Full Series The Clone Wars - 5.16 - Lawless - discussion thread

Does anyone get the feeling that they're going the tragic character route with Maul?
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I was pleasantly surprised at how well the brothers did against Sidious. They held their own. It appears that the reports about them being 'crushed' were overstated.

As for Maul asking for mercy....that annoyed the hell out of me ever since I heard about it. To be honest I was more anxious about this than the possibility of Maul actually dying. I really can't imagine why they would have him do such a thing.
Something occured to me though: I wonder if it wasn't so much the dying, rather the dying at Sidious' hands that rattled Maul so much. He was fanatically loyal to him before TPM, and even now he clearly still idolizes him.

Their relationship is an interesting one. I hope it will be explored more. In the Plagueis novel, Plagueis himself notes that Sidious had a "filial bond" with Maul. After Plagueis is dead and the Dark side is 'anointing' Sidious, he experiences a feeling of intense dread. Later he realizes it was because of Maul's 'death'( Plagueis' death and Maul's demise occur almost simultaneously). I think Maul may be the only being Sidious ever had a semblance of a feeling for.

 

Are they the same Sun Guards that once served Plagueis,too?

By the way, how old are those kids now? They look at least 5 years older if you ask me.

 

That’s my question as well, this is easily the best arc of the series, so far. How on earth could they possibly top "The Lawless" as a season finale? The Ashoka arc has big shoes to fill.

 

I am so sad that Maul and Savage can't continue their reign of terror. It makes perfect sense to do off with them this soon, I'm just sad to see it go down. But damned if that wasn't one hell of an episode.​

 

Difference from the book:

Anakin and Obi Wan's conversation is deleted.

Sidious' advantage is not that big compare to the book.

Bo-Katan is Satine's sister.

Satine's last words are different.

Palpatine's words in the end is different.

Maul's anger after his brother's death is not mentioned much in the book.

 

I'm clearly going to have to rewatch and re-evaluate my opinion on this later since everywhere I go people are raving about it.

 

Maul does care about Savage

 

Yes, that surprised me.

 

Obi-Wan should have brought Anakin

 

Hmm, bit let down at the duel, I thought last weeks was better though on a rewatch may change my mind.
Poor Savage, and Maul begging for mercy is awful.
Satine/Obi seemed very pointless, I'd have preferred more Sith time.

 

Is it me, or does it seem like a whole bunch of time has passed since the whole poison drink fiasco?

 

Maul is begging because Sith are terrified of death and are selfishly obsessed with figuring out how to live forever. Sith are consumed by fear and hatred. He has no nobility like Pre Vizsla who dies silently. It makes total sense to me and it's true to the mythology, it's not about being the biggest badass - from Maul's point of view what does he have to gain from dying? Also I imagine there is some little part of Maul that has affection for Sidious as a Father having raised him so he's basically begging his dad not to kill him. I loved this episode

 

This episode had potential. But little things like Obi-Wan not using Jedi mind tricks, and "good guys" suddenly have blue blaster bolts and "bad guys" using red. It just seems like they had a good outline, but filled it with mediocrity.

 

That's what I'm saying, Anakin could stay on the ship and fly it as soon as they got out, Obi Wan could also spare his hand to block some rockets.

 

nah i would rather have Anakin come and kick everyone's butts, that's how he does it

 

Well the important thing is to SAVE Satine, not to kick ass.

 

Dooku did.

Maul is the first Sith on screen to beg which is consistent with the interpretation that Witwer and Filoni have pushed for like a year. Previously, Lucas and Christopher Lee apparently decided that begging was not in Dooku's character, and they cut that bit of dialogue where Dooku gets flustered and pleads to Sidious. And in the EU there are Sith that don't beg. Overseer Tremmel (TOR) for instance tells you to kill him when he is bested, it's expected.

Maul begging confirms to a relatively new interpretation. Sidious was the only other one to beg (to Mace) but he was putting on a show for Anakin.

 

Yes, that scene of Dooku is much better than the novel version.

I think Maul beg for it because he was greatly afraid of his master since his master rose him up, taught him everything and tortured him through his training,.

 

Not as good as the last episode, but still an awesome episode.

The bad parts:

The sudden all-out battle had me confused. Who are fighting? Does Bo-Katan's forces number that many now, or have other people joined them? Before they were skulking about in the shadows, and now it's all-out war all of a sudden.

Obi-Wan really shouldn't be joking here. It was good to see that he accepted his loss like a real Jedi (instead of succumbing to his rage like a certain Jedi brother of his would have), but him joking and being all merry in the next scene was dumb. I don't want to see him crying but he should at least have been in a neutral mood.

The good parts:

I loved Obi-Wan's and Maul's Dark side vs. Light side discussion, and I was surprised by Satine's sudden execution. Daaaayum, Maul got upped to major A-hole in my mind there. Kinda makes sense that he doesn't want to kill Obi-Wan and instead prolong his suffering to match his own. Speaking of which, will we ever be shown how he survived and managed to get off Naboo to the scrapyard planet? I guess it's already been explained in a book or something, but it'd be nice to have the explanation in the TV show and not have to read something else to know such a crucial piece of information.

The duel was awesome. Not only was the battle outside confusing, but I also could not care less about Obi-Wan's escape when the duel had started, I just wanted to get back to the duel. I loved how Palps dominated them by crushing them against the walls and windows.
It was obvious that Savage couldn't hold his own against Palps. The moment he gets alone with the beast is the beginning of the end. I was surprised that Maul actually cared for his brother. Nice to see that all Sith aren't all "I care about myself and absolutely no one else, not even my family".
The ending was so... evil. Felt a little bad for Maul. It was obvious there that he really was no different from Savage... a person made into a monster to do an overlord's bidding.

End notes:

It will be interesting to see where Maul's story will go from here. Someone mentioned Palps using Maul to test Anakin - this could be interesting, only bad thing is that it would be incredibly predicable.
It would be cool if Obi-Wan gets a re-match against Maul in the future under some chaotic circumstances, and manages to kill him without succumbing to his rage, putting an end to this chapter of evil in his life known as Darth Maul.

EDIT: Another thing that confused me was the Death Watch member with the horned helmet. At first I thought it was Maul flying around with his new men, but then I saw that guy with both Maul and Savage. No one else seemed to have horns on their helmet. What's up with this guy?

 

Obi Wan's taunts enraged Maul to do it, I think he shouldn't say it.

 

While I thought the episode was the best so far in the series, I think the duel should have been longer, based on the hype. It was really good, but redicously short in comparison to last week’s fight, really don’t see how Dave Fillioni could consider this the best of the two.

 

The episode is still a bit too rushed like the previous ones of the Maul arc.

 

I wonder if any of it was cut/censored.. We'll probably find out tomorrow in the trivia if it was.

I'm hoping this one will be an extended director's cut on the Blu Ray.

 

I was thinking about that earlier when trying to come up with questions. They have been particularly guilty of doing this lately. If you want to know how Maul survives, you pretty much have to turn to behind the scenes comments by Witwer or Filoni, because on screen it just comes out of the blue. Back when the Mortis arc aired and the Father mentioned that too much light side was bad, I remember Witwer spinning his own interpretation of why that is, which made some sense, but still the show should stand on its own merits, I shouldn't have to read behind the scenes interviews to understand everything.

There's a blog regarding some Making of ROTJ book in which it is mentioned that the author was confused why Vader saved Palpatine from Luke's swing and that he didn't feel it made any sense. He says he posed this question to Lucas and got an in depth answer that will be included in the book. So basically, you want to know what was going on in that pivotal moment? Go read some book released decades after the fact

The films and TCW don't even explain why there's a Rule of Two, the novels, comics and behind the scenes interviews are where you have to look.

It's annoying IMO.