‘Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord’ Episode 8 Recap – Repetition Is Creeping In

“The Creeping Fear” does a couple of things very well, which are worth mentioning out of the gate. One of them is a small handful of surreal visions that help to reiterate Maul’s backstory and interiority; the other is the satisfying Two-Boots face turn that we predicted would happen. These aren’t the best scenes that Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord has managed to produce, granted, but they are a welcome deviation from a formula that seems to be becoming very pronounced in Episode 8.

And that’s the problem I had with “The Creeping Fear”. A pitched chase sequence is very impressively animated, but with the setting having been contained to Janix for the entire runtime, it’s far from the first nicely animated chase we’ve seen. Similarly, Maul’s reiterative arc of being so angry with Palpatine that he’s basically impossible to kill or dissuade, which has been his raison d’etre since he was revived in The Clone Wars, kind of highlights that he isn’t that complex a character in the grand scheme of things. With him and Devon being kept largely separate, that compelling possibility of him potentially taking on a new apprentice has been left by the wayside somewhat.

Anyway, needless to say, Maul survives the cave-in that he caused to get away from Marrok and the Eleventh Brother. The Inquisitors survive, too, but the move at least creates a degree of separation, which allows Maul to retreat and spend most of the episode on his own, wounded and contemplative. In his addled state, he begins having visions, the first of his much more uncomplicated younger self, when he was just a cool-looking villain with a double-sided lightsaber, but then of other key moments and figures from his past, including Savage Opress, Palpatine, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Anyone who watched all of The Clone Wars will get quite a lot out of this; it’s the right kind of fan service, used to underscore Maul’s ongoing story.

But, it doesn’t change the fact that Maul’s character does, in many ways, boil down to him being extremely angry all of the time. And we already knew that. Shadow Lord Episode 8 isn’t really trying to be illuminating in a new way, simply to reinforce an established point by calling back to previous events. I don’t mind it, as a long-time ardent fan, but I’d be lying if I said it was the most compelling form of storytelling in the world.

Luckily, I enjoyed what was going on elsewhere in the episode, too. Notably, Lawson did manage to contact Rheena Sul, who seems to have secured a transport he can use to get off-world, but he’s understandably not willing to leave without Rylee, who is still in Imperial custody. The fact that the transport is leaving in a couple of hours, with or without them, functions as a useful ticking-clock device and forces Lawson to expedite his rescue mission, which means pushing Two-Boots to turn against the Empire.

Lawson is willing to hand himself over to secure Rylee’s release, which Two-Boots visibly mulls over despite it being against protocol, but since Two-Boots ultimately turns his blaster – set to stun, granted – on the Stormtroopers means that the deal is off the table anyway. He springs Rylee from captivity and escapes with him on a speeder stolen by Devon, with backup from Master Daki, leading to the episode’s big chase.

And the chase is fine! Impressive, even. But I also can’t really escape the idea that it doesn’t offer the audience anything beyond it simply being a chase. There’s no character insight, no new dynamics, nothing climactic or intriguing in any way beyond the facile pleasures of the chase itself. A later scene with Rheena is better, I think. After the gang makes their way to the meeting spot, Devon starts to get a bad feeling, and in a brief call, Lawson realises that Rheena has been compromised by the Empire. I’m unsure of precisely what tipped him off, but something did. Either way, it leads to a nice moment when Rheena turns on the Imperials and fights them off, including blowing up the ship in the background, which may or may not have killed both her and Lieutenant Blake. It’s a little unclear, but either way, it’s a nice moment.

Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord Episode 8 concludes with Vario telling Maul, who has managed to drag himself back to what remains of the Shadow Collective through sheer force of will, that he has been in touch with Crimson Dawn and that Dryden Vos – last seen, I believe, in Solo: A Star Wars Story – wants an audience. Is there space in the final two episodes for another cameo? Why not! I just hope that the show can find an appropriate conclusion to Maul’s predicament.