One line in Maul Shadow Lord reveals a mind-bending truth about Star Wars

Maul — Shadow Lord brings up an easily forgotten fact about the franchise

From the very start, Star Wars has always been about Jedi and Sith, the Force and lightsabers, Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. So it’s easy to forget that for most characters living in that galaxy far away, the endless power struggle between two warring sects of an ancient religious cult has little impact on day-to-day life. As Star Wars continues to expand, we keep meeting more people who have no idea what the Rule of Two is, and the latest entry in this 49-year-old saga offers a clever reminder of just that.

[Ed. note: Light spoilers for Star Wars: Maul — Shadow Lord episodes 1 and 2.]

In Star Wars: Maul — Shadow Lord, we join the horn-headed Sith lord as he gathers power on the crime-infested city planet of Janix in the aftermath of Revenge of the Sith. The Empire is grabbing power across the galaxy, but Janix remains out of its reach, providing Maul (Sam Witwer) with the perfect perch to rebuild his criminal Shadow Collective and strike back against his former master, Emperor Palpatine.

In episode 1, Maul and his allies stage a jailbreak to free a low-level crime boss who has information they need. And in episode 2, the local police begin to investigate the case. Police captain Brandon Lawson (Wagner Moura) reviews the security footage and notices something unusual: The attacker is carrying a “laser sword.”

You can take this as a joke (ha ha ha, he doesn’t even know what a lightsaber is), but there’s something more interesting happening in this scene. Lawson’s lack of familiarity with the chosen weapon of both the Jedi and Sith is a reminder that most of the galaxy has never seen a lightsaber in action. The world of Star Wars is notably lacking in media: There are no newspapers, mass-marketed books, blockbuster movies, or TV shows in this world. (Andor introduced state-controlled television as a parallel to real-world authoritarian propaganda, but it’s unclear how far those broadcasts actually reached.)

The point being, in Star Wars, unless you’ve actually seen a lightsaber in person, you probably have no idea what one looks like. At the height of their power, the Jedi were still relatively unknown to most regular citizens. Unless you happened to run into one, your understanding of this quasi-religious peacekeeping force was pretty abstract, even during the High Republic era.

The way the mainline Star Wars movies are presented often obscures this reality. Because the action typically focuses on the Jedi and the Sith, we’re used to seeing characters who are familiar with the concept of the Force and the jargon that goes with it. While the films aren’t presented from any one character’s perspective, we’re still getting a very subjective view of the galaxy George Lucas first put on the screen in 1977.

Star Wars began as a hero’s journey, which means focusing on the Chosen One destined to save the world, not the background characters who keep that world turning. But with Shadow Lord, the franchise is zooming in on a character who’s often bridged those two worlds, operating on the fringes of society while occasionally popping up in the central narrative to tangle with various Jedi and Sith.

After making his debut in The Phantom Menace as a glowering attack dog who gets split in half by Obi-Wan Kenobi, he’s mostly appeared in animated shows and comic books, where his story was fleshed out into that of a Shakespearean villain. This makes Maul the perfect character to bring us back to the reality that exists beyond the Skywalker Saga — a world where most people have no direct knowledge of the Jedi or the Sith, and are better off for it.