Star Wars One-Ups The Last Jedi’s Best Moment — Nearly a Decade Later

Star Wars loves a good echo. When it hits, it feels clever. When it misses, you can hear the gears grinding. This time, it lands.

'It is like poetry... it rhymes.'

- George Lucas

Quick setup

'Maul - Shadow Lord ' is the new Disney+ series that follows Maul (voiced by Sam Witwer) in the Imperial Era, picking up after he lost the Shadow Collective at the end of the Clone Wars. He is rebuilding his crime network piece by piece, and in Episode 4 he pulls off a hit that is both nasty and very familiar.

Remember The Last Jedi move?

In The Last Jedi, Snoke confiscates Rey 's lightsaber and sets it on the arm of his throne. He orders Kylo Ren to kill Rey. Kylo, waking up some Ben Solo instincts, reaches out with the Force, twists Rey's saber, lights it, and slices Snoke in half. What follows is that red-room throwdown with the Praetorian Guard that a lot of fans still rank among the best action beats in the series.

Now, the prequel to that idea... by about 50 years

Episode 4 of 'Maul - Shadow Lord' ('Chapter 4: Pride and Vengeance') takes place decades before The Last Jedi and shows Maul using a similar lightsaber-assassination trick, except with more scheming and more spite. The target: Marg Krim, the head of the Pyke Syndicate, on the Pyke homeworld Oba Diah. The Pykes are no pushovers, so Maul builds a plan with stacked betrayals and a Trojan Horse flourish.

• Maul sends his hostage, gangster Looti Vario (Chris Diamantopoulos), to Krim under the guise of selling Maul out.
• A hooded Maul springs an ambush, mowing down Pyke guards.
• Vario actually does turn on him midplay and drops Maul with a stun blast.
• The Pykes drag their captive to Krim, pull the hood... and it is not Maul. It is one of Maul's Dathomirian bruisers impersonating him.
• That is Maul's cue to smash in for real.
• Krim, feeling himself, has taken 'Maul's' lightsaber as a trophy and is still holding it when the real deal arrives.
• Maul reaches out with the Force and uses the saber while it is in Krim's hand, turning the blade so the Pyke boss effectively cuts himself down.

Same melody, different verse

No, the show is not claiming Ben Solo learned a party trick from Maul. This is Star Wars doing its rhyme thing, and in this case the callback works because it is character-driven: Kylo's version was a split-second heel-face turn; Maul's is a premeditated, clockwork piece of cruelty designed to humiliate a rival. Also, as a pure set piece, it is one of the coldest executions the franchise has staged since TLJ.

'Maul - Shadow Lord' Season 1 is streaming now on Disney+.