12 Years Later, Star Wars Is Making Its Most Underrated Villains Scary Again
It’s time to get inquisitive.
Maul —Shadow Lord is giving us a new look at the antihero formerly known as Darth Maul. Stripped of the Darth title, he’s now just a humble crime lord trying to build an empire and possibly bring an apprentice, young Devon Izara, to the Dark Side. But if he’s not the villain of this show, then who is?
The answer, as it often is, is the Empire. Brander Lawson is trying to track down Maul without getting the Empire involved, but nevertheless, the powers that be have sent the Inquisitors to track down Maul and the two Jedi who were hiding out on Janix. It’s a common move for the Empire, but this time it’s a little different. This time, these lower-tier villains seem a lot more foreboding than before.
Marrok and the Eleventh Brother are ent to Janix by the Empire.
In the current Star Wars canon, when Jedi are in hiding after Order 66, it’s the Inquisitors who hunt them down. Inquisitors take all forms, but they usually have a codename of some sort, often incorporating the terms “brother” or “sister.” The inquisitors were first introduced in Star Wars: Rebels, essentially as a way to give that show’s heroes a villain who could be conquered without interrupting Star Wars canon.
Originally, in the Legends canon, it seemed like it was Darth Vader’s sole job to root out the remaining Jedi who survived Order 66, but in the new canon, he’s taking more of an officer role as the head of the Inquisitors. For example, in the video game Jedi: Fallen Order, the protagonist, Cal Kestis, is a Jedi in hiding years after Order 66 who must conquer multiple Inquisitors before facing Darth Vader himself.
With this hierarchy in place, it’s easy to see the Inquisitors as a lesser threat. Yes, they wear spooky masks, and yes, they have fancy lightsabers, but they’re still only there because Vader considers the target not worth his time.
The Eleventh Brother was nicknamed “The Crow” internally.
However, Maul: Shadow Lord completely revamps the Inquisitor’s image. With so much hyping up in previous episodes, when they eventually show up, it feels like Marrok and the Eleventh Brother are purely original villains, even though they’ve previously appeared in Ahsoka and Tales of the Jedi, respectively.
Aiding in this new image is a horror movie approach to these characters. According to the Star Wars website, “They don’t move much, but when they do, these Inquisitors have superhuman speed,” the website reads. “And listen carefully when Eleventh Brother turns his head. ‘In the mix on the back end, David W. Collins is always adding weird stuff,’ Supervising Director Brad Rau says. ‘When you hear a little turn of Crow's head, Collins put in this creaking, weird sound. It's great. We call it bone leather.’”
Previously, the inquisitors have more or less served as a prelude or lower-stakes replacement for a Darth Vader appearance. That’s not impossible for this series — a Vader appearance during the finale, releasing on May the Fourth, sounds too tempting to pass up — but this big build-up and new approach to these characters prove they can hold their own entirely.
