Calling Mom At Work

Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord Chapter 5 "Inquisition" & Chapter 6 "Night of the Hunted"

Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord’s latest dual release represents the center of ten-episode season and the action accelerates accordingly. The Empire has finally arrived on Janix, pouring fascism into the city like it’s Frosted Flakes being poured into a cereal bowl. Marrok the Inquistor (who dies in the future Ahsoka series, but is chronologically introduced here, such is Star Wars!) appears alongside standard-fare sneering Imperial jerks. The hunt is on for Maul, and for all those who may have not reported him quickly enough, and for any Jedi who may also be on the planet. To no one’s surprise, our heroes are forced to run.

I had a lot of fun watching these chapters, personally. They were full of smart details. Watching Rylee Lawson, teen boy, awkwardly clean up his room because Devon Izara, fellow teen, has crossed its threshold was humanizing for both characters. Watching defiant and hard-nosed Chief Klyce enter an interrogation room… only to be essentially deleted by the ruddy Lieutenant Blake? Chilling. Watching Rylee subtly react to his father putting his hand on Rheena Sul’s shoulder? The kind of look any child of a single parent can relate to. But the moment that really stood out to me this week was Rylee’s call with his mother.

When the still-credulous Two Boots tells Rylee that his father is being interrogated by the Empire, the boy reaches out to his other parent for help. Drea Lawson, who appears via hologram, is an Imperial functionary of some sort, clearly hoping to answer her son’s call before she gets into trouble at the office.

In Andor, even the most sympathetic of the Empire’s worker-bees are shown as weak or lost in some way. They’re some mix of officious (sometimes comically so), obsessive, delusional, narrowly focused on advancement, racist, overly pious.

But that’s not Drea Lawson. She’s a caring, reassuring mother. She interprets the Empire’s actions as an attempt to keep everyone safe, and encourages Rylee and his father to comply with their orders. She promises Rylee that everything will be okay, and you can tell from her sincerity, why he would believe her.

There are perfectly nice people who support evil Empires. People who would help you dig your car out of the snow. People who volunteer at soup kitchens through their church. People who coach Little League. They might work for a company that was sued for polluting the groundwater, or at a police department that’s coordinating with ICE, or push paper for Palantir; but they’re decent people in any other context.

Not everyone who works for some questionable organization or government is planning to leak information to the press or join up with the Rebellion. I imagine most of them have either convinced themselves that their employer is misunderstood; or that some things are just too big for them to worry about; or know that there’s something untoward going on and choose to look the other way. As Upton Sinclair said: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” (This goes for parents with mouths to feed, triple.)

The suggestion of compliance is also familiar refrain here in the US. We all heard members of our communities suggest that protestors who were killed by ICE, or taken without cause, were not compliant enough, and their lack of compliance is what got them into trouble. No matter that ICE was (and is) ignoring court orders, racially profiling or using lethal force: the harm was caused a failure to obey instructions fast enough, or give up one’s rights with enough enthusiasm.

This brief glimpse into a kind heart that is comfortable in the cruel Empire made this week’s offering especially engaging for me. But I wouldn’t characterize these episodes as contemplative: they were fast-paced and dangerous too, culminating is an entertaining showdown between Maul and Marrok, two wielders of double-bladed lightsabers. (Marrok fans must have had to change their underwear!)

The lightsaber duels in Star Wars animation tend to blend together for me - they all have a similar look and pace. This was frenetic and blurry (I’ve got 50 year old eyes! I’m sorry!) and mostly served to position Maul and Devon side-by-side: the inevitable next step.

What it brought to mind for me, though, one of my favorite unsung lightsabers battles from the last few years of Star Wars. In Obi-Wan Kenobi Part V, we get to see Vader, in live action, pick apart a fierce Inquisitor. It’s a brief, beautifully choreographed fight that takes full advantage of it’s combatants both being Sith and Sith-adjacent. Reva, bent on revenge, has molded herself into the image of Vader in order to kill him. They fight very differently, which underlines their different journeys through the Dark Side and life. It’s a perfect example fighting styles supporting the story, and a character-defining defeat.

We’re rounding the corner into the second half of Maul, and I’ve been digging it more and more each week. I’m intrigued by how they’ll close out this season: will this feel like a completed arc that leads into a new story for Season 2; or are we actually just at the very beginning of a much longer tale? Basically, how far into making this season did they become aware that Season 2 was going to happen?

Because as of now, one of the best things about Maul is that most of the characters are not protected by the surrounding story (or “plot armor” as they kids say). We know Maul and Marrok do not die in this series: but what about Devon and her Master, what about Lawson and Two Boots? Their fates are uncertain, adding weight to every fall or trip or scrape. It’s one of the benefits of linear storytelling (psst, Dave Filoni): high stakes.