"Brothers" is the twenty-first episode of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series' fourth season. This is the third episode in a four-part storyline about the fate of Asajj Ventress, the Nightsisters, and two of the Nightbrothers, which began with the last two episodes: "Massacre" and "Bounty." It aired on March 9, 2012.
"The dark warrior Savage Opress is on a quest to find his long-lost brother. Could Darth Maul truly be alive, after more than a decade since his gruesome bisection at the blade of Obi-Wan Kenobi? Savage voyages into the depths of a twisted planet to find whatever became of the fallen Sith Lord."
Savage Opress is still on the quest for his long-lost brother, the former Sith Lord Maul, he was sent on by Mother Talzin, but with each day he becomes stronger and more uncontrollable. As a result, Count Dooku informs General Grievous of Savage's growing power, while Asajj Ventress and Anakin Skywalker also sense something is amiss, concerning both of their respective companions, Latts Razzi and Ahsoka Tano.
Meanwhile, while Opress is on the run from authorities after an altercation at a local diner on Stobar, he finds faint clues about Maul's whereabouts in the dust clinging to an assortment of cargo crates and, after tracing their origin back to a freighter which had recently visited Lotho Minor, he forces the captain to take him there. Skywalker, meanwhile, visited the same diner shortly after the altercation, resulting in a standoff where the diner's owner, Loubo, tried to defend the diner with a frying pan before the misunderstanding was cleared up.
Once they have arrived and Opress has pinpointed Maul's location in the local junk lands, he callously ditches the captain for flying past the location where Opress's pendant glowed, and proceeds to search for his brother. The amulet Mother Talzin has given him to track Maul soon fails, but a resident Anacondan named Morley offers his guidance. Dodging the place's indigenous hazards – refuse incinerator droids, a band of hostile Junkers and a deluge of acid rain – they arrive at a lodge where Opress' amulet flares back to life, indicating that Maul is nearby. But at this very moment Morley betrays Opress, plunging him down a chute into the junk land's underworld where his "master" would deal with Opress.
Down in the tunnels beneath the junk, Opress is stalked and attacked by a spider-like creature who is eventually revealed to be an emaciated and deranged Maul, transformed into a centauroid half-spider cyborg. Morley takes this inopportune moment to reappear, asking for "leftovers," and under Opress' tight grip reveals that while he did exploit Maul for his own gain, it was not him who had turned him into a cyborg or left him in his current insane state, before he is choked to death. When Opress talks to him, Maul tells him in between his mad ravings about how he was reduced to this pitiful state and that he seeks revenge on the Jedi, especially the one who did this to him. However, Opress' quest, and the menace it presents, has not gone unnoticed by the strongest Force wielders in the galaxy, and Yoda has no choice but to reveal to Obi-Wan Kenobi that an old enemy has come back from the dead to haunt him once more.
Details from "Brothers" were first featured in the young-adult novel The Wrath of Darth Maul by Ryder Windham, released in January 2012.
This was the first episode in the series to have a red opening logo instead of yellow. The same red opening logo is also seen in the following episode "Revenge" since it still features Maul and his brother.
The broadcast version of the episode began with Dooku discussing the threat of Opress with General Grievous. Originally, this scene was intended to close Act 1 of the episode, with the actual starting point of the episode being the scene where Mother Talzin mapped the route to find Opress' brother, Maul.
The deleted scene "Savage in the Diner" was featured in the Jedi Temple Archives section of The Complete Season Four Blu-ray. The scene features waitress droid Marwigo's only dialogue, but although it was cut, Ashley Eckstein was still credited as voicing the character in the final episode.