Dark Hero's Journey? Star Wars Just Inverted Its Most Formative Plot Trope
Maybe the real Star Wars is the heroes we made on the journey.
Every villain is the hero in their own story, a fact which various facets of the Star Wars saga have tackled on more than one occasion. From Anakin Skywalker’s fall to the Dark Side to the machinations of the Stranger in The Acolyte, Star Wars has proven many, many times that the Hero’s Journey doesn’t just apply to goody-goody hero types. In studies of the monomyth, there’s no such thing, really, as the Villain’s Journey, but in Maul — Shadow Lord, the Star Wars franchise is certainly suggesting that former Sith baddies might see their stories much like the heroes see theirs.
In Shadow Lord Episode 3, “Whispers in the Unknown,” a very specific moment in Maul’s duel with Devon suggests that this version of Star Wars is hyper-aware that it's taking one very relevant step in Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, and applying it to the Dark Side.
Spoilers ahead.
Taking place shortly after the end of The Clone Wars (both the event and the TV series of the same name), Shadow Lord is chronicling what is, in essence, the second phase of Maul’s time as a crime lord. We saw his rise to this role in The Clone Wars, and by the time of Solo (about a decade after Shadow Lord), he’s in control of several major crime syndicates. By the time Rebels rolls around, Maul falls on hard times again, and attempts to gain sympathy with Ezra Bridger, a young Jedi who may or may not understand his Sithy past. Does this sound familiar? It should. Much of what Maul is doing with Devon in Shadow Lord is reminiscent of some of the tricks he’ll pull on Ezra. The biggest difference being that in Shadow Lord, Maul is more confident and honest about his background than he will be in Rebels, later in the timeline. The point is, some of his methods of persuasion are, at this point, classic Maul moves. Even in The Clone Wars, he tried to convince Ahsoka that maybe they were on the same side spiritually — something he’s trying on Devon in Shadow Lord.
Is Devon tempted by the Dark Side?
But the more pointed moment comes in “Whispers in the Unknown” when, as we hear modified musical cues from “Battles of the Heroes” — the John Williams composition for Revenge of the Sith that scored the tragic duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan — Maul specifically calls out a very pivotal part of the story structure known as the Hero’s Journey. Maul says to Devon that she is “refusing your call to fight.” And that exact phrasing, “refusing the call,” doesn’t feel like an accident.
In crafting the story of the original Star Wars, George Lucas was heavily influenced by Campbell’s theory of the monomyth, specifically the idea that “the Hero’s Journey” had specific patterns, which reoccurred in various narratives throughout the world, in different myths, stories, and religious tales. In the book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Campbell walks through various stages in the Hero’s Journey, one of which is called “The Refusal of the Call.”
This is the moment in a big adventure when the hero tries to get out of going on the adventure; Bilbo’s unwillingness to follow Gandalf and the Dwarves in The Hobbit springs to mind, just as Luke turns Obi-Wan down flat in A New Hope, saying, “I can’t get involved,” before his aunt and uncle are brutally murdered by the Empire. The moment of refusing the call to adventure seemingly makes the Hero’s Journey tick because, in a sense, it’s a moment where the burgeoning hero feels the most realistic and relatable.
Let Maul be your guide...on the Hero’s Journey?
So in Shadow Lord, Maul is overtly saying that Devon is “refusing your call,” implying that he views himself as the Obi-Wan (or Gandalf) of this particular story. Now, it's unlikely that Maul has a version of The Hero’s Journey in Aurebesh (or even in ur-Kittât, assuming he has books at all), but it does seem that the series is trying to plant a very specific narrative seed at this moment.
We don’t yet know what will happen to Devon in this series, but if she does end up embracing Maul as her teacher or taking a big step into a larger world, we’ll know that, in many ways, her formal hero’s journey began right here. Even if that journey turns her into a villain.
