my favorite underlying theme of maul shadow lord is denialism; the denialism not only of impulse, but denialism of our cast's new lived reality in the empire. this is undoubtedly, in my mind, one of the more deliberately written themes of this series as it is the heart of season one's core conflict, and that is because daki, almost verbatim, quotes blanche dubois in tennessee williams's a streetcar named desire.
for those unfamiliar with tennessee williams's works, one of his favorite avenues to explore character flaws was through illusion and delusion. blanche dubois, a well-to-do southern belle recently loses her family's inherited plantation to foreclosure, though the audience should understand in the changing shape of the modern world, belle reve is in truth lost to progress and modernity. blanche appears to us as a relic, entirely out of place and out of time in 1940s louisana. she cannot accept her newly lived reality, always stricken with panic at the "vulgarity" of the new world with its clamor and temptation. daki, of course, shares few superficial traits with blanche, but both remain suspended in time, unable to adapt, even going so far as to deny themselves not only their reality, but base needs, base impulses.
daki is a creature of habit and tradition. he is long-lived and has lived long. he cannot be anything but suspended in time, suspended in the stage of grief that denies reality. it is a loyalty to his culture, a devotion to himself, his identity as a jedi. his was a life and a trauma we, as humans, cannot fathom. but devon is not daki, and she cannot fathom his process for grief either. if daki is akin to blanche, devon is akin to the wingfield children in williams's the glass menagerie. tom wingfield is a warehouse worker, confined to a small apartment with his mother and sister whom he supports financially. his mother often recounts her past, much like blanche, from time immemorial, antiquated stories that feel more like fairytales they'd heard as children. expectedly, it drives both of her children to mania. tom escapes to art, while his sister, laura, escapes to her glass menagerie. both are fragile means to cope with their reality, both inside and outside the apartment. the new world is described as just as suffocating as their mother's bygone babbles:
"[...] one infused mass of automatism."
(i'll get to maul in a moment)
devon and daki are confined to living in sewers, to panhandling, to debasement common of... commoners in the wake of congested industrialization. this is not the future devon saw for herself. the empire robbed her of her clean air, her castle in the sky, her knighthood, her privilege. that fantasy is all it is now. because unlike her master, devon knows only an axial existence, her life caught between justice and injustice, peacetime and war, fantasy and reality. tom wingfield recounts to his sister an escape artist magician he saw who inspires his eventual escape from the apartment:
and let's speak of con artists because maul is not exempt from the williamsisms. when we are reintroduced to maul in this series, he is swallowed by memory. a spy droid, not dissimilar from the probe droid he employed in the phantom menace; a pair of dathomiri zabraks resembling his brothers; and a coterie of fractionally loyal mandalorians. it isn't until they are plucked one by one from his side that maul can operate unimpeded by his past. there is a line in scene one of the glass menagerie: this scene is a memory, and is therefore non-realistic. when the wingfield siblings are forced to face their lived reality, it came accompanying violence: tom's outburst shatters laura's glass figures, and the object of laura's interest, in his clumsiness, breaks her favorite of her menagerie: a lonely unicorn.
the last of its kind, with the ability to adapt.
after maul is maimed by the inquisitors, he recalls his own fractured past, all parts voiced entirely by sam witwer, all signaling to the audience, in williams's words, what funny tricks your memory plays. maul's denialism is unlike daki and devon's. maul is too shaped by tricks to not see the empire for what it really is, the tragedy lies in his inability to decode the precise reality of his trauma. and this is why maul is an expert con artist, because he was the stage magician's apprentice. he can continue to mouth palpatine's propaganda but shape it to deceive a young jedi cloistered in her own "2 by 4".
the season ends on an admission and its core conflict is resolved. devon declares to maul, to herself, that she is finally ready to confront reality and abandon the menagerie, the 2 by 4, belle reve. but the hairline crack in the glass cannot be sealed, the violence that came with her "emancipation" will continue to shape her reality like it shaped maul's. the questions i'm asking going into season two are: will devon go mad by her own proficiency to adapt, or will she invent for herself a new reality founded on illusion?
the lawsons are the civilian perspective. brander thinks he can outwit reality, continue operating unimpeded as not just a rogue law enforcement officer, but as a nominally present father. his ex-wife being an imperial loyalist is no accident. the writers are forcing conflict in brander's already volatile life by introducing "constancy" in the form of an imperial occupation. rylee misses his mother, he asks to be with her, the portrait of their family sits at brander's desk, in flames in their 2 by 4, but his father denies them both the reality of her position in their lives. she, for now, serves as a proxy for the empire, but she comes to rylee as a kind and grounding presence. she comes to brander as a reminder that the institution he serves cannot be divorced from the strongarm of the empire. its laws have always been an extension of theirs, just as drea is an extension of the lawsons.
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