Full Series Darth Maul in Star Wars Rebels

I agree that it was the right ending for his character.

 

Actually it feels strange to see a character die who grow on me, which I assumed dead after Ep. I to learn later that he is alive for some more adventures. That his fate is still going on. "He lives!" I rejoiced after it became clear to me that there was no official termination of Darth Maul yet.

Then the cliffhanger when "Son of Dathomir" was announed with the for sure option for Maul to die in the end. Which proved wrong again. Then his appearance in Rebels. That time I imagined Maul to be immortal. Why bringing him back to let him perish like this?

Yes... I know... the worthy reason to die for... the circular thing.

Still I feel sad for Maul.

 

Even though he was evil I can still feel bad for him because of how he was raised and how he just was surviving off revenge

 

The hangar carved into that crescent asteroid, where Maul in s. 3, "Holocron of Fate" did held the Ghost crew hostage, wasn't that the very same hangar near Ord Mantell, where in "Son of Dathomir" Maul, Dooku and Rook Kast did battle the Jedi during the late Clone Wars?

 

Yes, the same hangar. It's possible that some assets for the base were completed before TCW was cancelled, which would have made using the base in Rebels even easier.

 

I believe I heard that mentioned somewhere

 

I think they mentioned it in the Rebels Recon for that episode.

 

I may have said this before, but I will go ahead and say it again. At first I absolutely hated how they ended Maul's story. It should have ended in TCW, or kept going. This episode barely featured Maul, and the duel at the end was terrible. (I still believe this, people can defend it however they want but I despise it. This is Star Wars, it needed to be showy.)

However, the last episode has gotten better for me by now. Why? The Marvel Maul comic series really helped me understand Maul's character. It made me understand that he always failed. He would try again, but ended up just failing every time he tried. (He kinda reminds me of Texas from rvb.)

Still very underwhelming, but with this comic series and time, it has grown on me.

 

Why, Revan, they should have already let it end in TCW? That IMHO would have been a kind of busted flush - not being worth Maul.

 

Maul, by his own admission, wasn't a Sith when he faced with Obi-Wan on the Rebels.

- ''Formerly Darth, now it's just Maul.''

He and Ezra even searched for the key to destroying the Sith. Since Maul wasn't a Sith at the moment.

 

Witwer confirmed that Maul was always meant to survive the Clone Wars according to Lucas's outline. What was the original ideas is anyones guess. The Filoni and team's version of Maul was never quite the original from TPM, their version he was more drifted from stoic discipline of the film to laughing psychotic and with all the toonish unstable damaged mentally stuff that apparently he was always beyond repair. I don't think Filoni was the right person to bring Maul back as it seemed like something he was against but was following orders and on Rebels he just completely jumped the shark, he had his chance to close down the character & he did not have George overseeing him. In a lot of ways I'm glad he can no longer butcher the character with bad writing and over acting and just using the character as a prop to build up inferior characters and bad arcs.

For what its worth though, not only did Maul and Kenobi reconcile before the former's departure into the netherworld of the Force, Kenobi would go on to give Maul a funeral pyre following the events of "Twin Suns".

 

Initially I thought it was stupid to bring Maul back and still think the whole spider-trash-Maul thing was a bit too weird and unrealistic for my tastes, but I think the Clone Wars actually gave him some interesting humanity and development. I felt like there could have been an even more interesting story of Maul post Savage as, by the end of the Shadow collective arc, you could really tell he was beyond the whole slave/master relationship that he had with Palpatine as he actually mourned his brother. His relationship with Ezra (and I had hoped, the Rebellion) had the potential to be something interesting but I think it quickly became apparent that Maul was shoe-horned into Rebels just to give his character closure. In retrospect, although I thought Twilight of the Apprentice and Twin Suns were individually great episodes, I feel like Rebels should have gone fully in and focused on Maul's story, left him out, or just kept him as a cameo in TotA. I mean, did we really need two episodes of cackling Maul tempting Ezra only for him to run off in a pointless vendetta against Obi-Wan? I liked Twin Suns, but making Obi-Wan such a personal obsession for Maul seemed to ignore all the events and character development that occurred in the Clone Wars. He had revenge against Obi-Wan. I would have preferred Maul seek Obi-Wan as an ally against Palpatine. Have Maul point out how they have both been victims of Palps and should seek revenge and then have Obi-Wan point out that Maul's revenge plots so far haven't brought him peace so why should he follow in his footsteps. Then when Obi-Wan refuses have Maul point out Luke and the duel. That would at least be a bit of development (and one, to be fair, that was minimally alluded to in his "avenge us" line). As it stands for me now, the fact that Maul's story in Rebels felt like a B-plot that neither had a lasting impact on the main character's stories (Ezra quickly popped back to the light and Kanan's blindness is purely aesthetic) or did full justice for his own kinda makes his whole resurrection seem like a strange plot detour for both t.v. series that just kinda fizzled out in obscurity. Why go through the tortuous process of rewriting such an important character's fate and push our suspension of belief just to have the net effect be that he got mad at being chopped in half and got killed "again" by the same guy?

 

@Sudooku I think he should have stayed there because, though he did have effects on other characters story arcs in Rebels, I feel like his story was not very well told as it was in TCW.

 

Maul's storyline started to fall apart when the Son of Dathomir CW arc was turned into a comic. While I did enjoy the issues, so much of the story felt lost on those pages. When he appeared in Rebels, I was excited to see more of his journey told, but it wasn't done nearly as well as in CW. His Rebels appearances felt a bit contrived to say the least, and they jumped him around too much for my taste. They could explain it all away by saying he's insane and lost to revenge, but that would be a cheap work-around, and poor storytelling.

 

Reading that lady's work on Maul in Rebels is always a pleasure :

http://greenreticule.tumblr.com/search/maul

 

Thanks for sharing this with us, Sannom. Great art, great image caption and subtitles!

 

Eh, you've a point. But also Maul has seen a lot of things, what happened to the Republic, the Jedi, Obi-Wan and he even learned about the Chosen One. He blinded Kanan and Ezra learned about the Dark Side and the Holocron. Ahsoka probably died because of Maul's actions in Malachor which summoned Vader to the temple. He killed 2 Inquisitors. If you ask what was the point of his return.

Filoni talked about the possible Vader vs. Maul duel, but he changed that with Ben Kenobi duel since he believed that they stole Kenobi's victory in Episode I and he wasn't really the fan of the idea of Maul's return. It was George Lucas. If this was Lucas, instead of Filoni, perhaps Maul would go with an epic Vader vs. Maul duel, and I think Lucas would do that considering that he doesn't care about Kenobi's victory in the first place since he only cares about an exiciting story and new conflicts as we've seen in the The Clone Wars tv show.

As for my personal taste, I would choose a Vader vs. Maul duel in the Season 2. What Maul did exactly in the Season 3? He killed a couple of Rebel soldiers before capturing Hera and the Ghost crew. He killed a couple of Sand People, nothing worthy for a character like Maul. And then he get killed by Kenobi, the only thing he did was seeing what Kenobi was doing in his exile and he learned about the Chosen one. Not exactly huge accomplishments.

 

Both of you are making really great points, I think. As much as I like TOTA, I felt Maul´s story past it a little forced, or maybe it´s just that Vader vs Maul made all the sense in the world to me: it was a symbolic passing of the torch between Sith, and Maul was one of the only worthy challenges left for Vader, above in power of any of the Inquisitors.

This whole "Kenobi was robbed of his victory, we had to give it back to him" sounds very weird to me; Kenobi did defeat Maul on Naboo regardless of what happened later, and I don´t feel a Jedi power or success should be measured by the number of Sith (or darksiders) he/she has slained.

Still, I really enjoyed how tragic the character of Maul became with TCW and Rebels storyline, and enjoyed too the portrayal of Obi Wan as powerful and wise in Rebels, so I really don´t complain.

 

Not to forget that Obi-Wan is far above "getting back" or "to complete" his victory over Maul from once upon a time before. He just doesn't need that. Closing circles may be Vader's thing but Obi-Wan has the high ground here too.

 

Anyone who says maul did not have a lasting effect on anything did not pay close attention to TCW. If Maul had not returned Mandalore would still be a pacifist world.

 

That "Twin Suns" Episode together with "Holocron of Fate" for me was a circular reversal of the TCW-Episode "Revenge". The hostage-taking of the Ghost-crew was like the hostage-taking at Raydonia. Mauls cry on Tatooine - resembling the battle cry after his resurrection on Dathomir by Mother Talzin. Then the music when Maul prepered for his final fight with Obi-Wan - the almost same music when Savage handed over the remaining half of Maul's double-blade to his newly found brother. Now in Rebels Maul was about to loose his newly acquired double blade - to his last "brother" - Kenobi.

It must have been traumatic for Maul when he was betrayed by Gar Saxon at Mandalore about the Death Watch leadership. And we don't know what torture Maul did endure in Stygeon Prison by Dooku and Sidious. Maybe he suffered some injuries there as well leading to his lunatic appearance in Rebels later.

 

Not to mention he witnessed Sidious murder both his brother and mother.

 

Where was this? Not doubting, I just don't remember anything about Saxon betraying Maul. As far as I knew he was as loyal as Rook Kast in SoD and the next time we saw him was in Rebels. Was it in a comic or something?

 

DavrelKex:
I've red SoD too, where Gar Saxon and Rook Kast did serve Maul well. And I know roughly what happened in "Siege of Mandalore", the lost final TCW arc. Now build a bridge to Maul's and Saxon's appearance in Rebels: By common sense there must be a reason, Maul was no longer ruler of Mandalore after the siege of the latter and the takover of Mandalore by the Empire anymore, while Gar Saxon in Rebels is introduced as a loyal servant to the Emperor. Do you really think that Gar Saxon got his new privileges granted by Palpatine for nothing?

We all saw in TCW how Pre Vizsla served Satine in public while clandestinely working for his own rise and that of the Death Watch. Then Vizsla betrayed Satine in favor of Maul. Then Vizsla betrayed Maul. Maul punished Vizsla for the latter's betrayal but Maul had intended to betray Pre Vizsla in the end anyway. And for Star Wars is often using the motive of the betrayed traitor, I have every reason to believe that Gar Saxon, formerly known as the Right Hand and second in command to Darth Maul, switched sides after it became known that the Emperor had a personal and a very strong reason to get ride of Maul as Mandalore's de facto ruler.

I personally imagine this treason to happen Order 66 style: Suddenly some high-ranking Death Watch members are aiming with their blasters at their leader Maul and Maul saves himself like he did with that force-repulse in SoD against Grievous' droids. Or like Yoda did on Kashyyyk. Another cool Maul pose to behold. Then he flees with his black-red painted Gauntlet-fighter called Nightbrother.

We saw in Rebels how Gar Saxon treated Ursa Wren the same insidious way, when it was agreed to hand over the Jedi to him in order to spare punishment for the House of Wren - a promise, Gar Saxon shattered easily. So for me it is likely Saxon did so even before - and with Maul too.

I presume that all this will be unravelled when finally that last piece of TCW will be presented to us in a kind of standalone TCW final. There were three or four episodes planned for this arc, means that could generate at least one hour until one and a half hour screentime - sufficient for an animated movie as we got already with the introduction of Ahsoka in the pilot film for TCW in 2008, before the series got started. It would be a circular closure for that series, when we would get such a crash-pilot film at it's very end, centered again around Ahsoka as was the pilot film in 2008.

 

Satine would've been executed by Death Watch or left to rot in prison, either case her outlook was not a good one, and Pre also knew of the relationship between her and Kenobi who was also his personal sworn enemy as well. So he would've exploited her to get to Kenobi at some point its safe to say. At no point did Bo-Katan(prior to The Lawless) or even the Mandalorian citizens really seem sympathetic to her, the latter quickly turned on her cept for a few loyalists. Bo-Katan only broke with them once Pre was slain in warrior tradition and she refused to serve the rightful leader of Mandalore that was Maul. I don't buy all new stuff being introduced however on Rebels with Filoni seems to have too much attachment to Satine and revising TCW narrative with all this saint Satine . Her New Mandalorians were certainly not the same as all those clans we see, nor the Darksaber affiliated with her rule in any shape or form, it was the opposite . Maul leaving the Darksaber there on Dathomir seemed also by design like he's setting up pieces.

Well Grievous killed Talzin not Sidious. She chose to die instead of her son. Remember they had Maul willing to sacrifice himself to destroy Sidious by him wanting Talzin to absorb his lifeforce so she could destroy the Sith, later after Grievous killed Talzin Maul had to be held back from throwing himself into certain death by his Death Watch warriors. A common theme appeared to be die a warrior's death however it was clear he was not afraid to die.

Bendu: If two such powerful sources of knowledge are united, they will grant a clarity of vision beyond your kind.
[...]

When joined, any secret, wisdom or destiny can be seen through the Force.
One could bring much chaos with such hidden truths.

[...]

...but such power comes with a price.
Once a secret is known, it cannot be unknown.

Maul: I doubt that you comprehend the power that is within your grasp.

Ezra: I know if we open these holocrons together, any question we ask will be answered.

Maul: So you do understand.
Well, my apprentice, what is your question?

Ezra: You know what I want.
I want to destroy the Sith.

Maul: You are as ambitious as ever.
As for me, I seek something much simpler, yet equally elusive.

Ezra: What's that?

Maul: Hope.

Maul: I see nothing.
Only oblivion.
I must go deeper.
Go deeper!


So the odds are Maul already foresaw his own death and it did not interest him and that 'hope' was Luke. Since he had obtained the full knowledge and powers of the merger by the time he was finished on Dathomir, all secrets would've been known to him . Also remember, he was playing with Kenobi, he already knew of the Chosen One being protected and Kenobi's mission, it was simply confirmed.

This fanart of Maul eating Porgs is cool: