The Tragedy of Devon Izara
They are executing Devon’s fall in Shadow Lord season 1 so well because as with any good tragic hero, the most laudable thing about her is also her fatal flaw. Which is to say: Devon cannot stand the idea of being passive. She was raised to be a Jedi, to take action to protect people, to use her power in defense of others, and now as Daki struggles to keep her safe in the time of the Empire by urging her to keep her head down and let things happen, she can’t do it. He taught her to be a Jedi too well for it. As one of her most dedicated enemies says: it’s like an itch, she cannot help it.
But. But. Take that and shift it a little bit sideways.
There’s been a consistent thread with Devon throughout this season that she is developing a superiority complex about the Force. And Maul is egging it on, but he didn’t start it—Order 66 did. Because she has this power, she’s spent her whole life training it, she believes in using it to protect and help others—and then what happened? Her family was slaughtered, her religion and culture was subjected to a genocide by a Republic that framed them for treason and used that as justification to transform itself into an Empire, and the galaxy looked at that and…largely shrugged, to Devon’s point of view.
Think about how we met her: She and Daki have been begging on the streets to survive for a year since Order 66. Devon has had to hide her power and identity (which is so tied to that power) and put herself in the shoes of the people she was raised to serve, and she’s watched herself and her master mostly be treated with scorn and indifference. She feels lost, confused, humiliated. Spend your whole life living according to the teaching that all life is precious and all things are connected and you treat everyone and everything with generosity and never judge by appearances—and then when it’s your turn, what happens? The reason Maul’s opening pitch leaves her so shaken is that he is giving voice to every nagging, resentful thought that she’s been trying to pretend she hasn’t been having for months now.
And there is a core of horrible truth here: she does deserve better than this, they all did, holy shit, of course they did! Everyone does, that's the whole point! But that is what the dark side does: it takes things that are true and twists them beyond recognition. She does resent that she’s now expected to be on the level of any other teenage girl in the galaxy, she knows she’s so much more and was meant for so much more and—you see? How easily her pain is twisted to the mindset of a Sith's resentment? Take the scene in Rylee’s room:
Like, this scene is hilarious, the culture-clash awkwardness of normal kid Rylee trying to communicate with Devon like she’s one of his peers at school and her just no-selling and shutting him down is hysterical, but what’s really happening here? What is here to tell us about these characters in the long run, in this show that is so concerned with character work and so thoughtful with its screentime?
Devon is downright derisive—she outright resents the idea that she could be considered a peer by this teenage boy whose biggest concern in life is sports. I've seen people taking her bemusement here in a woobifying direction—oh no she was a child soldier and she cannot understand such simple age-appropriate things!—and yeah maybe there’s a little of that, but mostly? She thinks these things are beneath her. How petty the concerns of these civilians are—she was a Jedi trained to wield a power Rylee could never comprehend, she’s a veteran of the Clone Wars who has witnessed horrors he can’t imagine, she was taught to be concerned with things of great import to the galaxy—and he’s trying to talk to her about sports?
She does not want to become a person like Maul, she's fighting so hard against the temptation of becoming a person like Maul, but also…she does, deep down, enjoy the catharsis of throwing her power around. She has just a bit too much fun stealing a speeder for the getaway vehicle when she’s given the excuse to take something she wants by force. It’s cathartic; it dulls the pain of her loss, of the ongoing humiliation of defeat.
Devon is not a story with a happy ending, she is not, as we have seen many a time in Star Wars stories that aren't villain-centered like this one, the story of a Jedi facing and defeating temptation. She is not Ezra Bridger or Ahsoka Tano or Cal Kestis learning how to act as a Jedi in the time of the Empire—Devon is a story about how a young person’s pain and loss and trauma is exploited by bad actors for their own ends, and how for the most tragic and understandable of reasons she is driven to become her worst self. There are so many people out there who Devon could truly fight the Empire by following—she could so so easily be turned to something like the Rebel Alliance if only someone else had found her!—but this is not that story. She gets Maul, and Crimson Dawn.
This is the fall of Devon Izara: all season long she has been fighting a desperate rearguard action to maintain her wavering belief in the Jedi ideals she was raised in, but when something happens to shatter that for good and remove the positive influence from her life—she will finally let go and say fine. Fine! You know what? I am better than you. I’m meant for greater things, I’m marked for something special, the Force is my birthright and I am tired of letting people who are beneath me push me around. And if you think that makes me the bad guy, then fine. The Force will set me free.
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