TV Recap / Review: Maul Hits His Lowest Point in "Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord" Episode 8 - "The Creeping Fear"

Today saw the debut of the seventh and eighth episode of Lucasfilm Animation's new Disney+ series Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord. Laughing Place was provided with early screeners of these installments, and below are my recap and review of the eighth episode, which is entitled "The Creeping Fear."

"The Creeping Fear" begins by rewinding time a few seconds from the end of the previous episode, with Maul (voiced by Sam Witwer" about to collapse the cave ceiling on himself and the two Inquisitors who are pursuing him. They repeat the last couple of line and then we see him do so, only this time at the last moment he bolts out from under the falling rubble and jumps off a nearby cliff. It's a bit of a cheat from what we saw in "Call to Oblivion" but let's roll with it. So Maul falls down the ravine, lightsaber ignited in front of him, and then in the aftermath of the collapse we see the Inquisitors emerge from the rubble as well. They board a dropship with Imperial stormtroopers and leave the area as Maul's Spybot (David W. Collins) watches from above. He reports to Rook Kast (Vanessa Marshall) that there's "no sign of Lord Maul," and Looti Vario (Chris Diamantopoulos) wants to leave the former Sith Lord behind, whether he's alive or dead.

Rook comforts the Nightbrother who lost his sibling in the fight, and then we cut to Maul, collapsed in a heap at the bottom of the chasm. He sees a reflection of his younger self in the puddle of water he lies in, and yells "I hate you!" out loud. His injured mechanical leg begins shorting out, and he attempts to climb out via a pile of boulders, but fails and falls again. Still, he walks off, determined as we cut to the Janix police headquarters, where Imperial Lieutenant Blake (Alastair Murden) hands Rylee (Charlie Bushnell) over to the Eleventh Brother for questioning in the interrogation room. Outside the building, Brander Lawson (Wagner Moura) tries calling his droid partner Two-Boots (Richard Ayoade) on his communicator again, to no avail. Instead, he receives a call from his friend Rheena Sul (Pamela Adlon), who says that she had to go dark after her casino office was invaded by the Empire, but that she has now found a transport they can use to get off-planet and it's leaving two hours from now, with or without them.

Jedi Master Daki (Dennis Haysbert) tells Lawson, "The Empire is expecting you to make a move," and Lawson replies, "Well, we wouldn't want to disappoint them." Inside police HQ a cop named officer Wade (Avery Kidd Waddell from The New Guy) tells Two-Boots that Chief Klyce is most likely dead at the Empire's hands, which surprises the droid, and he looks pensive as he watches Rylee being led down the hall after having been interrogated. Finally Two-Boots decides to answer Lawson's comm call, and Brander offers to turn himself in, in exchange for Rylee's freedom. Two-Boots responds that making such a deal would not be protocol, but you can tell he's thinking about it. Outside, Jedi Padawan Devon Izara (Gideon Adlon) tells Lawson that his plan is terrible, but Brander only replies that it's the "one shot I've got to save my son."

Lawson gives the two Jedi the coordinates to Sul's ship and makes Master Daki promise that they will get Rylee on it. Inside the HQ, Two-Boots frees Rylee and says, "I am rescuing you." Then we're back underground, where Maul has started hearing voices and seeing visions of people from his past, including the Inquisitors, a young version of his brother Savage Opress (voiced in this moment by Sam Witwer, as well), and of course Darth Sidious AKA Emperor Palpatine, who in the visions takes Maul from his home planet of Dathomir and cruelly trains him to fight with a lightsaber. Naturally there's also Obi-Wan Kenobi, who we know was responsible for cutting Maul in half at the end of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, but here Maul reserves most of his anger for Sidious after we see the Sith Lord murder Opress. "You must have your revenge," we hear an older Savage (Clancy Brown) say to Maul.

"My home, my family, my brother-- all taken from me," Maul mutters to himself. "Sidious, you did this to me!" Next we're back up in the city, where Devon sneaks into a parking garage and steals a nice-looking speeder from some particularly mean aliens who try to stop her only to be knocked unconscious off-screen. At police HQ, Two-Boots escorts Rylee down the hallway and tells the stormtroopers there that it's a "prisoner transfer," echoing a moment from the original Star Wars movie. But the troopers don't buy it, and Two-Boots is forced to stun them with his blaster. He takes Rylee outside and they meet up with Lawson, who thanks him. "How did you know it was me? I'm not wearing my boots," Two-Boots asks, but Brander says he would know his partner anywhere. Lawson is prepared to turn himself in in exchange for Rylee, but Two-Boots tells him that the deal is off as stormtroopers erupt from the doors of the building.

Master Daki appears from around the corner and defends our heroes from the troopers and suddenly Devon shows up with the speeder and mows down some of the Imperials, scooping up her friends afterward. "Need a ride?" she asks jokingly, and there's another big chase scene as they flee an AT-ST and troopers on speeder bikes. An Imperial dropship attacks the speeder, sending it careening down to a lower level, but after eliminating some more enemies, the Jedi and the Lawsons manage to get clear and continue on their way. Underground, Maul stumbles through a large sewer pipe, eventually reaching a ladder, but his leg is sparking badly and his vision is blurry. He collapses in a puddle and sees his younger self in a reflection again. "It's all right," he says. "I won't let him do this to anyone else." He gets up and moves toward the ladder.

Out in the city, the Spybot still can't find Maul, and Looti tells Rook that he's probably either captured or dead. Just then, Maul appears from out of the shadows. Then we see our heroes walking toward Sul's coordinates, and Devon apologizes to Rylee for allowing him to get captured by the Empire. He tells her about his interrogation and how the Eleventh Brother wanted information he didn't have about the Jedi. "Fear is natural," Izara responds. "We just can't allow it to control us." They arrive at the predetermined location, but in the lift on the way down Devon begins to get a bad feeling. The Jedi want to turn back, but Lawson resists. "Anywhere is better than walking into a trap," says Master Daki. Rylee suggests calling Rheena, which Brander does. She sounds off during the call but says the ship is still ready for them. "She's been compromised," Lawson says after hanging up.

Down below, Blake waits in front of the ship with Sul, and the Eleventh Brother watches as the lift continues to lower. It arrives at the ground floor, but when the doors open it's empty, and the Inquisitor finds that a hole has been cut in the lift's ceiling. Now Rheena starts to fight back against her Imperial captors, the ship behind them explodes, and our heroes get away in the ensuing chaos. Elsewhere in Janix City, Maul, Rook, and Vario hide out in the office of now-deceased crime lord Nico Deemis. Looti takes a call on his encrypted communicator, and then tells Maul that he was talking to Crimson Dawn-- apparently Dryden Vos has requested an audience. (You may recall Dryden Vos as the character played by actor Paul Bettany in 2018's Solo: A Star Wars Story.) "Things are looking up!" says Looti Vario to end the episode.

I'm still into Maul - Shadow Lord at this point, but there are a couple things bugging me about the series. One is the repetitive nature of the storytelling, which I've mentioned elsewhere-- I feel like we've seen the same chase scene through the city several times already. The other is the overreliance on the Spybot as a plot device. He seems to be everywhere on Janix all at once, collecting and reporting back info that the Shadow Collective wouldn't have access to otherwise. It feels more than a little convenient to me, but ultimately I guess it follows its own established rules, so-- like Maul's survival of the cave collapse at the beginning of this episode-- I kind of have to just go with it. Otherwise I am curious to see where things go from here, and I definitely am looking forward to seeing whether the powers that be actually managed to get Bettany to return to his Star Wars role in the final two episodes of the season, which arrive on Disney+ next week.

The first eight episodes of Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord are now available to stream, exclusively via Disney+.