Looking like the Devil himself and rocking a badass double-ended lightsaber, Darth Maul entered The Phantom Menace as one of Star Wars’ coolest villains. Then, scarcely six minutes, a fistful of lines, and one ‘Duel Of The Fates’ later, he died… or so we thought. Yes, somehow, Maul returned. And now, after scene-stealing turns in animated series The Clone Wars and Rebels, the Zabrak baddie is getting his own show, Maul: Shadow Lord, to complete his story. As supervising director Brad Rau tells Empire, we’re about to see more of the Maul we know — and the one we don’t. “We wanted him to remain mysterious… brutal… dark,” teases Rau, smirking. “But there’s so much nuance to this character anytime he shows up.”
For the uninitiated allow us a brief trip back to not so long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Following his 50%-off trip down a Naboo reactor shaft courtesy of Obi-Wan Kenobi (“Kenobayyy!”) in Episode I, Maul resurfaced in Season 4 of The Clone Wars. Kept alive by the power of hate and reforged by magic — and, more importantly — metal spider-legs, Maul went on to be reunited with his weirdo brother Savage Opress; tried, and repeatedly failed, to exact revenge upon Kenobi (“Kenobayyy!”) and his former master, Palpatine; and eventually saw his remaining family mercilessly slain by the Sith. He even tried tempting Rebels hero Ezra Bridger to the Dark Side for a bit, before dying – again – in a final duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi. Bisection, it turns out, really wasn’t even the half of it.
Somewhere among it all though, the son of Dathomir reappeared in live-action in Solo, as the head of crime syndicate Crimson Dawn. So the question still remains: how did that happen? “We’re dealing with some of Maul’s missing years,” Shadow Lord head writer and co-creator Matt Michnovetz explains to Empire. “We’ve got some real estate on the timeline.”
Given Maul’s Clone Wars-era dealings as head of the aptly-named Shadow Collective — an alliance of crime syndicates rivalling the Sith Order — the idea of exploring Maul’s resurgence as a mastermind in Star Wars’ murky criminal underworld was on the board from the earliest conversations about the show. “Everything came up,” shares Michnovetz — including Maul material that had never actually made it to the screen before. “‘Do we keep [2014’s] Son Of Dathomir comic and those unproduced Clone Wars scripts as canon? Do we tell the crime story?’”
With an untold chapter in one of Star Wars’ greatest characters’ history waiting to be written, the time had come to give Maul centre stage. And it would be a return fuelled not by hate, or Dark Side powers, but… sushi.
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Long before he became the co-CEO of Lucasfilm, Dave Filoni was the overlord of Star Wars animation. Hand-picked by George Lucas to lead The Clone Wars, Filoni went on to oversee Rebels, Resistance, The Bad Batch, and more. Next up, then? Something darker. Something pulpier. Something edgier. Something Maul. And he knew exactly who to call. “I was in a parking lot at my favourite sushi restaurant, and Dave called me up and pitched it,” recalls Michnovetz. The onigiri could wait. “We had a two-to-three-hour conversation. I was like, ‘Oh my god, let’s do it. This is incredible’.” The idea, as well as the sushi, presumably.
Elsewhere, deep in the inner sanctum of Lucasfilm Animation, Brad Rau was in the trenches on the final season of misfit clones series The Bad Batch. When he got wind of a Maul solo show, he too couldn’t resist the idea. “When I heard about it, I said, ‘Wait, what are you guys doing?’,” Rau remembers. Once he’d officially joined the team, Rau and Michnovetz met many times to talk Maul — over dinner, naturally. “Matty and I have had more than a few conversations about the show at that same sushi restaurant,” he laughs. Honestly, outside of Lucasfilm HQ, this might be the most important office in Star Wars. “This is where the deals go down,” Michnovetz confirms.
In Episode I, Maul was a cool-looking baddie with little-to-no hint of anything going on behind his Sith yellow eyes. But in the years since, we’ve seen his pain — and his hate — and come to understand him as a uniquely tortured being…
The real food for thought with Maul: Shadow Lord isn’t only the prospect of learning how its demon-faced protagonist seizes power in a Mid Rim criminal underworld: it’s the promise of a deeper dive into one of Star Wars’ most compelling figures. In Episode I, Maul was a cool-looking baddie with little-to-no hint of anything going on behind his Sith yellow eyes. But in the years since, we’ve seen his pain — and his hate — and come to understand him as a uniquely tortured being within this universe, a deadly yet damaged warrior forever trapped in a Sisyphean struggle to prove his worth.
“He’s a complicated guy,” says Rau. The director teases that there’s “the potential for vulnerability” in Maul that viewers “should watch out for” in Shadow Lord. Lest we forget, by the end of the Clone Wars, Maul’s list of losses runs to *deep breath* his childhood, his master, his mind, his family, his morality (if he ever had any), his criminal empire, his dignity and his legs. Hell, he even lost his ‘Darth’! That’s a vulnerable position for anyone to find themself in — double-ended laser sword or not.
These deeper depths and new shades of the Dathomirian have clearly been on Michnovetz’s mind, too. Shadow Lord shows Maul in different lights, conducting Cassius Tea ceremonies as well as saber-kebabbing mobsters in the neo-noir underworld of Janix. “You’ve got to remember that he was trained by the big bad guy, the most powerful villain in the whole series…” he muses. “He’s a manipulator, and he’s got this desire for larger schemes, and all these devious means to achieve them.” Still, any path taken through the Dark Side casts a long and looming shadow. “This is also a cautionary tale,” teases Michnovetz. “Maul’s a tragic figure, doomed to repeat his mistakes. He’s stubborn, but because of that he’s also a survivor, so you’ve gotta give him that.”
And give him that, you do gotta. When we meet Maul in Shadow Lord, the horned Houdini’s not long escaped the clutches of the Jedi and the Sith amid the chaos of Order 66, fleeing for the badlands of the Mid Rim in a stolen shuttle. Now, around a year or so post-Order 66, it’s a dark time for the galaxy – but one rife with opportunity for those who move within its shadows. Maul’s journey has taken him to the murky metropolis of Janix, out of sight of the Empire, where he plans to fan the flames of a turf war to seize power while his underworld rivals take each other out; as long as the Imperials don’t catch him first. “We’re following him through these efforts to achieve all these crazy goals,” says Michnovetz of Maul’s burgeoning Janix operation. “Like Palpatine, he has a meticulous plan. But let’s just say he hits a lot more snags than his old master. He’s got to adapt and change, and I think that’s where the fun and real excitement of the show lies.”
Of course, amid all the plotting and scheming and strategising, you’ll still get the Maul you’ve known and loved since Episode I’s ‘Duel Of The Fates’ showdown. “We want to see the brutal, action-packed side of this guy,” says Rau. “And we do – it’s pretty cool!” It’s time then for Maul to deliver some serious double-ended street justice. Yeah, we’re thinkin’ the Zabrak’s back.
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Right at the heart of Shadow Lord – as he has been at the heart of all things Maul ever since the character’s 2012 Clone Wars return – is Sam Witwer. Peter Serafinowicz gave Maul’s first Episode I words life. Ray Park gave the Dathomirian’s physicality and ferocity form. But it is Witwer — affectionally referred to by both Rau and Michnovetz as their “Jedi Master” on this show — who has dedicated himself to the character for the last fourteen years.
Bringing menace, weight, seduction, and all-timer line reads (“Kenobayyyy!”) to the role, Witwer has been constantly reframing our understanding of Maul ever since The Clone Wars found him an incoherent, mentally shattered wreck on Lotho Minor. “He — and we — are constantly, all of us, looking for ways to see new facets of this character we haven’t seen before,” says Rau of Witwer’s approach. “Sometimes it boils all the way down to an emphasis or an attitude punch on a line read that’s different than we expected.”
It doesn’t hurt that Witwer is joined in Shadow Lord by a cadre of stellar voice actors, each of whose characters help to reveal Maul in new, unexpected lights. Across the season, Maul finds himself engaged in a Heat-like game of cat-and-mouse with Janix cop Captain Brander Lawson (The Secret Agent Oscar-nominee Wagner Moura), the duo’s honour codes fascinatingly bumping against one another as both try to achieve their goals while avoiding Imperial intervention and protecting their own.
And then there’s young Jedi-on-the-run Devon Izara (Gideon Adlon) and her diminutive master Eeko-Dio Daki (Dennis Haysbert), who find themselves involuntarily pulled into Maul’s orbit. Like Maul, Devon and Eeko-Dio have lost everything because of Palpatine. And like Maul, both find themselves hiding out from the Empire on Janix (fans are already theorising whether the Twi’lek will eventually become old-canon favourite Sith apprentice Darth Talon). If experience has taught us anything though, it’s that whenever Maul takes interest in making a young Force user his new apprentice, the teaching invariably flows in both directions — and things get very complicated, very quickly. Just ask Ahsoka Tano or Ezra Bridger.
“All you really need to know is that this is a fast-paced action thrill ride about a guy who’s been wronged by a bunch of different people, and he wants payback”
Whether you’re a card-carrying Maul-head, haven’t been following Maul’s story since Episode I, or see the name and think somebody’s just misspelt a shopping centre, Shadow Lord is designed to welcome all comers. “All you really need to know is that this is a fast-paced action thrill ride about a guy who’s been wronged by a bunch of different people, and he wants payback,” promises Michnovetz.
So yes, Maul: Shadow Lord is a Star Wars show. It is a Dark Side show. But it’s also a crime series, a mob drama, a pulp fiction about bad guys and worse guys as heavily influenced by the aforementioned Heat — and The Untouchables, and Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe mysteries — as George Lucas’ own THX-1138 and Ralph McQuarrie’s OG trilogy sketches.
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As ever with Maul, it seems his rise to the top of the galaxy’s criminal underworld won’t be straightforward. Michnovetz teases some “pretty crazy stuff” in store; we may know how and when Maul’s story ends, but that doesn’t mean we know the whole story. “We know Maul’s fate,” he states, promising “some zigs and zags that you’re not expecting, 100 percent.” Plus, of course, it’s worth remembering that the survival of any supporting players isn’t guaranteed. As Michnovetz reminds us of the show’s new faces, “we don’t know their fate or their timelines.”
In time, Shadow Lord will complete the story of Maul — but this chapter is only just beginning. Season 2 is already in the works at Lucasfilm Animation, and there’s still much to explore before we discover how Maul came to pop up in Solo. “Just wait ‘til you see where this goes,” says Michnovetz. As Episode I taught us all those years ago, you can’t keep a good Maul down.
Star Wars: Maul — Shadow Lord begins streaming on Disney+ from April 6.
