4 hours ago, gmaecrawler said:

Well I have to say you guys have definitely convinced me to watch Clone Wars and Rebels! Now im pretty interested to find out more about Mauls story.

I'm as hard on Rebels and TCW as anyone I know and I enjoyed the Maul story in Rebels quite a bit. A little less so in TCW, but I hated Savage Opress, so that may have had something to do with it. I just wish Rebels animation was as good as Clone Wars was.

I really enjoyed Rebels, thought it was great, but every scene Maul was in, I was like "WTF is he even doing there, how is he even alive ?". Maybe it was explained in Clone Wars or whatever, but not having watched that, I had no idea what was going on and it definitely detracted from it.

That aside, the Maul character in Rebels was sorta cool, but nothing like the Darth Maul from TPM - I got the impression in that (from the very few scenes he was in, to be fair) that he was a simple brutal violent killer out to do Sideous' bidding. In Rebels, he's a cunning wise deceitful manipulative liar... you're telling me he's even the same character? Pfft. Whatever. I mean guess time has passed and people do change,

If I could be bothered to put energy into it, in my headcanon the Maul in Rebels would be Darth Maul's long-lost twin brother or something, and definitely not the same person (because Darth Maul was killed when he was CUT IN HALF ), which would also explain the apparent personality graft. As it is, we just need to accept that Star Wars mythology/canon has been a mess from pretty much the moment it expanded beyond the OT... which isn't to say that some of that mess isn't good (Rebels was very enjoyable) but vast swathes of it are some combination of mutually contradictory, nonsensical, poorly conceived or poorly executed. It says something for the power and magic of Star Wars that we all love it anyway.

5 minutes ago, Bitterman said:

I really enjoyed Rebels, thought it was great, but every scene Maul was in, I was like "WTF is he even doing there, how is he even alive ?". Maybe it was explained in Clone Wars or whatever, but not having watched that, I had no idea what was going on and it definitely detracted from it.

That aside, the Maul character in Rebels was sorta cool, but nothing like the Darth Maul from TPM - I got the impression in that (from the very few scenes he was in, to be fair) that he was a simple brutal violent killer out to do Sideous' bidding. In Rebels, he's a cunning wise deceitful manipulative liar... you're telling me he's even the same character? Pfft. Whatever. I mean guess time has passed and people do change,

If I could be bothered to put energy into it, in my headcanon the Maul in Rebels would be Darth Maul's long-lost twin brother or something, and definitely not the same person (because Darth Maul was killed when he was CUT IN HALF ), which would also explain the apparent personality graft. As it is, we just need to accept that Star Wars mythology/canon has been a mess from pretty much the moment it expanded beyond the OT... which isn't to say that some of that mess isn't good (Rebels was very enjoyable) but vast swathes of it are some combination of mutually contradictory, nonsensical, poorly conceived or poorly executed. It says something for the power and magic of Star Wars that we all love it anyway.

I mean, you missed a major part of his development in The Clone Wars (considering he had almost no development in TPM anyway).

Obviously it's your prerogative, but I think it's kinda silly to criticize the canon when you won't even watch it...

1 minute ago, subtrendy2 said:

I mean, you missed a major part of his development in The Clone Wars (considering he had almost no development in TPM anyway).

Obviously it's your prerogative, but I think it's kinda silly to criticize the canon when you won't even watch it...

Well, the few bits of the Clone Wars I saw were crap, so, I'm not particularly inclined to sit through hours and hours of crap just for that. (It's only due to hanging around on forums like this one that I even know Clone Wars is the place to look, otherwise I'd have no way of knowing even that). Besides, have you seen how much Star Wars stuff there's been over the years? Some good, some bad, but hardly anyone's watched/read/played all of it, in fact, almost everyone has watched/read/played hardly any of it; so if you're writing a new entry into that milieu, you need to make sure your viewers/readers/players have a chance to know what's going on... otherwise of course they're going to be bemused.

In any case, whatever happened in Clone Wars doesn't change the fact that he was clearly killed in TPM. Most people tend not to have much "character development" after they are CUT IN HALF, so it's not like it's unreasonable that I (and many, many others, I am far from alone) raised an eyebrow when he appeared without explanation in Rebels; and by the sounds of things he was only brought back for out-of-universe reasons, anyway, so... fair to criticise, I think?

45 minutes ago, Bitterman said:

Most people tend not to have much "character development" after they are CUT IN HALF [...]

I would therefore not recommend any Marvel comics series to you because if there is something to be learnt from Marvel comic books is that "death" is just a temporary state for many super heroes

Maybe they thought Maul was the prelogy Boba Fett and saw an opportunity to bring him back. In my opinion I would think more plausible a story about how Fett escaped the sarlacc (aftermath novel spoilers)

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then Maul surviving the fall and being cut in half. I haven't watched the animated series and maybe they managed to give a good explanation about how he survived. He was a Force user after all, trained by a Master that most certainly prolonged his life with his knowledge of the darkside.

21 minutes ago, IanSolo_FFG said:

then Maul surviving the fall and being cut in half. I haven't watched the animated series and maybe they managed to give a good explanation about how he survived. He was a Force user after all, trained by a Master that most certainly prolonged his life with his knowledge of the darkside.

31 minutes ago, subtrendy2 said:

To be honest, they don't delve much into the how of Maul surviving, but rather the how of him rebounding. When he's found, he's a deranged and broken man, having cobbled himself together in a makeshift mechanical getup.

By using the magic of the Dathomiri witches (something that already existed in Legends at that point, by he way) Maul was mostly restored. This time, still full of rage, but much more cautious and purposeful, out for revenge against both Kenobi and the Sith.

I guess when it came to Maul's survival at the end of TPM, we're just led to believe that he survived the pit. I guess it's not all that different than this, though obviously the mauling (pun intended) was more severe.

[/spoilers]

Two pit fallers (Maul and Luke) ended up surviving. Maybe Han was still alive!! .... before the whole station blew up

3 hours ago, IanSolo_FFG said:

Two pit fallers (Maul and Luke) ended up surviving. Maybe Han was still alive!! .... before the whole station blew up

You know the old anime rule about character deaths- unless you see the final breath, they're definitely still alive

9 hours ago, Bitterman said:

Well, the few bits of the Clone Wars I saw were crap, so, I'm not particularly inclined to sit through hours and hours of crap just for that. (It's only due to hanging around on forums like this one that I even know Clone Wars is the place to look, otherwise I'd have no way of knowing even that). Besides, have you seen how much Star Wars stuff there's been over the years? Some good, some bad, but hardly anyone's watched/read/played all of it, in fact, almost everyone has watched/read/played hardly any of it; so if you're writing a new entry into that milieu, you need to make sure your viewers/readers/players have a chance to know what's going on... otherwise of course they're going to be bemused.

In any case, whatever happened in Clone Wars doesn't change the fact that he was clearly killed in TPM. Most people tend not to have much "character development" after they are CUT IN HALF, so it's not like it's unreasonable that I (and many, many others, I am far from alone) raised an eyebrow when he appeared without explanation in Rebels; and by the sounds of things he was only brought back for out-of-universe reasons, anyway, so... fair to criticise, I think?

As I said, I am very hard on both series. I was very, very unhappy with Maul's return, because it's so George Lucas to lament a mistake and try to bring the character back in some way. And it was Lucas that ordered Filoni to bring back Maul. Again, all that being said, once you accept that he did survive, as impractical as that is, and it is, he has some pretty decent story arcs. When I saw him return in Rebels I groaned, loudly, but even within that same episode, he showed some potential. I'll reiterate what I said before, his manipulation of Ezra is very well done. I was all but ready to abandon Rebels at that point. Ezra was a horrible character. The animation was horrible. Sabine was absolutely insufferable. After Maul entered the picture, and before Thrawn became a major villain, Maul's season 3 arc salvaged the whole show. Ezra became a better character, and while I still hated Sabine, even she became a better character.

Sorry if my thoughts are disjointed, I have a bunch of stuff going on.