Matthew
Welcome to this episode of the Star Wars Generations Podcast. Friends, we’re only a few weeks away from Maul: Shadow Lord coming to us, and today we’re going to start off our kind of primer coverage talking about Maul in Legends canon. There’s been a lot of great stuff about him in more recent books and we’re going to get you up to speed on that, as well as everything that happens to him in the Clone Wars and Rebels TV shows. Today we’re going to be talking about the Legends books that were written about him, and we’re doing it with probably the foremost Legends canon expert that I know. Jonah Kellman — he’s a friend of mine, a colleague from the Judge World. He is the program director of the Judge Program for Star Wars Unlimited, the Star Wars TCG, which I’m a part of, so I get to work with him a lot through that. But more than anything, I have known him as a Legends expert. He is the host of the currently-on-hiatus — but if you poke him enough, maybe we’ll get it back going — podcast. Just takes a little bit more free time.
The Archives Are Incomplete, in which he has been going through and reading a whole bunch of the Legends canon books. So I knew he was the person I wanted to get onto this episode. Jonah, how are we doing today?
Jonah
I’m doing fantastic, Matthew. How are you?
Matthew
I’m good. I’m good. And as those watching the video have already seen, when I asked you about these books, you have them, because I believe you own every single book that was published during the Legends era, correct?
Jonah
So I have all of the Legends canon novels, and I think at this point like 95-ish percent of the YA books, and then like 70 or 80 percent of the old Marvel and Dark Horse graphic novels pre-Disney. So most of them.
Matthew
And just for those who aren’t clear, the Legends canon is all of the books that were published. Some of them came out right around the time of the original trilogy movies — novelizations and an additional novel — and then you had more books being published all throughout the time of the prequel trilogy and the Clone Wars show and things like that, right up to the point where George Lucas sold the franchise to Disney, at which point Disney then decided that that Legends material was great, but they were going to start again.
Jonah
Oh, I just — there’s a bug in my head. I think you said up to when it was sold to Disney, and this is a tangent. Hi folks, if you don’t know me, tangents are one of my many specialties. The graphic novels at Dark Horse that were in warehouses and had not yet been distributed when Disney got the property — they were ordered to be destroyed. And I believe a big chunk of the books that had been printed and published and sent to distributors but not yet sold to retailers were Darth Maul stories. Interesting.
And I think it was at the climax of that arc, and they were like, well, it’s a new canon now and all of this is no longer valid — please destroy it. A handful of them are out in the wild, but when I was looking for them, I think they were like a grand each. And that was like five years ago before the collectibles market really took off. Pretty sure it was actually Darth Maul books.
Matthew
Well, if you want to start a GoFundMe, we can try and raise the money for you to purchase some of those. But for now, I think there’s still enough to talk about. And for anyone who’s wondering — if this is the old canon and it’s not what the new shows are based on, why are we talking about it?
You can watch the video and see Jonah getting very upset at that comment. One thing I think that we’ve seen, and has actually been directly acknowledged by some of the creators of some of the more recent shows, is that more and more, some of the Star Wars properties — including both novels, but especially some of the TV shows — have been drawing quite a lot of elements from the Legends canon. Acolyte, I think, is a show that did this quite a lot. Some other things as well, especially some of the novels. The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, which is sort of a history book written in-universe, was just wonderful and draws a lot on Legends canon. So I think talking about what we’ve learned about the character in Legends is a great way of better understanding this character and what we’re going to see from him in this new show coming out. Because clearly the people creating Star Wars are aware of Legends. They’re reading Legends. It’s part of the discussion and it’s influencing and inspiring them in many ways.
Jonah
Yeah. One of the ways that I think about Legends — it’s inverse. Legends is the true canon; Disney canon is the no-longer-canon stuff, at least in my little head. But whatever brings you joy brings you joy. The way I’ve come to think about Legends and all these other stories is that that’s what they are: they’re stories. And stories can be inaccurate or accurate.
One of the ways I talk about Legends canon is the discovery of the Death Star plans pre-A New Hope. In the Legends canon, I can name five suicide missions to get the Death Star plans off the top of my head. I think there are a dozen, and either that means they’re all true — it happened sequentially — or one of them is true, maybe two. But everybody else was like, there’s this huge mythical moment and I knew a guy who said he was a part of it. Let me tell you the story of Senator Garm Bel Iblis meeting Talon Karrde and how they outwitted Thrawn. And you’re like, okay, those are some big names you’re throwing around there, buddy — and first of all, very good story. Also doesn’t directly contradict other things.
But similarly, these books — like Lockdown, let me just have my books with me — this doesn’t contradict anything said anywhere else, mostly. I mean, if they said he was only trained on one planet it might contradict it, but it’s a two-week period on a space station where everybody else dies. So it’s not quite that, but it doesn’t have a lasting impact on the external canon. And so this can be true alongside the rest of the Disney canon. It’s just what your heart wants.
Matthew
Yeah, I hear that. And I think that’s a really good way of thinking about it, because a lot of the stories we get aren’t the complete story. There are a lot of holes to fill in, and we don’t always get reliable narrators. The Clone Wars TV show, I think, for example, is completely built on the idea that it’s being told to you by Admiral Yularen, who later becomes part of the Empire — and he’s definitely someone who is not the most reliable narrator. Clone Wars the TV show can be seen as a lot of Republic propaganda.
The other way that I think about it, in terms of the meta view outside of the story itself, is kind of like how in Marvel there’s a comic book arc called Civil War, and then people wrote a movie — Captain America: Civil War — that was clearly deeply inspired by it but was not trying to be canonical with that comic book. It was a different story. And since then, there have been other comic books that are canonical to the MCU itself, as distinct from the Marvel comic book. And I think many of these Legends stories are a similar thing.
We’re getting more and more people saying, oh yeah, let me go reread that Legends canon. And you mentioned, for example, the character of Thrawn. He has of course now shown up in Disney canon in both books and TV shows. He was really the star antagonist of — not technically the first of the Legends books, but what are often thought of as the first of the Legends books and the first to really take off — the Heir to the Empire series.
Similarly, Darth Plagueis, a character who is mentioned briefly in Revenge of the Sith as the legend of Darth Plagueis the Wise as though it happened quite some time ago — there is a novel that Jonah is currently holding up, because I have to keep reminding him this is mostly radio, but hey YouTube, check it out. And in that novel, Darth Plagueis is Sidious’s direct mentor and Sith master. And of course in the show Acolyte, the character of Darth Plagueis shows up there again in a way I think very inspired by that novel.
So that kind of sets the overall tone. Let’s talk about Darth Maul in Legends canon. And first, of course, one of the defining things we’ll be talking about a lot — because it’s a thing that raises a lot of questions — is that in the first movie of the prequels, The Phantom Menace, to all intents and purposes, Obi-Wan Kenobi kills Darth Maul.
Jonah
But did you see a body?
Matthew
I saw two parts of a body.
Jonah
And I saw our boy fall down a shaft — and yet somehow.
Matthew
True. Exactly. Somehow. And in next week’s episode, we’re going to talk about how it was that Maul — for people who haven’t seen some of that material and are wondering, like, I’m excited for this Maul show but I don’t get it, wasn’t Maul killed by Obi-Wan? — we’re going to talk about all that. The Legends books about Maul are all set in the time either before or during The Phantom Menace. And so all of this is within the story that ends at the Battle of Naboo, where he defeats Qui-Gon Jinn and kills Qui-Gon Jinn and is then defeated by Obi-Wan. So talk to me about the overall picture you get of Maul in these books.
Jonah
See, I knew you were just going to start me off with a big question. I wasn’t expecting such a broad question to begin.
But his character is one of ambition and hunger. He, like all the Sith or Sith acolytes, wants power. But compared to most Sith, I actually find him relatively subservient. There is a lot of him just being like, “I will do that, Master,” whereas the other Sith we see — particularly those interacting with Palpatine — give Palpatine a lot more pushback. Maul is just like, you got it, boss, whatever you want me to do, I will go do it.
He very much feels like an attack dog. And that’s referenced in one of these books I have on hand — by the way, spoilers abound in case you were not expecting that, spoilers abound. But I think Darth Plagueis and Palpatine talk about Darth Maul. Now, how could Darth Plagueis, Darth Sidious, and Darth Maul coexist with the Rule of Two? Plagueis learns about Palpatine’s apprentice Maul and is like, hey, what’s up with that? Do you plan on killing me anytime soon? Palpatine’s answer is, of course not, I would never. Maul certainly does not deserve the title of Darth. He is not a true Sith. However, if we need somebody who is powerful, can go murder a gang on his own, and is somebody we can trust absolutely — yeah, it would be my apprentice. And sure, I’ll give him the title of Darth to make him wag his tail and not bite me for a couple more days. But he’s not a real Sith.
Which is — oh, that’s fast. I just put this together. But when they’re talking about how there are two in The Phantom Menace, after Maul has been defeated, there are in fact two: Plagueis and Sidious. They just think they’ve gotten it down to one. Then of course Palpatine takes care of Plagueis, but that’s not — anyway. Maul here is very subservient, very much an attack dog.
Matthew
The subservient part feels really relevant to this idea of whether or not they’re going to be able to do the same thing — Darth Plagueis being one of the best examples of this, but also the Darth Bane books and some others. Part of the idea of there can only be two is that — and you’ll correct my exact wording — there is one to hold the power and one to crave it. And part of the idea is that the apprentice wants to learn from the master, but the entire idea is that one day the apprentice will be strong enough to take down the master. They should always, on some level, be kind of waiting and watching for when the master is going to turn their back so they can stab them in it.
And that’s not Darth Maul at all. In Darth Plagueis and in some of the other books, we hear about Sidious already starting to think about when he can take Plagueis down, when Plagueis is going to be weak. We see that with Darth Zannah and Darth Bane early on. Maul seems like — I don’t think we see anything from him in these books or certainly in The Phantom Menace that tells me he is actually thinking that one day he might take down Sidious.
Jonah
Yeah, there’s not a lot of long-term planning in Maul. He does have some cunning in him — it’s not just pure aggression. In Lockdown, the general plot is that Darth Maul gets sent to a prison space station. He needs to get a MacGuffin for Palpatine, needs to figure out where it is, all while being a prisoner in a gladiatorial prison that makes no sense — I have questions, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about today. That’s really the entire plot. Then the space station blows up and it has no impact on the larger plot of Star Wars at all, other than Palpatine gets his MacGuffin.
And in that, one of the things Maul does is get two gangs to turn on their gang leaders and follow him. So there are traits of him being a commander and having this flair for machination, but he’s not a charismatic manipulator like Palpatine. He’s a little bit more brute force even in his manipulation of people.
Matthew
No, and I think that’s a good example. If you think about it in Dungeons and Dragons terms, you can use either a Persuasion roll or an Intimidation roll. Often either one will suffice, depending on which one you’re better at. Maul has a maxed-out Intimidation. Persuasion, not so much.
Jonah
And most of the time it’s roll Intimidation with Strength, not roll Intimidation with Charisma.
Matthew
Yeah, exactly. So let me just talk with a full overview. There’s Darth Plagueis, which we’ve discussed a bunch, which is really — God, it’s so good — it’s basically the whole arc of Sidious up to The Phantom Menace, including Plagueis before he finds Sidious, so it gives a lot of great background into the dark side and how all that works. It also starts to show the fall of Count Dooku in ways that I really love, that show how the Jedi changed in ways he didn’t agree with. So that’s probably one of the best of the books.
There’s Lockdown, which we just mentioned. There’s Saboteur, which is a short story really — funny enough, I read it three days ago and the details are almost completely escaping me. But it’s a similar thing where basically there are two different groups fighting over mining rights on a fairly random planet. The point is that what Sidious wants — and what Maul helps make happen — is for the two of them to fight each other enough that they have to merge, because neither one is strong enough to stand on its own, and then they have to turn to the Trade Federation.
Jonah
Yeah, it ties into the novel The Cestus Deception, which is a story about Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon discovering the machinations of the Trade Federation before Naboo. But if you haven’t read that, you’re just like, yep, this is a planet that exists. Sure. If you want to read a whole other novel that tells you why this planet is important — go ahead.
Matthew
Yeah. And then there’s the one I was just mentioning, Shadow Hunter — he’s referred to as an assassin frequently, but the title is Shadow Hunter. This is set very close to the events of The Phantom Menace. In it, one of the Neimoidians who’s working with Sidious decides to go on the run and is planning to basically be a snitch — to tell the Jedi or the Republic about the plans for the Trade Federation to invade Naboo and that Darth Sidious is behind it. The story is about Darth Maul being sent to hunt him down, and a Padawan kind of getting in his way.
There are a number of times in these books where you hear someone in the movie say “this has never happened,” and then there’s a whole bunch of instances in the books where it has very nearly happened. And in this regard, what I mean is that in The Phantom Menace, Darth Maul reveals himself as a Sith. There are a number of people who seem to see him doing very Sith-like things in this book, as well as in some others.
Jonah
How many of them survive?
Matthew
Okay, you’re right. No.
Jonah
One of my favorite things in that book is that one of the people who has critical information almost gets away from Maul, and he’s like, I am dying, I am bleeding out, but I have found somebody I think I can trust. This is information about the imminent invasion of Naboo. I happen to be on a space station with the Senator of Naboo. Let me hand this critical information to Senator Palpatine. I’m sure he’ll take good care of it.
And as we mentioned, this is a full novel. It is replicated in the Darth Plagueis novel over the course of a page and a half. Palpatine finds out about the problem, sends Maul to get it, finds out that Maul has mostly done it, and then finds out that Maul in fact did not succeed in getting the data back and stopping everyone because the guy did hand it to somebody in a position of power. Luckily for the Sith, it all worked out. But oh boy.
Matthew
And it puts another interesting twist onto what Maul is doing in The Phantom Menace, because in the Darth Plagueis book, that mission is specifically set up as: this is your opportunity to show me that you’re still worthy. And to me, again, these are interesting novels. I think if you want to read them, you definitely should. But what’s mostly important to me is what are we learning about Maul and his relation to the Sith and his relation to Darth Sidious? Because as we’re going to talk about next week, by the time this show exists, Maul has re-found himself. It’s not called Darth Maul anymore — it is Maul: Shadow Lord. He is rebuilding his life outside of the Sith. He carries a grudge against the Sith. Part of that is something that happens in Clone Wars, but a lot of it, I think, is how much he feels betrayed, how much he feels like he was used, and that he was never truly valued. And I think that’s what these books really dive into.
Jonah
He played with the Sith and didn’t expect to get used and betrayed. That’s what you’re signing up for. I mean, he was basically groomed.
Matthew
Yeah, he was taken as a toddler and raised in a cult. I don’t think we can expect him to have any outside understanding of the idea that maybe this person who has been the only authority figure or parental figure in your life doesn’t have your best interests at heart.
Well, certainly one thing we see in those books is that it is not a loving relationship — it is an incredibly abusive relationship, in the kind of way that again makes cult-like behavior very likely. Sidious tortures Maul on a number of occasions. And granted, to some extent that is just Sith training. But it does seem very much like Sidious is trying to break this guy of any will — doing what today we might call gaslighting in extreme ways — like Maul has become the broken dog whose very thought of rebelling is just never going to occur to him.
Jonah
The vicious, broken attack dog — that is exactly who Maul is lining up to be in The Phantom Menace. Something I find interesting, though, is that of course when Maul returns, he lives in the underworld and the outer rim, out of the major sight lines of the galaxy — because the Sith don’t like him, the Jedi don’t like him, and that means 99% of the galaxy doesn’t like him. But the stories we have about him from Shadow Hunter, from Lockdown, and even from the short story Restraint — which is a strange title to give your Sith warrior — he has links in all of those to various underworld groups. He has connections to the Black Sun, to the Hutts, to a couple of other gangs, to Death Watch. So it’s not super surprising that when he comes back, he’s like, okay, the world I was given was acting as an enforcer for the Sith, particularly in underworld environments. Seeing him return there and say, this is where I can find my people — this place of other broken people who are ostracized by the galaxy — it comes together in a way that really makes a lot of sense, if you accept that he somehow returned. Which I do, because everybody somehow returns in Star Wars.
Matthew
Yes, it’s like comic books — unless you literally see the head removed from the body, death is pretty flexible.
Jonah
If you don’t see the body, they’re alive. If you do see the body, it’s 50-50.
Matthew
Yeah, and his body is 50-50, never mind.
Jonah
That’s the best thing about the little Lego minifigure Darth Maul, because you could reenact that scene. Other scenes are really hard to reenact — like popping an arm out of a Lego minifigure is really painful to do as a kid. Taking the legs off and cutting Darth Maul in half? Very easy to do.
Matthew
For those concerned about Jonah’s childhood, he’s in therapy. Do not worry. Let me read a passage actually from Shadow Hunter that I think is a really great illustration of what we’re talking about.
“It was impossible even to conceive of a time when he had not been enthralled to Darth Sidious. He knew that he had come originally from a world called Eridonia” — that later changed to Dathomir, but same idea — “but knowing that was like knowing that the atoms composing his body had originally been born in the primordial galactic furnaces that had forged the stars. The knowledge was interesting in a remote academic way, but no more than that. He had no interest whatsoever in learning any more about his past or his homeworld. As far as he was concerned, his life began with Lord Sidious. If his master ordained an end to his life, Maul would accept that judgment with no argument.”
Jonah
Yeah. I think the phrase is: he’s cooked. It’s interesting to see, talking about how he has blinders on and doesn’t know what’s happening, that there’s actually a really interesting parallel in his killer, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Because a lot of the other Jedi we follow — Anakin and Ahsoka, namely — they make their own judgments. But Obi-Wan toes the company line. He’s just like, look, if the Jedi Order tells me to do something, they’re telling me to do it for the right reasons. And in a very similar place, Maul is: if Palpatine tells me to do something, I say, how high?
Matthew
And while Obi-Wan grew up in what I think you could describe as a much more benevolent institution — and maybe less of a cult specifically — he has no memory of his life or his family before being with the Jedi. He was literally raised by the Jedi. It’s all he knows.
So yeah, I think it’s a very important parallel. And as we’ll be discussing next week, there are a lot of ways in which their two stories intertwine — and in which Maul really fixates on Obi-Wan as a fundamental figure in his life and keeps going back to him in a number of ways.
Jonah
If somebody cut you in half, would you fixate on them?
Matthew
I mean, the F-train took out my leg, but I have no problem riding it today.
Jonah
I think that’s different from a person being plastered on propaganda posters as the hero of the Republic.
Matthew
That’s fair. That’s also fair. Yeah. I’m not blaming him for being obsessed with Obi-Wan. He’s got the sarcasm, the flowing locks — he’s pretty compelling. But it is definitely a thing.
So let’s talk about what Maul knows about the Sith, because as you said, he doesn’t seem to know what his purpose is supposed to be under the Rule of Two. Is your understanding that Sidious is basically teaching him only what Sidious wants him to know about the Sith?
Jonah
Oh yeah, not by any means the full picture. 100%. The picture of the Sith that I think Palpatine is giving Maul is essentially what a lot of people think of the Sith if they’ve just watched the movies, which is: bad guys with red swords who kill people. That’s what Palpatine sells Maul.
It’s not, hey, so this is a thing we’ve been working on for a few centuries now, and our real endgame is to take over the galaxy through political and financial machinations — not conquer the galaxy through force of arms, which is your specialty. You, of course, are going to be very helpful in your bull-in-a-china-shop way when we are fully working in a china shop. Like, yes. Maul thinks the job is to break all the china. Sidious knows the job is to get hired to clean up all the china because Maul broke it all.
Matthew
Right.
Jonah
And to be fair, all of the jobs he’s given are: break stuff, steal things, cause problems. And he’s very good at that. He does get a couple of sub-goals like suborn this individual or get this person to do something against their will. But as we mentioned earlier, he relies on intimidation checks and just brazens his way through things rather than more subtle arts.
Matthew
He is not the person who is ever going to be part of the Republic Senate machinations. And I’ve always thought that the choice of the next person Palpatine chooses — Count Dooku — is really interesting because he is so much the exact opposite. Count Dooku is a political figure whose primary way of assisting the Sith plan is helping to foment the civil war, the Clone Wars, and doing all of those things. No one knows Darth Maul exists except during The Phantom Menace, and they all think he’s gone again. Everybody knows who Count Dooku is. He’s a very public figure. He works mostly above the board. Talk about how Dooku really represents a very different direction in what Palpatine is doing. I mean, Dooku isn’t brainwashed —
Jonah
Well, he is, because he was raised a Jedi. But he’s somebody who looked past his blinders and stepped free and was like, what the Jedi are doing is morally incorrect. And while I don’t believe in what the Sith are doing — like the Sith code isn’t true — the ends do justify the means, and freeing the galaxy from the tyranny of the Republic and the Jedi is a thing worth doing. There are arguments for that, but his ways of going about it are not correct, and resulting in the Empire — not a great thing. I don’t support what Dooku brought about for the galaxy.
But even the combat approach between Maul and Dooku is very particular. Maul, of course, uses his signature double-bladed lightsaber, which is the coolest thing ever the first time you see it. It’s so cool. But if we go back to the Darth Bane books set several thousand years earlier, Bane is talking with his master — I want to say Kas’im — about using a double-bladed lightsaber. The reason Kas’im uses it — or whoever Maul’s lightsaber instructor is — is that people don’t know how to fight against it. Even though it limits your ability to attack because you have another saber pointed at you if you just thrust forward, your opponents don’t know how to defend against it. So it confuses them and gives you opportunities to take advantage of their way of thinking.
Matthew
Yeah, it’s an intimidation tactic.
Jonah
It’s intimidation, but also strategic because you haven’t trained against it. But the reason Darth Maul uses a double-bladed lightsaber is not that. It’s so that he has two swords and can hit twice as much.
And the next person to take his role as Palpatine’s apprentice, Dooku, also has a slightly different lightsaber. His hilt is curved, which does something similar to what the double-bladed lightsaber does for Kas’im — it gives slightly different angles of attack. He’s just a few degrees off, and those few degrees can matter. Dooku is a very precise duelist. He very much represents the idea that in a fight, he would try to win in a single stroke. He will wait, then he will strike, then he will win. Whereas Maul will just jump in as soon as he realizes you’re there, ignite both blades, and see if he can overwhelm you.
Matthew
I mean, just the word: duelist. Maul is an assassin. He wants to attack from the shadows. He wants his prey to never notice him. Dooku wants to have a duel. He says that to both Anakin, Obi-Wan, and also to Yoda — shall we fight in the way of the lightsaber masters, or something to that effect. He likes honorable combat and winning at the ancient art of saber dueling.
I think even just their Darth titles are very significant. Darth Maul — you can be mauled in two ways. It can be a bear attack, an animal mauls you, or you can think of a maul as a huge hammer. Neither of these are finesse attacks.
Jonah
The third option is a shopping center.
Matthew
Yes, but that’s not M-A-U-L. Although here in Minnesota, home of the largest shopping center in the world — Mall of America, yes. But both meanings are brute force physical attacks. Tyrannus — a tyrant is a ruler. A tyrant doesn’t fight you one on one. The whole point of a tyrant is that they have secret police, layers and layers between the people being oppressed and the tyrant. The tyrant never gets their hands dirty dealing with people on the street. They have people for that. And I think just those two names are very significant of the very different roles they’re supposed to play.
Jonah
Yeah. You can also see it in the jobs they’re sent to handle. Dooku gets sent to convince a planet’s senator to betray their previous plans, to betray an alliance, to allocate resources to the Separatist cause. And Maul is sent to kill gangsters.
Matthew
Right. The only time Maul is sent to convince someone is because it involves the sentence “or else.”
So, one other thing I wanted to ask about before wrapping up — I think I best phrase this way: in Darth Plagueis especially, you always have the sense that Sidious is very obedient to Plagueis and is following Plagueis’s orders, but always thinking about the day when he can take control. And at the end of the book — again, forgive the spoilers — he basically reveals how he has never really respected Plagueis and has been undermining him from the beginning. Every time Sidious says something to Plagueis, you’re always wondering how honest he’s been. Certainly there are times where Sidious talks about one day having an apprentice who can help him take over from Plagueis.
So going all the way back: we talked about how Sidious says to Plagueis, oh, don’t worry about Maul, he’s not going to be my true apprentice, he’s just an assassin. I remember when I first read that book thinking, no, Sidious is actually thinking that Maul might help him take over from Plagueis and he’s just telling Plagueis what he wants to hear. But by the end of the book, and also looking at a lot of these other works, it does feel to me like Sidious never thought Maul could be a true Sith apprentice. Do you think that’s accurate?
Jonah
Yeah, I think that’s very accurate. I mean, I think Palpatine doesn’t think of anyone as truly his apprentice until he reveals himself as Sidious. One of the things I noted in Shadow Hunter is that Maul, as I mentioned earlier, essentially hands Palpatine his own salvation. And it reminded me of a piece of advice — not directed towards me, but general advice: only break one law at a time. If you have a body in your trunk, don’t also break the speed limit. If you’re a Sith Lord bent on galactic domination and annihilation of the Jedi, don’t also commit petty graft and bribery or have any hint of corruption in your day job as a senator.
So what Palpatine needs when he is a senator is somebody who can just be dirty. He needs to be pristine, except for his connection to whoever his lackey is. And his lackey needs to be as dirty as they come. So he gets this Force-sensitive kid from Dathomir and just warps him into a weapon and is like, great, now I can send you off to do things. You think you have a holy destiny, that you are going to be part of something great — and that means you’ll do anything I need you to. And I do need you to do a lot of things that a lot of people would say no to very quickly, even if they’d been brought up in the Sith way. Like I think Zannah under Bane would have said no to Palpatine a lot more. And Vader does push back to Palpatine from time to time — just like, hey, do we actually have to do this? Can you at least give me the reasoning? Whereas Maul is just like, yeah, you say they’ve got to die — question is, slow or fast?
Matthew
Right. Yeah, we literally see Vader talk to Luke about, together we can overthrow the Emperor. And of course he does quite literally at the very end.
Jonah
But yeah, he’s treated like a dog. He’s treated like he doesn’t have the possibility of overthrowing Palpatine. I’m confident that the version of the Sith that Palpatine teaches to Maul is: one day when I say you’re ready, I’ll give you a test, and when you complete that test you’ll become a Sith Master and then I’ll die. And Maul is like, yeah, that math checks out. Whereas anybody who’s spoken to Palpatine — or not Palpatine, but to Sidious — for about ten seconds is like, so that math doesn’t check out at all. He’s just going to use you, betray you, and throw you away.
Matthew
Yeah, no, it’s definitely true. And of course later we learn that Sidious himself is very confident about breaking that cycle — Sidious doesn’t want the Rule of Two to continue. He wants eternal life and not to be overthrown by an apprentice someday.
But that’s another story. So I think what we’re getting from this is that by the time this new show begins, all of that is broken. Not only is Maul no longer part of the Sith, but he has been quite literally kicked to the curb — we’ll talk about this a lot more next week — but there’s a point in Clone Wars where he goes to Sidious with his brother, whom he’s also trained to use the dark side, and basically tries to rejoin Sidious. And Sidious is like, no, you were never anything. You were just a dog. And there’s that sense that the most devoted followers can often feel the strongest betrayal. And I think that’s a lot of what’s going to be happening with Maul by the time we get to this new show.
As a wrap-up question — although it’s going to take us down some tangents, I’m not sure — is there any last thing from these books that you think is important for people to know as we get ready to watch the new show?
Jonah
I think I mentioned this previously, but I think the most important thing is to recognize in Maul — I have a very Unlimited-brained way of saying this, but: think of the aspects of him beyond aggression. Think about his ability to command and his cunning. Those are the words that are in my head.
Matthew
These are all references to the Star Wars Unlimited card game, for anyone wondering what the hell he’s talking about.
Jonah
I could evaluate cards by myself. It’s fine. But his aggression is the prominent characteristic in The Phantom Menace — his intimidation, his fear factor. In Clone Wars, it’s a mix of that aggression and also a recklessness, I would say.
But in Shadow Hunter, we do see a very analytical side of him. He’s able to hack Coruscant’s security network to figure out where the Jedi and the Smuggler are going so he can cut them off rather than just chasing them all over the city. He’s like, well, the route they’re taking, they’re going to have to go through this choke point eventually. Let me just take a speeder over there and sit in the choke point rather than chase them down. He’s not just a brute when he’s in his element. He is somebody who can think and can connive. However, his element isn’t the Senate rotunda.
His element is the undercity of Coruscant or the outer rim — working with Death Watch, with Black Sun, with the Hutts. Those are his people, and he knows how to manipulate those people because he knows what motivates them — which motivates him, I think, in a way — which is the same thing that motivates most Sith: freedom and the ability to do what they want. I think what he wants has changed over time. It’s changed dramatically.
Matthew
I think a lot of the new show will be about him figuring out what he wants and seeing where that goes. That’s a really good point, because I think the way we’ve been talking about him, it’s easy to take him for a dummy. He very much is not. I think due to the way he’s been raised and groomed — or brainwashed, however you’d describe it — he has very limited fields of thought and is very out of his element in some areas. But in those areas where he operates, he’s very cunning and very intelligent. I think that word “hunter” is very appropriate, because you think about animals that are very good at hunting and stalking prey — there’s a real intelligence there in being able to predict your prey’s movements and anticipate them and be there waiting for them instead of just blindly chasing them.
Jonah
Yeah. Have you seen Arcane, the League of Legends show?
Matthew
I have.
Jonah
Maul really reminds me of Sevika — Silco’s right-hand woman with the artificial arm, which is the coolest thing in the world. She then takes over the underworld. She’s not the conifer — she could never replace Silco, much like Maul could absolutely never step up in that way. You know how Senator Jar Jar was jarring for some people? Can you imagine if Maul was like, well, Palpatine got hit in a speeder accident — guess I’m going to have to step into his shoes. Supreme Chancellor Maul? Like, buddy — people would figure it out at the first press conference.
Matthew
Well, and the number of reporters who then get decapitated with cauterized neck wounds would be a pretty big clue.
Jonah
Yeah, he would not last long in that arena. And similarly, like Sevika — when she’s just like, hey, my job is to intimidate these Camberans into following me and taking over the city — oh yeah, I can do that. I can be in charge, I can lead. I just was never given the opportunity because the only leadership styles I saw were styles that do not match with any of my strengths.
Matthew
Now, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for being a part of this. As I said to listeners — send us questions. What else do you want to know about Maul and his role in the Legends books? We’re going to be talking soon about Clone Wars and the movie Solo, because both of those are kind of part of this conversation, and the show The Bad Batch. Let us know what you think.
Jonah, can people still find The Archives Are Incomplete?
Jonah
Yeah, The Archives Are Incomplete is still up online. I still get spam email being like, hey, we can help promote your podcast — that’s been on hiatus for three years. As soon as I have a minute of free time, I’m getting back to it. I just have a couple hundred books I want to read before I get back into just reading Star Wars, and a couple thousand minis I need to paint before my creative energies on Star Wars are spent. But once those are done — so in a decade or so — I’ll definitely be back. I want to get back to it sooner rather than later. But it still exists. And of course, if you’re interested in Star Wars Unlimited — hi, I like that game.
Matthew
Yeah, it’s a great game. It’s a great judge program. If you want to be a part of it, always contact Jonah — we’ll put that in the show notes. And of course, always contact me. If you go to TheEthicalPanda.com you can find information about this podcast and the Superhero Ethics podcast, where we just put up an episode. I think it’ll be out by the time this episode comes out, or if not, it’ll be coming out shortly afterwards. It’s the first of a series that we’re going to do — kind of interspersed among other things — on Superhero Ethics called What Made You Rebel Scum? A conversation about what media inspired various people to look at the world with some dissatisfaction and want to make it a little bit better.
So Jonah, thank you so much. On behalf of Jonah and myself, to the fans and listeners — thank you all so much. We have spoken.
