Review: Star Wars – Maul: Shadow Lord “Chapter 5: Inquisition; Chapter 6: Night of the Hunted”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
The Empire quickly takes control of the city as they search for Maul, bringing in First Brother Marrok, one of the Inquisitors, and quickly putting Brander, Devon, Daki, and Brander’s son Ryler in their crosshairs.
OUR TAKE
Following up on the impactful ending of last week’s pair of episodes, we quickly see what Brander was afraid of with the Empire getting involved. They pretty much immediately take over the investigation for Maul, and despite Two-Boots’ initial relief that his calling them in would only settle matters and get everything back to normal, it becomes clear that they’ll be hanging around long after any resolution on this matter is reached. This is also, expectedly, bad news for Devon and Daki, since while the Empire only currently knows about Maul being there, they’re also not all that big on escaped Jedi. This makes things even worse for Brander when he comes home to find the two having taken up residence in his home and talking to his son. We saw Ryler last week when Brander couldn’t stay at his Sportball game for very long, as well as some implications that Brander and his wife are separated, but now we get some further insight on that when Ryler tries contacting said mom, Drea, who is now a full fledged worker for the Empire, and given Brander’s apprehension against them, we can piece together what might have been the breaking point for their marriage.
Brander talking with Daki gives Devon and Ryler a chance to kinda sorta bond as two adolescents living under the iron grip of fascistic tyranny, though that is VERY quickly cut short when the Empire arrives and starts chasing them throughout the city, followed shortly by Marrok, one of the Inquisitors, and designated First Brother, so he’s kinda one of the top ones. The Inquisitors were a neat idea back when they were introduced in Star Wars Rebels, starting with their boss the Grand Inquisitor and then a handful more after he died before showing up in tons of other media set during the Empire years. The group was added presumably to answer what Palpatine may have done with force sensitive children after the Jedi as an organization were scattered, and also if some author wanted to throw in a lightsaber fight but didn’t want to have to use Vader all the time. Unfortunately, at least from my perspective, the Inquisitors really quickly lost their luster, mainly because so many of them ended up blurring together, in design, in personality, and sometimes in origin. If they ever got backstories or motivations at all, it was more often than not being an abandoned Jedi from the fallout of Order 66, which itself ends up feeling like the same sort of story. I guess with Marrok being in the upper ranks of that group, it could be a chance to make this interesting, but we have two more weeks of episodes in this season, so they really need to get a move on with that if they’re going to at all.
