General Star Wars Animated Series

Ya know I can't help but laugh at all that due to knowing just how badly this is gonna end for Maul.

Edited by slimcoder on Aug 10th 2018 at 12:44:52 PM

Not to spoil future stuff but you might prefer his broken, beaten portrayal in Rebels where he’s shown as a pathetic shell.

Edited by Beatman1 on Aug 10th 2018 at 3:37:47 PM

Maul is actually integral to the ongoing story. He was to serve as the show's Final Boss (and probably still will) in the Siege of Mandalore arc that was (and is still) to be the series' finale.

Also there's a lot to be said about the overriding theme of the prequel era being the galaxy's fall toward darkness and how having so many Dark Side users running about in the show's latter stages is part of telling that story, but I'm in a rush and don't feel like getting into it.

But does that make him integral to the ongoing story? Or is that just more of him warping the story to be all about him? A series finale of "Darth Maul is SO POWERFUL, YOU GUYS! NOTHING CAN STOP HIM!!! Let's all dogpile on his face!" can still be shilling.

Out of curiosity, I checked Wookiepedia. The season premiere and these episodes were written by Chris Collins, who never wrote anything else for the show. He was just here for Darth Maul.

EDIT: Wait, my mistake. He also wrote the Saw Gerrera arc between. That and the Darth Maul stuff.

So, who knows? Maybe I'll like some of the Darth Maul stuff after this arc?

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 10th 2018 at 2:08:29 AM

You realize that it doesn’t actually matter who wrote the scripts because the stories were assigned by Dave Filoni and George Lucas.

You know, I was actually joking when I suggested that Maul might fridge Satine. For f*ck's sake. What a waste of a fantastic character. >.< And as the capper of a "How I hate you so, let me count the ways" speech, no less. Like, there's not even the dignity of a "Not REALLY Fridging, Totes!" pretense here. They're not even pretending that he killed her for her throne or some shit. No. Both in-universe and out, her interesting direction and story potential was snuffed out so that Obi-Wan could be sad for five seconds.

Ugh. At this point, I don't even have the emotional capacity to be as upset about this as I should be. Darth Maul is living down to all the worst parts of a Revenge Villain, playing the cliche exactly straight to the letter. There he goes again with not killing Obi-Wan for the second time despite not explicitly wanting anything other than to kill Obi-Wan.

This continues to just feel wrong. Like, the last time Satine and Obi-Wan were in a room together, she was fiery and short-tempered and quick to tell him about how much his Order sucks. But here, she's the helpless damsel literally falling into his arms to remind us all of of how sad we should be when she gets her turn in the cooler.

From badass ruler to Sexy Lamp to Manpain Topping. F*ck this arc and the character who drove it. Darth Maul is the worst thing that ever happened to this show.

That said, it was actually really refreshing to see Palpatine show up and establish who the Biggest Bad of the franchise really is. At this point, I was legitimately worried they were going to have Darth Maul kick Palpatine's ass. This is the first time a Star Wars product has actually had me rooting for Darth Hitlerface to wreck a f*cker.

But then he killed the much more interesting Savage instead. God F*cking Dammit, I just cannot win with this Darth Maul shit. At least the fight was good and watching Maul fry under Sith Lightning is somewhat cathartic for all the nonsense this character's bullshit has done to the story.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 10th 2018 at 2:57:30 AM

Man Tobias no offense but you are such a fucking whiner about this.

I mean Jesus A Christ, I’m tempted to post the world’s smallest violent video just to accentuate your incessant complaining about Revenge Villains & shit.

Besides Sabine was always gonna die anyway, Mandaloore was never gonna be saved after all.

Edited by slimcoder on Aug 10th 2018 at 1:59:42 AM

There are other ways for a character to die than Fridging. A lot of other ways.

Eh a death is a death.

All leads to the same thing either way, the complete breakdown of Mandaloore.

Which might never be fixed even after Rebels.

Edited by slimcoder on Aug 10th 2018 at 2:12:27 AM

There is a fundamental difference between a character dying as an actor and one dying as an object. This arc gives us three deaths: Vizsla, Satine, and Savage.

Vizsla dies as a result of his bargain with Darth Maul. He is an actor with agency. The choices he makes leads directly to a culminating confrontation, where he stands his ground and fights his adversary. His death, indeed, is the culmination of his journey. It's the final outcome for his increasingly rash efforts to conquer Mandalore. He is undone by the terrible choices he made to get what he wants, in the very throne room he fought so hard to claim.

Savage dies as a result of Palpatine's retribution for his and Maul's actions. He's an actor, but without agency. Savage dies for Maul's five-second Manpain, similar to Satine. He has no real stake in this. But he does stand his ground and fight his killer, getting a kickass lightsaber battle to cap off his journey before Palpatine snuffs him out. He is acted upon, but he acts against his killer in return.

Satine dies because Darth Maul wants to make Obi-Wan feel pain. She dies as an object, possessing no agency and committing no action. She is treated as a thing that Obi-Wan and Darth maul act upon, a Sexy Lamp for Obi-Wan to possess and for Darth Maul to smash. Her death does not serve as a final culmination of her journey. Her journey remains unfulfilled so that she can die as a footnote in Obi-Wan's.

There are a great many ways that characters can die. Satine's is one of the most overused misogynistic tropes in media. The problem with the phenomenon of Women in Refrigerators is thoroughly documented.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 10th 2018 at 3:14:06 AM

Be that as it may, you're still posting wall after wall of spoiler-marked text just to complain about it.

Both of those things can be annoying at the same time.

Indeed they really are.

Edited by slimcoder on Aug 10th 2018 at 2:21:48 AM

Satine WAS a character with agency-she made her choices, and those choices led her down that path. She refused to address the entirely predictable deprivation and corruption that occurred when she declared Mandalore neutral: the first coup likewise was a direct result of her own decisions. What happened with Maul was more of the same-even after nearly dying before, she keeps Mandalore neutral, does not make any visible attempt to address the conditions that led to the first coup, and when it happens again-this time, at the hands of people who know what they are doing-she is stuck in a similar situation of her own making. This time, as well, there is no Jedi to save her from her own mistakes: and she willingly abdicates the last of her agency-and her own life when she refuses to run with the Deathwatch bearing down on her palace. Her cruel death is drawn out for the expressed purpose of torturing Obi-wan, but it was a forgone conclusion long before-the fridging is a facade. Satine made her bed, and her refusal to fight or run was her last choice-if she had been murdered right there in the throne room, I do not think you would be making this argument-even though her life effectively ended there anyway.

Edited by ViperMagnum357 on Aug 10th 2018 at 6:26:50 AM

Onwards! The Jedi Temple bombing arc is interesting. I had the wife pegged as the bomber as soon as the scan reported that she was clean of explosives. If the nanodroids were in their food, then an innocent person would have eaten the bombs too. Anakin also seemed to pick that up, given how quickly he asked her to come answer questions. It makes me happy when clever observations do not go unnoticed by the characters.

Assuming he's innocent, of course. Which he almost certainly is. Two episodes in and Ahsoka's being framed for the crime by a Jedi. The Jedi's descent from diplomatic peacekeepers into a war machine is once again brought up, and the Temple bombing was done to make some kind of statement about Jedi militarization? Anakin wouldn't be protesting the Jedi's militarization. If he bombed the Temple, it'd be to convince the Jedi to militarize harder.

It's nice to see Tarkin again. I love the blossoming creepy relationship between him and Anakin, setting the stage for what will be twenty years of crushing insurgencies under their bootheels. The two of them get along so well and it's so sweet in an awful way! Like Nazi Boy Scouts!

So now Ahsoka's doing the whole "Clear My Name" shtick. You know, it occurs to me that after she saw the unconscious guards, if she'd gone back to her cell and sat down and waited for help to come, it'd be a lot easier to sell her innocence. "So, what, I conjured up my lightsabers out of nowhere with magic, broke out of my cell, attacked the guards, and then left my lightsabers on the ground for you to find and went back to twiddling my thumbs?"

She's obviously being framed, but she's also totally helping the frame-up by running. Which is typical of "Clear My Name" stories.

What's really interesting about the frameup is that whoever did it clearly was trying to frame her and her specifically. The bomber was told to ask for Ahsoka by name if she needed help. Ahsoka's not exactly world famous, so the most likely person to have told her that was the Jedi who had her perform the bombing. Someone has a grudge against Ahsoka.

Can't think of anyone in the Order that hates her, though. That's weird. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

(Clap, clap, clap) Well put.

I have to say I always rather disliked Sabine.

Now there is absolutly nothing wrong with neutrality & pacifism but the way she went about it....... well it did end absolutly horribly for everyone involved after all.

Edited by slimcoder on Aug 10th 2018 at 3:39:29 AM

You're not wrong to say that it would not be a Women in Refrigerators moment if she'd been killed in her throne room as the sovereign monarch of Mandalore in direct response to her choice to stand her ground, choose pacifism, and die for her people. That is a death she would have agency in. It's a perfect way for her story to end.

But instead, she dies as Obi-Wan's quasi-love interest after spending the entire episode being carted around by others and then snuffed out for his five seconds of manpain. She does not die as a consequence of her choices. Instead, she's stripped of her agency and reduced to an object for the rest of the arc, and only then does she die.

Satine deserved to die as a queen. Not as a murdered girlfriend.

I'm not sure why everyone is criticising Tobias for their opinions on Maul here. Everything they're saying is fair criticism, and it's not like they're criticising anyone for liking Maul's arc.

Let's not forget that these were all points that were controversial at the time. I remember being told not to bother watching series 4 of Clone Wars because of this arc.

Whoever told you that was insane. Because Season 4 also has the Umbara arc, which is arguably the best in the series.

Well yeah, but I can watch that without watching the season.

That's not skipping the season, though.

If you are watching anything in the season then you are watching the season.

Edited by slimcoder on Aug 10th 2018 at 4:17:56 AM

I have yet to see the Maul arc, so I can’t really judge, but I will say that I agree that killing Satine solely to cause Obi-Wan pain (or even primarily for that reason) is pretty fridgey. Not opposed to the idea of killing her off, as it can represent the fall of Mandalore, which itself is the prelude to the fall of the Republic, but the way they do it sounds...bad.

Yeah. Of all the things about Maul’s storyline, Satine’s death is absolutely the thing I would agree deserves to be called out for being awful and just plain a poor idea. I really like and enjoyed Maul’s storylines for the most part, as Ive mentioned on here before, and I think that moment was awful and brings down the whole thing despite imo a promising beginning and middle ( the climax with Sidious being the only thing that saves the plot afterwards). It’s cliche and disposable in a way this show had no business being, and it wasted both the plot and especially the worthwhile characters within on a “nyahaha, I’ve captured and/or murdered your girl” moment.

Tobias is right to call that for what it is, a fridging, and to point out that, damnit, Clone Wars should’ve been better than that.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Aug 10th 2018 at 5:56:34 AM

Y'all are getting really focused on weather or not watching some of a season or all of a season is the same as watching the season?

Which is fine, but kind of distracting from my point that this plot arc was considered controversial at the time.

And now it’s considered among the show’s ultimate high-lights.

Surprised it it was that controversial though.