This past year on Star Wars Rebels, one of the most captivating facets was the return of Darth Maul, who now dropped his moniker down to just “Maul.” After attempting, and failing, to recruit Ezra to the Dark Side, Maul became infatuated with confronting Obi-Wan to finish the battle they began back in The Phantom Menace. During a panel at Star Wars Celebration, Rebels and Clone Wars director Dave Filoni explained how he brought the character back from “death” and George Lucas’ input on that process, or lack thereof.
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As far as how the concept of bringing Maul back for Clone Wars came about, Filoni explained that idea came directly from Lucas himself. Filoni said, “We would be in a story meeting and [Lucas] would often say stuff like ‘I’ve got an idea and you’re gonna love it,’ and I thought, ‘Ohhhhh, that so seldom lines up.’ Then he said, ‘We’re bringing Darth Maul back,’ and I said, ‘Really?’”
The director was initially reluctant about the idea, pointing out, “One of the things I really loved about Phantom Menace was that he was cut in half, and I thought that was so smart because it ends the debate, not like Boba [Fett] going into the Sarlaac. Endless debate, right? I mean, it’s over, he’s cut in half. And he said, ‘No, he’s coming back.’ And I said, ‘Well how does that work?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know, you’ll figure it out.’”
Creating the reason Maul could exist once again was a little more complicated. “To make it believable,” Filoni discussed, “I knew there had to be some Dark Side belief or persistence of evil that keeps him alive but as this sort of terrible thing. He couldn’t be anything human, he couldn’t be conscious of himself.”
Harkening back to Filoni’s point about how deliberate his wounds in Phantom Menace were and how Mail could have recovered from that, Filoni confessed, “We largely decided to leave that portion of the story a little bit nebulous. We discussed it, it was part of a comic book. But we had a plan that he and I discussed and we didn’t want to be too implicit with it. The more you define that stuff, it can be a little bit difficult to believe.”
Were you happy about Maul being featured in Rebels or do you wish he truly had died in Phantom Menace? Let us know in the comments!
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