D23 has been full of exciting news, and the weekend is just getting started. Another announcement sure to excite fans is the premiere date for The Clone Wars Season 7. Supervising director Dave Filoni told EW the exciting news today, and it is hard not to be jazzed by the new. The good news comes with some tough news as well because this will be the final season of the series.
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When asked about the state of future seasons and if this season would be the last, he sounded wistful. Filoni began, “It will conclude the story that [George Lucas] and I started together. There could be stories after that that take place with a lot of those characters. But especially for me directing Clone Wars, being that hands on, I wrote and directed the final four episodes. It’s the end of something I feel really good about.”
The Clone Wars‘ final 12 episodes will air on Disney+. The series has been surprisingly resilient, but this is the endpoint for a show that many fans have come to love. Star Wars: The Clone Wars began all the way back in 2008 with a theatrical feature-length film. The series shifted to Cartoon Network in 2009 as a series and continued for a while.
Disney would go on purchase Lucasfilm in 2012 and the company decided to end the series in Season 5 to focus on Star Wars Rebels and Star Wars Resistance. However, the fandom would not be denied and calls for more led to Netflix financing the sixth season of The Clone Wars in 2014.
Disney+’s announcement led many to believe that the series would find a new home there once details started to release. Filoni also teased a Darth Maul and Ahsoka Tano conflict during the interview called “The Siege of Mandalore” as a central focus in the final season. Things are shaping up for a bombastic conclusion on Disney’s newest platform.
One of the more shocking storylines explored in the series was Darth Maul’s survival of his duel with Kenobi in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Actor Ray Park portrayed the character in Phantom Menace, with Filoni confirming earlier this year that he performed a motion-capture performance for the animated character in the new episodes.
“I wanted this fight to be big. I wanted this to be an epic lightsaber fight… This one had to be among the best, if not the best we did,” producer Dave Filoni shared during a Clone Wars panel at Star Wars Celebration. “I went and, I know Ray Park, and I said, ‘Ray, wouldn’t it be great… why don’t we suit you up in mo-cap suit and be Darth Maul?’ So when you see Maul fighting, it’s going to be really Maul fighting… There’s just something unique about how Ray moves… It was a great moment having him perform it.”
Fans previously saw Maul in Star Wars Rebels as well as last year’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, played by Park and voiced by Sam Witwer. Stay tuned for more on Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
