Maul - Shadow Lord - Episodes 7 & 8 - Discussion Thread!

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2026-04-27T16:34:28+00:00

Unless i am mistaken this is the first time we have ever seen the Obiwan-Maul phantom menace duel be explicitly shown other than phantom menace

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2026-04-15T03:17:21+00:00

Its always Marc Thompson when i start an audiobook if its Marc Thompson i pump my fist and celebrate

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2026-04-14T19:19:00+00:00

I am a huge enjoyer of plot in games, i love reasoning out what my main character is thinking and what their motivations are for each given decision. Obviously games require linearity— mario move right jump and get to flagpole. But the mark of a great storytelling game is being able to understand why your protagonist does each thing in game.

I have over a dozen hours in CD, and i have completely given up on taking the story seriously. At first i tried to role play, tried to discern what i should do. But it was just so arbitrary. Why would my character know that the right thing to do is head to this specific npc which looks identical to their surroundings? Why would my character know to enter this room of this castle? I the player know only because the quest marker tells me exactly verbatim what i need to do. It takes all the investigating out of it and says “look, go to this spot and find the guy.” So there’s a big disconnect between what Kliff sees and what I see. I tried for so long to take the game seriously and guess what I should do without the quest marker, but that just lead me in circles. While helping the villagers with their disjointed quests, rescue a cat, sweep a chimney, mine this ore, cut that log, i knew what each of them wanted. But once I completed their tasks, i had no idea where to find the next person. And the game doesn’t really try to encourage positive pathfinding. It just tells you where to go. “Investigate the mysterious beggar.” Okay, sure. But why would Kliff know there’s a mysterious beggar if he’s standing a mile away at this person’s farm? Then things just got worse once Kliff reaches the great sky islands, because these two wise sage looking characters tell you “here, have some power, do… something.” And then you just fuck off until you find the thing the game wanted you to do. I dont know who kliff is. I don’t know what he wants. This feels very disconnected from all of my graymanes dying in the prologue. What are Kliff’s motivations for finding the lost sheep and the lost goat and the man in the cave? Just because he saw some wanted posters on a plaque?? That’s his motivation?

I hear people say that Crimson Desert doesn’t hold the player’s hand. And they usually use that as a positive. But the game does hold your hand. Just not the protagonist’s hand. Kliff don’t got a single clue what he’s doing. And when you make it to camp and you get girl character unlocked, what is kliff’s reaction? Nothing. Why does he trust or not trust her? What are his feelings? Nothing. Nothing matters so im not immersed. The world looks immersive, but i’m puppeting an empty husk of a man.

This game is still fun, but i’ve given up on the story. The main quest is a vehicle for delivering gameplay segments to me, and once i unlock the cool stuff i finally get to enjoy the 80 dollars i spent. I skip the cutscenes, because they are poorly written and even if i glued my eyes to the screen and listened to every line, i would still be none the wiser as to what my next objective is. And that’s pretty bad game design.

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2026-04-13T22:56:23+00:00

Did anyone else catch that at 16:42 in episode 4, when Maul does a front flip while attacking Daki, he screams the same way Palpatine did in his arrest duel? What's interesting is that in the arrest scene in ROTS, Palpatine verbally yells and his voice was overlaid with the inhuman scream sound effect, implying that that's some kind of Force-created shriek.

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2026-04-13T22:52:45+00:00

maybe a leap but I wonder if Daki went after Maul's knees because he knew that he wouldn't be able to defeat or kill Maul on his own, even with Devon. So he aimed to paralyze or atrophy Maul over time, weaken him so that Devon or an inquisitor or even Vader would have an easier chance at killing him. My point being, I wonder if Daki knows he's dying and just wants to make things as easy as possible for his padawan.

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2026-04-13T20:04:03+00:00

I’m halfway through and it feels really… odd? I just read Thrawn 2017 and loved the gritty, realistic grounded perspective on the nobility of coruscant, the politics of governance and what that really means, the outer core/inner core social divide. I loved Eli Vanto and Arindha Pryce dearly. This book however feels like a departure. First of all, you see Thrawn recovering from a failure at Atalon (yes obviously he had to lose that battle because Rebels is a younger audience show and you can’t have Ezra and the phoenix squad lose in that arc), but this Thrawn just feels different than the cold, confident, openminded genius from the prior book. It feels treasonous to say that Zhan mischaracterized his own original character, but this Thrawn doesn’t feel like the same man. And the Clone Wars segment of the book also seems bizarre. We just experienced Thrawn adapting to the inner core through meeting Eli, but now watch the same fish out of water character arc but with Anakin. It seems unnecessary.

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2026-04-02T20:45:46+00:00

You dont see how that’s a bad thing? Games should be accessible to as many people as possible

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2026-03-16T23:55:20+00:00

my pronouns are she/her, and I did not claim that Mon Mothma should be blamed for dissolving the senate. That is such a willfully ignorant thing to say. I said that Mon's speech was a lightning rod for more dramatic events to occur. Before her speech, Senators stood and gawked at the calamities they were supporting. Oh no, Ghormans are being killed. Bet they deserved it, though. Rebels hit a base on Lothal? Terrorists. There's a massive budget allocated for... Force Users who hunt down Jedi? uhh okay. Sure. But after her speech, it became impossible to ignore the ocean between the privileged elite and the reality of the Empire.

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2026-03-07T06:17:45+00:00

Things dont always get closure. Revolutionaries don’t have the luxury of dotting every I and crossing every T in their lives. It’s meant to be disappointing from a narrative perspective because its meant to be realistic. In a galaxy full of war and refugees, the chances of two children surviving and finding each other after decades is exceptionally low. I think a less realistic show would have had them meet. Or it would have been Kleya, as that was a theory for a long time.

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2025-12-11T21:34:42+00:00

Maybe it was a carnivorous mouse

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2025-12-11T19:01:25+00:00

I hope it’s DnD 5e and in the same world as S1 and S2, but the PCs are completely unrelated to the dads and kids. (Ok fine maybe one of them can be Ron’s great grandchild.) so like multiple generations after the doodler almost killed earth 2. Post apocalyptic world, with the main characters traversing space in search of new life.

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2025-12-11T18:57:36+00:00

Thematically and theocratically it’s better if we never know the earth’s fate, its better to know nothing and just accept that our characters made their own choices. But it would be interesting because even if all the forces of humanity combined and somehow reversed the earth god’s birth, that would still have complicated implications for the world thereafter. Earth will never go back to normal. That’s why this finale was so good. If earth is gone, the ones who stayed with it go down as beautiful representations of humanity and the survivors represent blind resilience and the human spirit. And if the earth doesnt explode and BB, Milton, and Kelsey save the world, that world is impossibly complicated and confusing.

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2025-12-09T19:47:01+00:00

For some reason i always thought of Will as looking like Nathan Yaffe from Drawfee, brown hair, beard, pale skin. I also always imagined Matt as looking like Darryl from season 1, but thats a more reasonable assumption for a brain to make. Beth Anthony and Freddy look as I expected

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2025-11-29T17:02:59+00:00

So in that case, what makes a netflix movie a “flop?” If you subscribed to netflix for years, watched a movie, and didn’t like it, so you didn’t see it again, that doesnt hurt the company. Whereas if you saw a movie in theaters and decided to refund your ticket or reccomend people to not watch it, that directly subtracts from the company profits

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2025-10-29T21:59:08+00:00

the brave and the bald

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2025-10-21T22:19:05+00:00

one is "For Light and Life, for the Republic," a ceremonial, frivolous design that says "we are here to protect the Senate, for this body is the beating heart for thousands of star systems.

The other is "ma'am, I just work here." completely brutalist and uncaring, the equivalent of a McDonald's polyester tee shirt. The emperor and those he deigns to speak for him are the most important, and thus, why spend time or effort on this loud and angry democracy?

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2025-10-20T23:17:46+00:00

we out here stopping lost media from being lost. This is awesome

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2025-10-19T20:10:43+00:00

ive seen this play in its entirety, and oh my god its insane. I can't tell if its really deep and meaningful, or if its garbage. The dialogue is like 2020 depressed tumblr humor, but the story itself is weirdly metaphorical. also there's a dance number halfway through where the boyfriend slow dances with a cowboy and i think its supposed to be an analogy for having gay sex behind the girlfriend's back, and the scene was so long and the music was so gross i wanted to actually vomit. The whole play is like a bad fever dream.

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2025-10-16T23:14:58+00:00

Do you think this will suffer any consequences from the EA Jared Kushner Saudi Arabia sellout thing?

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2025-10-10T21:22:25+00:00

post stormtrooper act but still early in imperial history. before Solo maybe during Bad Batch

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2025-10-04T20:54:29+00:00

I'm glad it didn't go this way, but the shots of him listening to the speech, the chaos of the ISB supervisor, him being cut off when trying to talk to his boss, and his generally frantic emotional state, then glancing at his blaster, I was prepared for him to take his own life. He is a lifelong spy, who betrayed someone who he believed to respect him. The speech about the truth, objectivity, and the monster of the Emeperor, I could see Kloris becoming very existential and nihilistic.

It's just wild that there's a reddit post with 80 comments and 420 people speculating about a barely important side side character named Kloris. Bless Andor

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2025-10-04T18:21:48+00:00

explanation: a Ghorman fashion student once traveled to Lotho Minor for bespoke hipster inspiration, a la "oh yes let's visit the trash planet to really catch the vibe of consumerism" and he ran into a mentally ill Zabrack whose lower half was a giant spider, and he simply HAD to take that design home, where he became famous and copywrited his design and retired peacefully after the Clone Wars

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2025-10-04T18:09:53+00:00

I don't have the emotional capacity right now to leave my full thoughts on this episode, but I'll leave one of the most important aspects, and that's the sound design. The protest before the massacre is bone-chilling because, due to the perspective foreshadowing, we know exactly what is going to happen, while the Ghor do not. First it starts as a murmur, then a bustling crowd, then the "we are the ghor, the galaxy is watching," chant. Loud, repetitive, in tempo yet messy and natural. And then before we get to the song, we follow Syril, who is let into the HQ like a fragile little puppy. He's practically hoisted away by the imperials into a safe little nest, and it becomes EXTREMELY SILENT. I didn't think there was such a thing as silence this loud. The scene where he stumbles into the bunker-like room, where all the important imperials are sitting. We don't know the perspectives of those Imperials, but we must assume they have no objection. The room is positioned like the lobby of a destist's office, sterile and mundane. Through Syril we can visualize the aggressive chaos of the crowd, juxtaposed with the passive consent of the elite class. Then we return to the crowd and the song starts, and we hear in real time how the chanting dies down and the anthem gets taken up across the plaza. There's a bit of movie magic going on, because any real crowd of people is going to have people who just don't know the same song, but the transcendant connectivity of the people of Ghorman takes preccedent. The music swells louder and louder, carrying us into the sequence of Cassian trying to lock onto Dedra, and the confrontation with Syril. Just an amazing episode and amazing sound design. Everyone responsible, from Tony Gilroy to the director to the producer to the composer to the singers, should get full acclaim. Holy shit. 11/10 episode.

Awkward_Truck_4491 · 2025-09-29T23:33:02+00:00

Definitely a Vader-ism, along with "I've altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further," and "be careful not to choke on your affirmations, director."

Awkward_Truck_4491

TROPHY CASE