disliked, about the first season of Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord.
Check out the trailer for Shadow Lord below.
A Darker Star Wars Galaxy
One thing many critics agree on when dissecting Darth Maul’s first foray into leading man territory is the surprisingly mature tone the series presents. While animated series are still overwhelmingly targeted at children, more and more are putting the focus on older viewers – a move that makes sense when you remember that Star Wars has been around for over 50 years at this point. Shadow Lord takes the seedy underbelly of the Star Wars universe – think the “wretched hive of scum and villainy” of the Mos Eisley spaceport – and puts it centre stage.
“Undoubtedly, this is the most mature Star Wars animation has ever been,” said Screen Rant. “The gritty, grounded tone felt refreshing, almost like Andor meets The Clone Wars, wrapped in a crime-thriller bow.”
Inverse agreed, calling the show a “cat-and-mouse story” that “often feels more like Catch Me If You Can than A New Hope.”
This focus is partly down to an active effort to court older fans, and also due to the overwhelmingly dark period the series is set in. Shadow Lord takes place following the events of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which ends with the fascistic Empire effectively taking over the galaxy. Emperor Palpatine now rules, with Darth Vader at his side, and the Jedi are all but wiped out. It’s not a cheery time, and thankfully Shadow Lord leans into that darkness.
Beauty in Motion
Part of that darkness comes from the incredible visuals at play here. While Clone Wars showed off some pretty rudimentary 3D animation, and newer series have upped the game bit-by-bit, Shadow Lord brings a level of technical mastery to the screen that the series’ animated efforts have been sorely lacking – visually going toe-to-toe with something like Arcane or Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
“Animation has always been hit-or-miss with Star Wars, at least when made in-house at Lucasfilm. But Shadow Lord is visually the best the studio has produced to date,” said RogerEbert.com.
The series successfully blends 3D characters with stylised 2D backgrounds, creating an effect that several critics compared to the incredible matte paintings used in the likes of Blade Runner. That dark, painterly quality helps give the show an identity and style usually missing from Disney’s recent outings in a galaxy far, far away.
And, as you’d expect from a show centered on a former Sith with a double-ended lightsaber, there’s quite a few acrobatic fight scenes throughout the show to break up all the scheming and plotting. Thankfully, these are well done, using kinetic action and well choreographed movements to make each lightsaber duel pop.
“Sharp animation and punchy choreography highlight (Maul’s) spasms of violence, as he slices through criminal rivals like he’s reaping wheat… If a show is going to fixate on laser swords, it should at least do it right,” said AV Club.
Darth Maul goes Missing
That said, while Maul himself is the drawcard for the show – a character whose introduction in The Phantom Menace was largely an exercise in aura-farming, but who did get significantly more fleshed out in the Clone Wars – he’s far from the most interesting character Shadow Lord introduces. He was never the most fleshed-out character to begin with, but several critics noted that the series does very little to deepen Maul’s story.
He’s still an intimidating figure, and uses that menace to great effect, but never really earns main character status throughout this first season.
Screen Rant noted that while Maul probably gets the most screentime in the series – as he should – there are a surprising number of scenes where he is entirely absent: “I wanted Maul to be granted the depth that his own show should allow for… (and) I am somewhat disappointed by the treatment of the character himself here.”
Roger Ebert agreed, noting “Maul suffers from a major problem: it provides no interesting depth for the titular character… (and) is so concerned with maintaining (his) sinister persona that it gives no insight into what’s going on with him internally.”
Thankfully, the various new characters surrounding him are rich and complex, and received almost universal praise from reviewers. Standouts include Detective Lawson – a law man hoping to bring Maul in without alerting the Empire to the Sith’s whereabouts, as doing so would effectively put the entire planet under its watchful gaze – and Jedi-in-hiding Devon Izara, who Maul discovers and begins tempting to the Dark Side in an effort to gain a tool to use for his own ends.
The dynamic between Jedi outcast and former Sith is given a fresh coat of paint here. It’s done without the usual dramatic drive to turn a good person toward evil that we usually see from the Sith, and instead gives Devon a genuine reason to consider his offers. See, she wants nothing more than to destroy the Empire that murdered and drove her order underground, and kill the Sith Lord at its head – and wouldn’t you know it, Maul happens to have been left to die by that same Sith Lord and now wants revenge.
“When Maul offers to team up so they can strike down their common enemy, Darth Sidious, this proposal takes on a different tinge than the series’ usual dark-side temptations, mostly because Maul sort of has a point: sometimes you need to call a truce with a lesser evil to fight a greater one,” said AV Club.
An Uneven Story
While the set-up is great and the characters are strong, Shadow Lord does suffer from uneven pacing across its paltry runtime. While we already know that the series has been picked up for a second season, so are certainly getting more episodes, this first season offers a number of great ideas that are let down by short ~25 minute episodes that still manage to feel like the wheels are spinning at times.
“It does take multiple episodes for Shadow Lord to dig its hooks in,” said AV Club. “The problem upfront is that the cartoonish crime wars don’t offer much to chew on.”
Variety added that over the course of the eight episodes they’d seen, the show felt stranded between a tentpole franchise entry and a small side quest: “Shadow Lord can capably move the Clone Wars story forward, but it’s not yet ready to serve as a Star Wars standard-bearer on its own.”
Should You Watch ‘Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord’?
If you’re a diehard Star Wars fan, you’ve probably already watched this one, but even if you just have a passing interest in seeing what the underbelly of the Galactic Empire looks like, checking Shadow Lord out is a pretty good idea.
While Maul himself might feel a bit underbaked, he is as menacing and edgy as always, which is really what we all want from him anyway – and there are enough great characters around him to keep you engaged in the various plot threads being hinted at in this first season. Plus, with a second season already in the works, there’s more to come in this grittier, darker version of Star Wars.
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