I'm Sorry, *That's* How Vader Killed Rook Kast in 'Shadow Lord'?

A lot of people die in the season finale of Maul: Shadow Lord. Most of those deaths are, indeed, pretty brutal. But it turns out one largely left unseen is actually meant to be one of the wildest in recent Star Wars memory. Darth Vader makes his grim presence in Shadow Lord‘s narrative known after taking out what is arguably the closest Maul had to a confidant up to this point: Rook Kast, the last of Maul’s dwindling Mandalorian loyalists left by the season finale. It’s a fun little moment—Kast and the sole other Mando left on Team Maul scout ahead in a foggy jungle, Kast runs back alone almost immediately petrified that “something” is out there, only for her to be swept off her feet and magically dragged back into the mist. One scream and some heavy breathing later, it’s Vader time. It’s all well and good, and an effective way of establishing Vader’s threat before he proceeds to spend much of the last episode just wailing down on his opponents. But what was meant to be happening off-screen wasn’t just a simply slash of a lightsaber or a Force choke: Darth Vader was yanking her lungs out of her throat. That was, according to a behind-the-scenes story shared by the official Star War