I really need to stop tying to listen to Dave Filoni so much, because I swear at this point whenever I hear what he has to say, he makes things sound LESS interesting than they actually are. I really need to be more death of the author with Star Wars. XP
Maybe it's partly informed by internet discourse and how moralised it's gotten, but hearing how he always has to insist that Maul's still the bad guy and ultimately selfish and stuff, while technically true, it feels very reductive and prevents more interesting conversations.
Besides that general tone of HEY REMEMBER HE'S STILL THE BAD GUY and going on the same Dark Side selfishness spiel in every Shadow Lord interview like we're six years old or something, this was spurred by two specific comments.
One, in the new video where he comments on Maul scenes, he kind of implied that he only really saw Ezra as a tool and never actually cared about him? And yes, I do think that's true Maul primarily sees Ezra as a way to gain further power, but I feel that's overly simplistic?
Like, I feel like Maul does still care about Ezra on some level, even if he's very twisted about it and doesn't know how to form a healthy relationship. Like in Season 3 of Rebels, when he says "I would have still remained loyal to you", I do think he's being honest.
Yeah, he was willing to betray Kanan and Ahsoka, but he still wanted to form something with Ezra. Yeah, he doesn't realise that this betrayal would've pushed Ezra away from him, but that's just Maul, he struggles to understand how to form these connections.
But more prominently was the scene in Visions and Voices where he's literally pleading to Ezra to stay with him, but again underestimating how much he actually cares about his family. You can tell Maul doesn't just want someone as an apprentice to gain power.
He even says he and Ezra can be like "brothers". But again, despite having that very human need for connection, being raised Sith means he doesn't know how to express that properly, he can't help but fall back into seeing everything through the lens of power and domination.
At most, I'd grant that maybe Maul doesn't realise himself how much he cares, because that's what seemed to happen with Savage. He insisted Savage would be an apprentice in his recreation of the Rule of Two, but when Savage is harmed and especially when he's killed, he realises that he really did want a brother in his life, he just can't help but see relationships through that Sith way of thinking. But even with Ezra, I feel like he genuinely liked him from the start, even if he ultimately did aim to just gain power for his revenge quest.
The other thing about Maul Filoni said that rubbed me the wrong way was in this recent interview, he seemed to indicate Maul in The Clone Wars Season 5 actually genuinely wanted to come back to Sidious to be his apprentice?
Look, I'm sorry, but back when those eps came out, that was not how people talked about that. Maul was indeed using his Sith training to form a power base of his own, because that's what he knew how to do, and he may have still been Sith in his mind at the time, but I really do think he wanted to be in charge for himself. He wanted to grow his power not to return to Sidious' side, but to eventually be strong enough to challenge him. Plus, that's the more Sith thing to do.
Like, Maul straight up made his brother his apprentice (even if Savage insisted otherwise), and declared them both "the true lords of the Sith". Maul may still fear his former master and reflexively bend to him, but that's cuz he was raised by the most evil man in the Galaxy.
When Maul faces Sidious again and says he built everything to return to him, I don't think he genuinely wanted that. At most, he was reflexively trying to suck up the man who abused and tormented him as a survival mechanism. But Filoni makes it sound like he genuinely meant it?
Look, IDK, maybe I am missing on some things, or maybe they're trying to retroactively change how we see stuff because Maul's story is now bigger than just TCW. But from everything I've been given, I feel like Filoni is trying to oversimplify his own story here.
Or maybe we as fans are adding more complexity than there is. But again, I'm not holding authorial intent as gospel here (something I feel like people do with Lucas too much as well, to be fair).
I will say I feel like I've clashed with Filoni more since he started to get bigger in Lucasfilm, basically when we started moving into the streaming era. I love The Clone Wars and Rebels, but since the streaming era, I feel like I've started to question his intent more.
Like, I'm sure I've talked about how even with The Siege of Mandalore (which to be fair was conceived before the Disney acquisition), I feel conflicted about the way he frames Ahsoka's behaviour and motivations, to the point I wonder if he's playing favourites too much.
And of course, there's all the stuff going on with the Tales of series and the Mandoverse shows, especially Ahsoka, where I find some decisions and choices kind of baffling (or at least how Filoni talks about them) even if I still enjoy things there.
IDK where I'm going with this, I just kind of feel like I'm disagreeing with Filoni as a creator over some things more as I grow up. I'm not some anti-Filoni hater like I'm sure some are, like I said I still love a lot of what he does, but I can't help but question more now.
I'm in a weird place where I'm not someone who feels the need to treat Filoni as this huge authority just because he's a Lucas protege, where in some things that experience may inform a lot but that doesn't mean everything he says or does should be taken as law.
And similarly, I'm not someone who hates his Star Wars output and thinks he's a hack or whatever. I certainly question his decisions more and his personal priorities as an artist at times, but I still like stuff he makes, too. IDK, it's complicated.
