Warning: Spoilers follow for Solo: A Star Wars Story. Jump into hyperspace and away from this page if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

Solo: A Star Wars Story might have been about a young Han Solo, and Donald Glover’s Lando Calrissian claimed some of the spotlight, as did L3-37’s sass and spunk…but the appearance of a surprising villain made me momentarily forget about anything else in the film. When Qi’ra got in contact with the head of criminal organization Crimson Dawn, she called Darth Maul. Yes, he’s still alive. And yes, it makes total sense for him to be entangled with the Star Wars universe’s underworld at this point in the timeline.

How is Maul alive?

If you haven’t watched the Star Wars animated series, you last saw Darth Maul tumbling down a power generator shaft in The Phantom Menace after Obi-Wan Kenobi cut off his legs. But he didn’t die. Star Wars: The Clone Wars revealed he survived the fall and made his home in a landfill on Lotho Minor. He was found there by his brother Savage Opress and taken to his mother, the Nightsister witch, Mother Talzin, who used her dark magicks to create cyborg legs for Maul.

What’s he been doing since The Phantom Menace?

After Maul came back to the universe, he was primarily focused on exacting revenge upon Obi-Wan for almost killing him and for taking away his future as a Sith Lord. Maul blames Obi-Wan, and by extension any Jedi, for everything that went wrong in his life. He was also bitter towards Darth Sidious and Count Dooku because he felt abandoned and pushed aside.

To bring about the fall of Obi-Wan and the two Sith Lords, Maul built the Shadow Collective. He constructed the group, comprised of the worst of the worst criminal organizations (Death Watch, Pyke Syndicate, Black Sun, and the Hutt Clan), in order to have an army of sorts under his command. Maul intended the Shadow Collective to be a third party in the Clone Wars, fighting against the Separatists and the Republic. With this group at his back, he successfully led a short-lived takeover of Mandalore.

How is he connected to Crimson Dawn?

Crimson Dawn seems to be a relatively new crime syndicate. My guess is after Maul’s Shadow Collective failed and he fell out of favor with all those groups, he either plotted a takeover of an underworld group in its infancy or founded Crimson Dawn. He knows the world. He has the contacts. It’s a natural progression in his “career.”

Where is all of this on the timeline?

Maul returns (and gets legs!) about 12 years after The Phantom Menace and about 10 years before Solo.

Maul first builds the Shadow Collective about nine years before Solo. Darth Sidious destroys the Collective at about the same time. It was short-lived. Maul returned to Mandalore with the forces he had left, but he didn’t stay long because the Republic laid siege to the planet (the Siege of Mandalore). Maul escaped. His whereabouts and activities from this point to Solo (still about nine years) are unknown, but he eventually returned to Dathomir.

What’s the deal with Dathomir?

Maul was born on Dathomir and Darth Sidious saw potential in Maul when the Zabrak was a boy (Sidious was working with Mother Talzin at the time) and took him to train him as his apprentice. Maul has returned to Dathomir repeatedly. Besides being his homeworld, it’s a place of deep and mysterious magic.

What happens to Maul after Solo?

We don’t see Maul again until about eight years later when he appears in Star Wars Rebels. Then, he’s on Malachor. He was looking for an ancient weapon in the Sith Temple on Malachor, but his ship crashed onto the planet, leaving him alone for an unspecified amount of time.

If you want to go all in and read and watch every part of Darth Maul’s arc, check out this guide.

Images: Lucasfilm

Amy Ratcliffe is the Managing Editor for Nerdist. She likes Star Wars a little. Follow her on Twitter.

More Solo and Star Wars!

• How L3-37 appeared in The Empire Strikes Back
• We ranked the hottest Star Wars villains so you don’t have to!
• Learn more about Darth Maul’s role in comics

Racism in healthcare practices has a lot to do with it.

This simple experiment with oil and water will introduce the concept of polarity and density to your child.  Younger children will also enjoy this as a sensory project, too. As you experiment, ask your child questions that encourages him to observe and hypothesize.  Does the oil and water mix? What happens when you whisk the two ingredients together vigorously? What happens when you let the solution sit still over time?

The post Simple Water and Oil Experiment appeared first on Crafts for Kids.

The cast of Arrested Development is currently doing the promotional rounds for the new season of the show on Netflix, but given Tambor’s recent firing from Transparent over allegations of sexual harassment, questions regarding his on-set behavior on both shows were bound to come up. In a recent interview between the New York Times and much of the cast, Tambor called these questions a “distraction.” Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, his male castmates seemed, largely, to agree.

In what NYT’s Sopan Deb described as “a freewheeling, at times emotional conversation that had the air of a family Thanksgiving dinner,” Jessica Walter (Lucille Bluth) made note early on that “there’s so much testosterone in this room.”

While that reads as a joke, the truth of it is clear in the interview. It wasn’t just in how much the men dominated the conversation word-count wise, though they did. (The interview was comprised of edited excerpts, so the full conversation could have been more balanced. Alia Shawkat, who barely speaks at all in the interview as published, definitely had at least one interesting excerpt cut.)

The interview starts to get incredibly uncomfortable when Deb asks about the Transparent allegations. It’s not uncomfortable because of what’s being asked, but rather because it reads as if two separate conversations are happening. One in which Walter (and Shawkat, briefly) is trying to engage directly with the subject, and one where the men present are dismissing it.

It starts when Deb askes Tambor, “if there’s another season, do you expect to be a part of it?” Tambor says he would hope so, while Bateman interjects multiple times, saying he wouldn’t do the show without Jeffrey and that “there’s no reason he shouldn’t” be in another season.

Many of the show’s men–Bateman, David Cross, and creator Mitch Hurwitz, most notably–have made it clear that they don’t think much of the accusations of sexual harassment made against Tambor. Interestingly, though, that’s barely even discussed here. Instead, Deb chooses to ask about Tambor’s recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, in which he admitted yelling at directors, assistant directors, and even Jill Soloway. He also mentioned a “blowup” with Jessica Walter while filming Arrested Development, something she hadn’t spoken about before. But it’s Bateman, not Tambor, that responds.

BATEMAN: Which we’ve all done, by the way.

WALTER: Oh! You’ve never yelled at me.

BATEMAN: Not to belittle what happened.

WALTER: You’ve never yelled at me like that.

BATEMAN: But this is a family and families, you know, have love, laughter, arguments — again, not to belittle it, but a lot of stuff happens in 15 years. I know nothing about “Transparent” but I do know a lot about “Arrested Development.” And I can say that no matter what anybody in this room has ever done — and we’ve all done a lot, with each other, for each other, against each other — I wouldn’t trade it for the world and I have zero complaints.

The conversation starts to move on, with Arnett and Cross jumping in, before Walter makes them back up, asking Deb directly, “What was your point about that, though?”

NYT: If someone approached you and said, “O.K., here’s an actor that admits he routinely yells at directors, at assistant directors, at co-workers, assistants,” would you hire that person?

TAMBOR: I would hire that person if that person said, you know, “I’ve reckoned with this.”

Well, that’s a pretty easy answer to give when you’re the hypothetical in question. Bateman, unprovoked, once again jumps in. “Again, not to belittle it or excuse it or anything,” he says, and then proceeds to belittle all complaints that have made against Tambor. He talks about “context” and the “amorphous process” of acting and how “difficult” people are so common in this industry. I cannot express how poorly Bateman comes off in this interview.

Jason Bateman: “Well, that interview went great!”
Narrator: “It didn’t.”

— John Wellington Ennis (@johnennis) May 23, 2018

Here’s the heart of the conversation:

BATEMAN: [Acting is] a weird thing, and it is a breeding ground for atypical behavior and certain people have certain processes.

SHAWKAT: But that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. And the point is that things are changing, and people need to respect each other differently.

WALTER [THROUGH TEARS]: Let me just say one thing that I just realized in this conversation. I have to let go of being angry at him. He never crossed the line on our show, with any, you know, sexual whatever. Verbally, yes, he harassed me, but he did apologize. I have to let it go. [Turns to Tambor.] And I have to give you a chance to, you know, for us to be friends again.

TAMBOR: Absolutely.

WALTER: But it’s hard because honestly — Jason says this happens all the time. In like almost 60 years of working, I’ve never had anybody yell at me like that on a set. And it’s hard to deal with, but I’m over it now. I just let it go right here, for The New York Times.

BATEMAN: She didn’t give it up for anybody else.

HALE: But I will say, to Jason’s point, we can be honest about the fact that — and not to build a thing — we’ve all had moments.

WALTER: But not like that, not like that. That was bad.

HALE: Not like that. But I’m saying we’ve worked together 15 years, there has been other points of anger coming out.

BATEMAN: Exactly. Again, there is context. What we do for a living is not normal, and therefore the process is not normal sometimes, and to expect it to be normal is to not understand what happens on set. Again, not to excuse it, Alia, but to be surprised by people having a wobbly route to their goal, their process — it’s very rarely predictable. All I can say, personally, is I have never learned more from an actor that I’ve worked with than Jeffrey Tambor. And I consider him one of my favorite, most valued people in my life.

The NYT has released audio of part of that exchange, and it’s honestly pretty difficult to listen to. As Bateman continually interjects to explain why Walter’s own experiences weren’t as bad as she thinks, and as the other men in the cast rush to back him up, to find ways to explain and normalize abusive behavior so they can wrap that conversation up and put it behind them, they are totally ignoring the fact that Walter–a woman who has been a professional actor longer than Bateman has been alive–is actually trying to work through her feelings in order to be able to do just that.

The whole thing reads and sounds like kids trying to deflect and distract from their parents’ fighting. Except these aren’t kids. They’re grown men, refusing to acknowledge the severity of the abuse present not just in their industry, but on their set.

Here’s audio of Jessica Walter CRYING, standing up for herself after all the men in the AD cast try to gaslight her into thinking Tambor’s harassment isn’t THAT bad. This is horrific. pic.twitter.com/innJv8LIYF

— Kevin T. Porter (@KevinTPorter) May 23, 2018

Walter is trying to have a very specific conversation head-on, while her male colleagues insist on talking around the issue at hand. It’s incredibly frustrating to read and listen to, and will likely feel familiar to many women who don’t have to have been in this exact situation to know what it feels like to have your feelings minimized and explained to you, to see people work so hard to maintain the status quo when all you want is a simple acknowledgement of your reality. The way Walter refuses to back down is inspiring–as is Alia Shawkat, standing her ground in a room of older male colleagues–but it’s disheartening to see these men ignore and dismiss her, clearly not even realizing that that’s what they’re doing.

Bateman, for his part, issued an apology late last night. (As did Tony Hale.) In a series of tweets, he wrote:

Based on listening to the NYT interview and hearing people’s thoughts online, I realize that I was wrong here. I sound like I’m condoning yelling at work. I do not. It sounds like I’m excusing Jeffery. I do not. It sounds like I’m insensitive to Jessica. I am not. In fact, I’m horrified that I wasn’t more aware of how this incident affected her. I was so eager to let Jeffrey know that he was supported in his attempt to learn, grow and apologize that I completely underestimated the feelings of the victim, another person I deeply love – and she was sitting right there! I’m incredibly embarrassed and deeply sorry to have done that to Jessica. This is a big learning moment for me. I shouldn’t have tried so hard to mansplain, or fix a fight, or make everything okay. I should’ve focused more on what the most important part of it all is – there’s never any excuse for abuse, in any form, from any gender. And, the victim’s voice needs to be heard and respected. Period. I didn’t say that and instead said a bunch of other stuff and not very well. I deeply, and sincerely, apologize.

This apology is … fine. It’s frustrating to see Bateman claim that he just sounded like he was condoning and excusing Tambor’s behavior. He was doing those things. He was being insensitive to Walter and whether he was cognizant of it at the moment or not, he was working hard to silence her as she tried to speak about the verbal harassment she experienced. When we talk about ending systemic harassment and abuse, it’s not just the abusers that have to change. It’s also those who are complicit in maintaining an environment that doesn’t allow women to speak out when abuse happens. And that’s exactly what Bateman was doing here.

Anyway, I’m glad Bateman has had a “learning moment,” and I hope that’s genuine and not just a PR scramble, but it sure would be nice if every man didn’t have to go through their own individual public embarrassment to learn how to listen to women.

(image: Cindy Ord/Getty Images for SiriusXM)

Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!

—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—