Maul’s forces scatter, Rylee, Lawson, Two-Boots and the Jedi come to an accord and make an escape. Maul has a long dark night of the soul.

That’s so much better. From the opening sequence to the close, this makes up for the empty calories of the last episode with a brutally personal descent into the darkness with Maul and some brilliant action and character beats for everyone else.

To begin with Maul, his trudge back to life is played out in front of memories that are being projected in live action onto swirling dust clouds. We see his brother, see his training with Sidious and Kenobi as a brief, terrifying figure. We see Maul, a man who has been set up again and again as an unstoppable force, stopped. Again and again. The paragon of Sith discipline, humiliated and abandoned. Sam Witwer, a man I would watch read a phone book at this point, is stunningly good as he guides us through Maul’s grief and rage to the tragedy at the heart of the character. This is all he knows how to do. Sidious has burned everything else from him. He’s tragic, monstrous, compelling.

Elsewhere the rest of the cast also get some fun muscles to stretch. Richard Ayoade finally finds a second gear for Two-Boots as the world’s fussiest robotic police officer discovers his ethics and his programming aren’t the same thing. I’ve not been a fan of the character at all but it’s a credit to everyone involved that there’s a moment here where I actually caught myself being worried for Two-Boots.

The Jedi get some fun beats too including a gloriously nasty tag team takedown of a gunship that kicks off one of the big action sequences. Lawson and Rylee are a touch under-utilised but there’s a sense of the disparate elements coming together this episode that really helps. It also sets up the hardest beat so far as Sul, Lawson’s old partner, is compromised and sacrifices herself to save the others. Again, Sul is a character we’ve barely met but unlike the empty cloaks of the Inquisitorium, we actually know enough to care about her.

As the episode closes, all our heroes are in big trouble, and Maul may finally be on the way back up. In the first continuity link the show’s done that I enjoyed, we get a reference to Dryden Vos, the head of the Shadow Collective. We met Vos in Solo, played first by the late Michael C Williams and in reshoots by Paul Bettany. His name grounds the show in time, telling us where the series is going and foreshadowing what’s next for Maul. It’s a clever beat, and one that has resonance that few of the other links have managed. Especially when you remember the Lawsons and Jedi are very far from safe…

Verdict: A vast improvement on the joyless plod of the last episode that sets up a final act that has a lot to pay off but a lot of potential. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart