This might be a really random thing to waffle about, but I trained for years to get to the splits and to flatten my legs, etc, anything to do with flexibility - it was like the one thing I was slightly okay at. I got a bit too excited once doing a stretch and manually moved my legs further out, and asked if someone could push me down. Dawg - I instantly felt my hamstring puuuullll like nothing I’d felt like before. I hadn’t snapped or severely damaged it, but it set back so much of the process I’d made over the years in one minute. It took me 9 months just to get back to my standard cold stretching flexibility. In that time (and still even now) I’m so jealous and bitter towards myself from years ago - like girl, you could do that, why’d you get so cocky all of a sudden? So imagine being Maul, when your own legs that YOU strengthened, that YOU trained, are cut off and replaced with metal substitutes? If he was injured with his own legs, at least he would be able to power through with stubbornness or adrenaline - he is in full control of his own body. But with his metal legs? He’s at the mercy of circuitry, not only that, Vader has top of the range cybernetics. Once the circuits are cut off and damaged there’s literally nothing he can do. (More nerdiness:) Even as a Zabrak, a species known for their resilience and endurance, I have no doubt that a lightsaber to his organic leg would’ve set him BACK - but he’d be moving on his own terms without his legs literally FAILING him. His metal legs can’t live up to his own expectation, because he won’t allow them to - to Maul, his legs were take from him, and that’s that.
One of the most interesting things I find in the way he fights in MSL is that he still uses his legs but not in the way he did before.
You can literally see in this image how he made a jump to lend on an upside down split to get those guards by surprise, in Wrath he makes a backwards jump from a cliff and is constantly jumping on trees and between branches just to set an example.
In MSL he still uses his legs to fight, like on his first fight with Devon and how he takes her down with a kick after crouching down, or how he will spin in jumps to get more strength in his moves. But it's not the same way.
From his waist down he was a lot more acrobatic trained than in the usual fighting sense we see from him. Whenever we did not see him fighting with a lightsaber he would most likely rely on the rest of his body in more gymnastics like ways.
It was not something we see other sith doing (maybe Ventress but it's still different) or in the other nightbrothers fighting style, that's something from him. Maybe even something he liked to do.
But then when you analyze it, during the CW he uses his legs in fights far less, especially his more animal ones that Talzin made.
Once he gets his DW legs (Pre Vizsla that's the only grace I'm ever giving you) he becomes a lot more like he was in a lot of scenes before.
Like how when they're meeting with the Black Sun and he crouch down to let Savage decapitate all the guys; it might seem like an stupid example but can you imagine him with any of his other legs crouching like that? Or how when he fights Ashoka he does the same type of spinning we see him doing in MSL and also fighting a lot with his legs against Vizsla.
He can almost fight like he could before when the legs are newer and considerably good, but after one year and a lot of different events he has to tone it down again. And have possibly hours long repairs for knee problems.
Honestly I don't think we talk enough about the immense gap that leg injury became, if it was his actual leg it would actually be a chunk of his skin gone.
I wonder if he might get new legs in the second season. The ones he has is rebels look different but I don't know if it's the style or actual different ones, if that's the case I wonder if we can see him more active again with newer legs.
