Darth Maul Just Took Over the Galaxy’s Biggest Criminal Empire

The Star Wars franchise continues with Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord, the latest animated series from Lucasfilm CCO, Dave Filoni (Clone Wars, Rebels, The Bad Batch), featuring the iconic dark side villain, Darth Maul (Sam Witwer). The series is set at a pivotal point in Maul’s life: having narrowly escaped Order 66, Maul is operating in the shadows of the Imperial Era, trying to rebuild the “Shadow Collective,” his underworld empire, which was fractured when the Republic defeated and arrested Maul.

In Shadow Lord Episodes 3 and 4, Maul sets about accomplishing two goals at once: further consolidating his criminal syndicate while trying to turn a young Jedi to the dark side and recruit her as his apprentice. Maul isn’t quite successful at the latter (yet), but when it comes to the former, he achieves a major victory and locks a major piece of his criminal comeback into place.

The Pyke Syndicate Falls… Before Maul

In Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord “Chapter 4: Pride and Vengeance”, Maul uses the diminutive gangster he’s kept alive, Looti Vario (Chris Diamantopoulos), as a Trojan Horse against the Pyke Syndicate. Vario goes to the stronghold of Pyke leader Marg Krim (Stephen Stanton), claiming to be snitching on Maul. Instead, Vario pulls the double-cross of having “Maul” ambush the Pykes and start cutting them down, until Vario hits him with a stun ray. The Pykes bring the crime lord to Krim, who soon realizes that the hooded Dathomirian they captured is not in fact Maul. The real Maul then enters the room and uses Force grab to retrieve his lightsaber from Krim’s side, and uses the floating sword to slash the Pyke crime boss right across his belly, killing him. Maul watches the remaining Pykes bend the knee, promoting the captain of the guard, Kalt, to be his new proxy in running the Pyke syndicate.

This event was pivotal to Maul’s story arc and the later state of the Star Wars underworld. A lot of what’s happening in Maul – Shadow Lord has to reconcile with what happens later down the Star Wars timeline, in films like Solo: A Star Wars Story, where Maul’s criminal empire is fully rebuilt and thriving, through organizations like Crimson Dawn and the Pykes. It also bridges the gap with the preceding animated series, Clone Wars, which dedicated considerable screen time to telling a story arc about Maul building Shadow Collective under Emperor Palpatine’s nose, while hiding out in the Outer Rim Territories on planets like Mandalore. After uniting with Mandalore’s Death Watch fringe group, Maul got the Pykes, Black Sun, and others to submit to his alliance, ruling the Shadow Collective with an iron fist.

The Pykes are a major part of Star Wars lore, who come from the homeworld of Oba Diah, one of the biggest producers in the galaxy of the drug known as raw spice. That resource gave them incredible leverage, which the Pyke Syndicate harnessed to become one of the most powerful underworld organizations in the galaxy, rivaling the likes of Black Sun and the Hutts. They were hired for all kinds of dastardly deeds, like the killing of Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas for Darth Tyranus (Count Dooku), to cover up the creation of the clone army. After surviving the Clone Wars as part of Maul’s Shadow Collective, the Pykes continued to thrive throughout the Imperial Era and into the New Republic Era, when their power hold started to slip, after Boba Fett’s gang took over their operation on Tatooine, killing the leadership stationed there.

Aside from Krim’s death being one of the cooler kills in Star Wars (and a nice echo of Ben Solo’s assassination of Snoke in The Last Jedi), Maul – Shadow Lord is doing its job as a proper bridge/backfill piece for a key Star Wars character. Future Star Wars series could learn from that example.

Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord is streaming on Disney+. Discuss the latest episodes with us on the ComicBook Forum!

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