In 1999, Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace introduced audiences to Darth Maul. Played by then-unknown Ray Park, the red-and-black Sith was defined more by aura than anything else: he had very little dialogue, but he looked cool as hell and looked great in his one fight scene. Whether you were just coming into Star Wars or excited for the franchise’s first movie in decades, he seemed poised to be a scene-stealer.
And then… he got cut in half, his bisected halves falling down a veeeeeeeeery long hole. Some comics played around with the idea of him coming back, and he was referenced in video games, but otherwise? Just a blip on the radar when it came to the larger Prequel narrative establishing Anakin Skywalker’s descent into Darth Vader. We likely wouldn’t be talking about him today, but then Star Wars: The Clone Wars went and brought him back. In a few months, he’ll headline his first solo television project in Maul—Shadow Lord, set between his final (plural) appearance in Clone Wars and his eventual resurgence in Star Wars Rebels.
Like in Big Two comics, death’s always been a bit of a funny thing in Star Wars, with many a character coming back after it seemed like we saw the last of them. When it comes to the current era of the franchise, which itself technically began in the episodes of Clone Wars, Darth Maul is ground zero or close to it. Midway through the show’s third season in 2011, audiences were introduced to Savage Oppress, Maul’s brother and effectively a reskin with a lighter skin tone. What initially seemed like a more fleshed out version of the dead Darth and a fascinating antagonist in his own right turned out to be a stealth operation to bring back the actual Maul the following season.
Over the rest of Clone Wars’ and later Rebels, Maul ends up surprisingly involved in the state of the galaxy and characters like Obi-Wan and Palpatine come Revenge of the SIth and the Original Trilogy. In a lot of ways, it feels like a flex on behalf of Dave Filoni and George Lucas: not only does Maul get to come back, he’s allowed several rematches with the man who ruined his life, throws in with the Mandalorians and becomes a crime lord with his brother, and is aware of Anakin’s importance. That Maul’s up-to-date on the lore of Star Wars and gets to have all this happen to him would be eye-rollingly dumb (and in some cases it is) if it weren’t for a small, but key constant of his characterization: Star Wars never forgets to remind you that from his first appearance up to his last, he’s a loser.
A problem with several once-dead, now returned characters like Boba Fett and Ahsoka is that the forces involved are aware they have to look cool to justify bringing them back. They’re inherently booked to be awesome and come out on top at the end of the day, and any time they’re not posing for an action shot is just dead air with flickers of potential. Fortunately, Darth Maul doesn’t have this problem because there’s a degree of self-awareness in everything surrounding him. He looks great in fights and he’s got fans, but he’s far from a load-bearing pillar, even when he’s being positioned as such. In terms of screentime, he’s only in three of the many arcs that make up Clone Wars and in five of Rebels’ 75 episodes.
If anything, Maul’s appearances across both shows underline how his continued survival only comes because he keeps entering other characters’ orbit: every time he face off with Obi-Wan ends in defeat, and the only person he can completely relate to is a 16-year-old he’s tried manipulating twice. He got his brother killed because they were both too loud for Palpatine to ignore, and he himself dies in the arms of the man he spent years fixated on, whose name he shouted into the endless desert like a scorned lover after doing a Shakespearean monologue to himself. Maul’s not so much the hero of his own story as he is someone looking to get back into others’ so he can warrant his own mention in the wiki. The tragedy and hilarity of his character is how much he fights to matter and doesn’t see how he’d be better off not mattering in the grand scheme of things.
All of that is to say that Filoni and company have spent years knowing that Maul sucks, striking a fine balance between making him worth the return while still punching him down every now and again to humble him. (He gets thrown off the ledge by a man he blinded two minutes earlier, for crying out loud.) But therein lies the question with Shadow Lord: on a “new for the franchise” planet full of criminals, cops, and a potential apprentice to take on, can the Maul we’ll see there gel with the Maul we’ve seen get beaten down across two shows in the 2010s? Will he maintain his loser energy or get some kind of proverbial glow up as he tries to become a crime lord?
We’ll find out when Maul—Shadow Lord hits Disney+ on April 6.
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