Maybes:

Remove the Maul cold open and make it the stinger at the end of Death Watch (where it makes sense in context) rather than at the end of the season (which will already end on Maul’s face). Still a bit on the fence on this one, putting myself in the place of an absolute newbie. I think I’ll make this change based on feedback to my (production) season one finale, which we’re two episodes away from.

Could this be solved by adding additional context, perhaps through different dialogue elsewhere in the series? Would be easily accepted by the viewer since everyone is in helmets. And the actual voice of Pre Vizla really shouldn’t matter at this point, since we have no IDEA who this character is at the outset (and chances are, we aren’t going to go back once we meet PV and compare this opener’s vocal performance. If we accept that, then perhaps we could find some other audio introduction to Maul that makes more sense for the first time viewer? There’s gotta be someone, somewhere in the 7 seasons of TCW who says something to the effect of: “I thought you/him was dead!” vs the existing “What ARE you…?” dialogue, which serves the PV/mando character more than it does us as a viewer anyway. Add in a telephone/hi-pass filter to the audio (for the helmet) and boom, it might work for a cold open.

Thoughts?