Obi-Wan’s rematch with Maul is shockingly brief and intentionally straightforward. Indeed, every move he makes is designed to say a lot about how he developed from the ponytailed upstart played by Ewan McGregor in “The Phantom Menace” to the white-haired statesman portrayed by Alec Guinness in the OT, and with nary a word of dialogue. As “Rebels” animation supervisor Keith Kellog explained in a behind-the-scenes video released in 2017:

“It’s much more about footwork and the thought process that Obi-Wan has. It starts out as young Obi-Wan, and then we shift him to sort of more what Alec would do when he was fighting, and then the very last one — if you look back at ‘The Phantom Menace’ and you can see what Qui-Gon is doing — we sort of just move him just a little bit right after Maul changes his. It’s kind of a game within a game almost.”

You could even argue that Obi-Wan’s technique here proves just how vital the “Obi-Wan Kenobi” series is despite coming out years after “Rebels” ended. Flawed as the series may be, it shows how Obi-Wan found balance again after paying the price for insisting he should be the one to fulfill Qui-Gon’s dying request and train Anakin. That shift from being young and overconfident to being older, wiser, and more empathetic manifests itself in the way that Obi-Wan dispatches Maul while taking no pleasure in his defeat.

It also speaks to the truth about what makes a great lightsaber fight. Cool-looking as they can be, they’re really all about characters working through conflicts with one another (that or within themselves, if not both) once words have failed.