TV Review: "Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord" Takes Lucasfilm Animation to the Next Level Visually

Today marks the series premiere for Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord from Lucasfilm Animation on Disney+, and Laughing Place was provided with early access to the first eight of this season's ten episodes. Below are my mostly spoiler-free thoughts on the first four-fifths of the season.

Back at Star Wars Celebration 2025 in Japan, now-Lucasfilm-President Dave Filoni (who was then "only" the company's Chief Creative Officer) celebrated the 20th anniversary of Lucasfilm Animation on stage, looking back at the legacy of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, Star Wars Resistance, and Star Wars: The Bad Batch, among other smaller-scale projects like the Tales of... anthology. He then announced the next series that would sit aside those listed above as a major animated effort from Lucasfilm: Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord, which would feature voice actor Sam Witwer reprising his role from The Clone Wars and Rebels (Ray Park, who originated the role in live-action via Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, has become something of a loose cannon lately-- in true Maul fashion-- and I can't foresee him donning that red-and-black Zabrak makeup again anytime soon).

So here we are, nearly a year later, and Maul - Shadow Lord is finally dropping on Disney+ amid a marketing buildup to Lucasfilm's latest live-action feature The Mandalorian and Grogu, which Filoni has cowritten and produced alongside director Jon Favreau. But these two projects feel different enough in tone and intent that they don't come across as conflicting or competing with each other. Instead, Maul and The Mandalorian, like so many disparate entries in the Star Wars storytelling universe, will likely complement each other, continuing Lucasfilm's recent endeavors to showcase the narrative diversity of A Galaxy Far, Far Away (this is, after all, the same galaxy that has room for both Andor: A Star Wars Story and Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures on either side of it demographic spectrum).

Fans of The Clone Wars will remember that Maul survived his ordeal on Naboo in The Phantom Menace-- having been severed at the waist by a Jedi Padawan named Obi-Wan Kenobi-- and went on to seek revenge against those who wronged him, including his former master Darth Sidious, AKA Sheev Palpatine. So Maul - Shadow Lord takes place after the seventh season of The Clone Wars, with Palpatine having seized power as the galaxy's new emperor... and roughly 15 or so years before Maul's reemergence in Rebels. There's also the character's brief appearance in 2018's Solo: A Star Wars Story in the middle of his timeline, and that thus-far-unfulfilled tease will, in all likelihood, become more important as this story goes on.

This animated series takes place on the crime-ridden planet of Janix, which has already been established in the current Star Wars: Shadow of Maul miniseries from Marvel Comics, serving as a lead-in to the events of the show. Our cast of characters includes an overworked local police detective named Brander Lawson (voiced by Academy Award nominee Wagner Moura from 2025's The Secret Agent), his overly by-the-book droid partner Two-Boots (Richard Ayoade, who also voiced the outlaw protocol droid Zero in The Mandalorian), Lawson's son Rylee (Percy Jackson and the Olympians costar Charlie Bushnell), and Jedi Master and his apprentice named Eeko-Dio Daki (24's Dennis Haysbert) and Devon Izara (Blockers star Gideon Adlon), respectively, who are on the run from the Galactic Empire in the wake of Order 66 and the subsequent Jedi Purge, as ordered by Palpatine.

Enter Maul, who has a grand plan on Janix that unfolds over the course of the season, and serving at his side are the Mandalorian warrior named Rook Kast (Vanessa Marshall from Star Wars Rebels), additional Mandalorian commandos, and members of the Dathomirian Nightbrothers clan from which Maul originally sprang. I won't spoil too much about what Maul's goals are, exactly, but rest assured they make sense within the context of this point in the larger Star Wars timeline, and they involve both the criminal underworld and the Empire itself. Unfortunately for would be bystanders, the title character's actions-- not to mention his mere presence on the planet-- draw so much attention and cause so much carnage that pretty much all the other beings in his orbit get caught up in the chaos, hurtling them on a collision course that continues to build over the course of the eight episodes that I've seen.

As I noted in my recap of the first episode, which you can find elsewhere right here at LaughingPlace.com, the first thing that stuck out to me about Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord were the series' visuals. The painted backdrops and textures are drop-dead gorgeous, and I found myself marveling at the look of the show so often that I occasionally missed dialogue or story beats. That's not a huge deal, as it's easy enough to rewind and rewatch, but I will say that the aesthetics of the series are absolutely its strongest aspect, which is not to say that the rest is bad-- the energy and drive of the storyline just never quite live up to the undeniably beautiful images I'm seeing on the screen.

And when I say storyline, I do mean it in the singular. Unlike any of the other Star Wars animated series I listed in my first paragraph, Maul - Shadow Lord is so committed to its serialization that it doesn't allow room for the possibility of one-off adventures or standalone narratives. Obviously that's an intentional choice on the part of Filoni as creator and his team of writers, but as I binged these first eight installments I did find myself wishing that these characters could find a moment to breathe or have, like, a side quest or two on occasion. There's also a certain repetitiveness to the proceedings of this season that started to gnaw at me every once in a while: characters get separated and find their ways back together almost arbitrarily, they get arrested and interrogated and then are released with no larger impact, they go on the run and get chased only to lose their pursuers time and again. A good amount of it feels like wheel-spinning to fill time before the finale, which I have yet to see, though overall I would say the season sometimes comes across as too little story spread out over too much time. It starts out very strong and I suspect it will end the same way, but seeing as how the middle sags a bit, perhaps this could have been six episodes in length instead of ten?

Still, on the whole I believe that Maul - Shadow Lord's strengths definitely override its weaknesses, and beyond the visuals I would list the voice cast as one of its biggest assets. Witwer alone has proven himself to be a commanding, compelling presence in the Star Wars pantheon, and he's joined here by some undeniable powerhouses, both veterans in the industry and those newer to the voice-acting game. The action scenes are well-choreographed as well, and fans of Maul's lightsaber-twirling combat style will be more than satiated by what they find here. So ultimately I'll say viewers should check out this series primarily for its jaw-dropping look, then prepare to enjoy the characters and performances and lightsaber duels, but maybe brace yourself for a few batches of frustratingly circular storytelling. Again, I'm only basing that on the first 80% of the season-- the finale and its preceding, penultimate episode may very well completely knock it out of the park and change my perspective on what I saw as shortcomings. For now, I predict that anyone who's been looking forward to this show since it was announced will be more than satisfied with the finished product.

The first two episodes of Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord are now streaming exclusively via Disney+.