Darth Maul and Savage Oppress Rehabilitated by Death Watch: Exploring Darth Maul VII

[Part of my ongoing Darth Maul Project]Having gone half of season 5 of “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” without knowing the fate of the brothers Savage Oppress and Darth Maul, the episode of “Eminence” picks up their story, with the narration introducing it: “With their plan to build a crime organization in peril, the brothers’ fate is about to be changed forever, as they drift barely alive through unknown space.”

The brothers are found floating adrift in their escape pod following their escape from Florrum (and the Jedi not pursuing after them) by members of Death Watch:

Bo-Katan: “Should we rub them out?”
Pre Viszla: “No, I want to hear their story; if they’re an enemy of the Jedi, then they’re a friend of mine.”

So, they load them up onto their ships and take them to their base to rehabilitate them.  When Darth Maul wakes up, he immediately realizes that he has different legs – they look more normal and less robotic.  He is then approached by Pre Viszla and a little entourage:

Pre Viszla: “You’re not Jedi, so what are you?”
Darth Maul: “We are Sith.”
Pre Viszla: “Do you serve Count Dooku?”
Darth Maul: “I serve no one.”
Pre Viszla: “I thought there could only be two Sith – a master and an apprentice.”
Darth Maul: “We are brothers – the true lords of the Sith”
Pre Viszla: “What happened to your ship?”
Darth Maul: “Destroyed by Jedi”
Pre Viszla: “Do you know which Jedi?”
Darth Maul: “Kenobi.”
Pre Viszla: “And what do you seek now, Sith?”
Darth Maul: “Fortune and power.”

Although the main importance of this dialogue is to tell Death Watch that they are neither with the Jedi, nor Count Dooku, I actually found the final line to be very fascinating.  At the beginning of the last episode in which we saw Darth Maul, when his brother got excited about a bunch of credits: “Look Brother – a fortune!” and Maul responded sharply: “True fortune will be the demise of Kenobi. Credit chips are meaningless without a plan to survive. The Jedi are hunting us. We will be forced to make a stand.” Now, it seems Maul either has changed from solely seeking revenge on Obi-Wan Kenobi and seeking fortune and power or he merely stated that to tell Pre Viszla.  I’m guessing he was actually speaking earnestly and has now turned his focus to a much broader – and bigger – scope. Wow!

Following this dialogue, Pre Viszla turns away, satisfied, and commands the medical droid: “Repair this one’s legs and do what you can for the other”, ensuring that they will be properly healed.

In so doing, Savage Oppress gets a new arm, while Darth Maul’s legs, which had been some weird-looking mechanical contraption, are now normal-looking (at the very least, they can fit into pants).  However, they are also shorter than what he had before, so he’s shorter. Not only that, but he’s shorter than his brother now. This makes him less intimidating (think about the beginning of “Revival” (the previous episode in which we see Maul), where Maul uses his mechanical “foot” to step on the face of Oppress).

In sum, we see the following:

• The brothers were in really bad physical shape and might not have fared well, had they not been picked up by Death Watch
• Darth Maul gets new legs, making him shorter – and less intimidating – than before (and, if you’re counting, this is his third pair of legs in “Star Wars: The Clone Wars”)
• Maul has departed from his sole focus on seeking revenge on Obi-Wan Kenobi to now seeking broader pursuits of “fortune and power”