A/V Maul: Shadow Lord

That reminds me, we did see in the Solo novel that Enfys Nest works with Saw, and the movie established that Nest and her mother had hounded Crimson Dawn and other syndicates for a while, so maybe we could see the early Cloud Riders.

 

Enfyst Nest mother could be an annoyance for Crimson Dawn. And Beckett worked for Crimson Dawn for years even before his crew got together. We know Lando did some Odd Jobs for Crimson Dawn. Aurra Sing was probably one of the Bounty hunters they used until Beckett killed her.

 

I got to tell you that I am not too thrilled with this because I feel that we keep playing with GL character's instead of creating new Star Wars. I feel that all these stories that are coming out are more to validate than anything else. There is nothing really new or fresh here.

 

They lay with Lucas characters of characters created under his tenure (although the bad batch were definitely something George came up with as they have George written all over them) they use these characters to introduce new characters

Omega, this Twi’lek apprentice. Rey and the new trilogy 3 keeps going

every time they try to do a wholly new show on screen it doesn’t go well. Looking at resistance and Acolyte. Talking monetary here Disney doesn’t care for anything else

 

Honestly I agree, in many ways this announcement just feels like some sort of April fools joke or fan pitch, because it is so dedicated to a very weird and specific fixation that Lucas had over a decade ago.

It also bothers me that, honestly it feels weird for Maul to even HAVE loyalist crime syndicates. Son of Dathomir had Mauls alliance of "people he united through force a few days ago" already start to collapse and Dooku even making a statement that it's easy to build up power, but hard to maintain.

What has Maul achieved with the Shadow Collective ? Set up a shadow government of Mandalore that he promptly lost to the Republic, force his criminal followers into open warfare with both the CIS and Republic which did not benefit the syndicates in the slightest, get captured and escape very clearly shaken and maddened. His alliance lasting into S7 is already a miracle.

There is a very clear line between TCW S7 Maul and Rebels Maul, ruined only by that egregious Solo cameo. The Solo cameo is so ill advised I thought it was a joke before I saw it myself, and now that teaser has spawned one of the worse comic crossover events with Crimson Reign and now this show.

I don't like how crime syndicates are now doomed to collectively always be props for some Big Important Person to easily manipulate into creating a "Third side" to a conflict big enough for everyone in the galaxy to take notice. Remember when Qira easily manipulated the entire Hutt Council into effectively committing suicide by attacking the Executor? This is only possible because the writers don't want the syndicates to actually be their own players with their own motivations anymore, just props for supposedly charismatic leaders to use as playthings. So now the entire criminal underworld of Star Wars is reduced to chaotically stupid goons and sycophants waiting to throw their lives away in service to whatever new Uber Godfather figure the writers wants. It's an endless parade of Tyber Zanns, worfing entire organizations and as many named characters as possible.

 

Thats Star Wars always about the big bad guy or main character since beginning

 

While true I feel like there is a difference between say Shadows of the Empire where some effort is made to differentiate the various Vigos of Black Sun and implying deeper motivations.

And the Chaotic Stupid tendencies of TCW's Black Sun where they all fall in line when their indistinguishable five bosses die, or the Hutt Council being portrayed as utterly interchangeable and disposable compared to the Crispin Solo Trilogy, or the Chaotic stupidity of the entire criminal underworld in Crimson Reign.

Imagine if in Crispin's novels Durga just killed most of the Hutt Council, declared himself the Overboss, and it works out until Ylesia is hit, or if Shadows of the Empire opened with Xizor gassing the Vigos and former underlord and declaring himself the new boss.

As it stands, the Hutts are easily manipulated morons, Crimson Reign is full of people willing to completely give up their lives in favor of a woman who lets them work in slave conditions in the second death star even a Hutt council member gets himself and council compatriots killed to mildly annoy Vader in her name, and the Pykes don't even get NAMES in the show where they are the big bads.

EDIT: it's amazing that the crossover event ends with Leia crying about how much good Qira did and that she would never get to know that her disruptions led to the Rebellion learning about the second death star. Yet Qira should have been aware of the DSII the entire time considering the DSII workers were in direct contact with Crimson Dawn and utterly loyal. Instead the discovery is left completely up to chance and to a small family of four who I guess would have never tried to leave their slavery without Qiras approval. This was a choice on Qira's end presumably due to utter self absorbtion on her end and I genuinely don't have sympathy here, nor does her callous discarding of loyal followers to potentially rescue Han reflect well on her.

Double EDIT: anyone ever think about how stupid Jabba must have been to publicly hang up Solo like an ornament after the Auction fiasco where Vader forcefully stole Solo from him? And another thing, making solo be wanted not just by Jabba but by the entire underworld who he has singlehandedly annoyed is just another way the criminal underworld is utterly and needlessly worfed these days. Not to mention feels like something that would have come up in the movies, rather than him exclusively mentioning a debt to Jabba.

 

Criminal Syndicates are both smart and stupid. It takes someone snart like Maul and Palpatine to take over the criminal Underworld. And as seen in clone wars most criminals are stupid

 

In hindsight, Maul building the Shadow Collective should have been something he was slowly doing behind the scenes in TCW over the course of a season. Instead of something that happens in about a week.

Really unrelated to this but I've always thought that Jabba being based out of Tatooine was always an odd decision for ROTJ.

 

There is alot to unpack here. The "Criminal" label doesn't suddenly make you a moron and we aren't even talking about the typical street level crooks here peddling drugs or purse-snatching, we are talking about the top criminal syndicates of the Galaxy headed by ostensibly feared and powerful figures. The Hutts have for millennia kept the Republic and Jedi at bay and away from their dealings, Black Sun has one of the most thorough and established intelligence networks in the Galaxy that outperforms even the Empire on occasion.

Additionally, Maul was not intelligent in his dealings with the criminal underworld: he walked into their fortress, went to their top-honchos, threatened them, then killed them when they didn't comply and put their security man in charge. Then he demanded to be shown "the goods". You would assume each of the Black Sun heads would have private accounts and vaults scattered across the Galaxy as well as various personal connections and blackmail material over various politicians that are now completely lost with their deaths, and you would also assume that said heads have many underlings personally loyal to them specifically, even criminal syndicates are built on loyalty you cannot run any large-scale organization on threats and coercion alone. You cant even run a gang of like 10 people like that.

If even the largest criminal syndicate is essentially a mook organization run by complete jobbers, then the Galactic Underworld is needlessly homogenous, sterile, and boring. Just endless Book of Boba Fett Pykes of barely motivated unnamed self-sabotaging baddies.

Anyway, too much ranting can ruin a thread, so I will end it here. Hope the people looking forward to this get what they want, but I personally probably won't watch.

 

Luke just walked in and killed Jabba (well it was Leia that choked him, but still) and blew up his barge with everyone inside it and got away. Seems like the Hutt power and influence is vastly overstated, if all it takes is one brave Jedi/Sith (Luke/Maul) to walk in and get what you want.

 

In the comics Darth Vader came in and threatened Jabba to do his bidding.

 

I would unironically love this.

This was my hope. But the comics said she wasn't, when she fought Vader at the Solo auction.

 

@AusStig You know, we could get both Xizor and (far less likely but still possible) Exar Kun in this....

 

This conversation is giving me memories of SotE when Jabba was like "Yo Xizor de wanna wanga!" and Xizor just went "Speak basic bro." and Jabba was like "....'kay." Probably with a little disappointed shoulder hunch.

 

Oh we, could..... We shall see. I hope, but I am not hopeful.

 

I really feel like Jabba should have been a minor Hutt gangster, with a reputation but on the periphery. He wasn't even in Hutt Space, and had a pretty small palace. One thing the New EU (including the animated shows) should never have done is make him the leading Hutt.

 

I'm sure I'll like this, but I don't know if I'd want it to be anything beyond a limited series. Maul is only of interest to me in his crossing blades with our main heroes. I don't really care about his criminal empire between TCW and Rebels.

I'd much rather Luxasfilm Animation use resources to help shore up the post OT era by giving us the New Republic adventures of Luke, Han and Leia(and Wedge) bridging the period from Jakku to Mando. LFL seems intent on confining that to comics for some reason, when a series in the style of TCW/Tales featuring the OT heroes would be much appreciated.

 

I’ll be real, the fact that this is likely to be a darker tone and feature less adventure of the week, “fun” smash and grab infiltration missions...that actually has me more interested than anything else they could have announced within the time of the film saga.

And it seems like it would actively challenge the storytellers at Lucasfilm Animation to be a little bit more brave with the kinds of stories they tell in the future.

 

Comics and Mandalorian/Ahsoka seems to cover the Early New Republic era. If we see OT in animation it be in prequel to TFA.

This show will probably be multi season show. 3-5 seasons that deals from post Clone Wars to before Rebels.

I think this show will be more like Clone Wars in scope and mature themes.

 

It makes perfect sense when you realize Jabba was supposed to be a local crime boss with no connection to a wider network, and he was named "Jabba the Hutt" because he was the only Hutt crime boss. But because everything after the movies has been professional fanfic, Hutt crime bosses are a dime a dozen and also they were the biggest and most influential crime network up until we had to come up with something to make Shadows of the Empire seem like it was worth a multimedia push.

That's not to say I dislike seeing a bunch of Hutts in the Clone Wars cartoon who look like stereotypical mafia guys out of a Godfather movie. I just like noting whenever branding shanks creative intent in an alleyway and leaves it for dead.

 

TBF, TCW was Lucas' baby, he fully embraced the Hutts being like that

 

Episode 1 is where the Hutts were at least stated by Panaka to be "all gangsters" and controlling a planet far outside of Republic control that mints it's own money and doesn't recognize Republic credits, with a "Gardulla the Hutt" once owning the skywalkers, and Quigon has to ultimately concede to the local power structure presumably to avoid a diplomatic scandal with the Hutts.

While I'm sure Jabba was meant to be smaller than what we ended up with, I'm fairly sure he was always meant to be well connected, with his bounty hunters harassing Han constantly enough that even the Alliance wasn't safe from his bounty hunters.

I think the title "The Hutt" was merely to evoke the name "Attila the Hun". I don't think it was ever meant to imply anything about the rarity or lack there of of Hutts, I even don't think it was necessarily meant to be his species's name, he was called Jabba the Hutt back in the third draft of ANH when he was just the pirate captain of the vessel that Han was the cabin boy of that he stole with the help of chewie and other friend Montross when he learned the kind of money Luke was offering to reach Alderaan, and the script unclear on whether Jabba was even alien or not.

Hutt could have been some lordship title, a family name, or some sort of alien language descriptor that translates to " the Cruel" or "the venerably old" or "The one who parties hard" or something. We don't know and I feel like Lucas didn't necessarily have it figured out either. Sometimes you just do creative flourishes just to imply a bigger universe full of multiple conventions and cultures.

Hutts being a species name originates in 1989's Galaxy Guide 4: Alien Species which established their hermaphrodite nature, their longevity, their intelligence, self-centeredness, emigration from Varl after a civil war, and aggressive business mindedness that is apparently not exclusive to criminal empires(yet).

 

Regarding the heritage - wonder if there will be story connections with Ahsoka season 2, like Thrawn using Maul's infrastructure on Dathomir.

At least there will be probably a clarification of Ziton Moj's post-TCW status.
Would be really great, though, if this series will use the old hint from Scum and Villainy reference book, that Xomit Transport Systems was rebranded into Xizor Transport Systems.

Maybe even to the point of Vos meeting with Amedda.

Agree, they can be the relatively "good guys" there.

That can be traced way back to SotE though, with Emperor's final speech about him utterly manipulating Xizor (even if there was some exaggeration from Palpatine's side). There was a big focus in both TCW and comics that Maul and, later, Qi'ra are just using Sidious' methods.

 

Oh yeah, I think Lucas was among the many writing the pro fanfic to his own movies, as unintuitive as it may sound. I can totally believe that "Hutt" went through the same process as "Darth" and "Sith," although even if it wasn't meant to be a species, I would lean more towards it being a group rather than a rank. But it's most probable that Lucas just liked the sound and had no idea what it meant until the development of RotJ.