Star Wars’ new TV series, Maul – Shadow Lord, fulfills everything George Lucas wanted to do with the Sith apprentice. Even George Lucas realized he’d made a mistake when he killed Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace, and he wasted no time trying to figure out how to bring him back. At one point, the cyborg General Grievous was supposed to be Maul, his body repaired with cybernetic technology. Lucas ultimately ditched that idea, only to figure out a similar way to bring Maul back in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, where he was voiced by Sam Witwer.
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“Maul is a character that’s our responsibility,” Lucasfilm’s Dave Filoni – creator of the entire series – explained to StarWars.com. “George [Lucas] and I had had some talks about Maul over the years and what his plans for Maul had been. And so I felt [a new Maul – Shadow Lord series] was a way of honoring that future that we were going to have and finally bringing some of it to light.” This story may have moved in the Star Wars timeline, but Maul – Shadow Lord really is the perfect way of completing the tale.
George Lucas Planned For Maul to Become a Crime Lord
George Lucas was always fascinated by the idea of exploring the galaxy’s criminal underworld. This was part of his original plan for Star Wars: Underworld, intended to be the first live-action Star Wars TV show. Lucas officially announced this at Star Wars Celebration 2005, exploring the lower levels of the city-planet Coruscant. Underworld sadly never happened, simply because Lucas couldn’t make it work financially. The design of Janix in Maul – Shadow Lord seems deliberately evocative of Coruscant, and the artistic style matches with the few brief clips from this canceled Star Wars TV show.
Lucas resurrected Maul in The Clone Wars, swiftly tying him in to the galaxy’s criminal cartels when he placed Darth Maul in charge of the so-called “Shadow Collective.” But Lucas’ plans went far beyond that, as we learned in Paul Duncan’s Star Wars Archives Episode 1-3 The Prequels. This revealed Lucas originally intended Maul to be the main villain of his own sequel trilogy; “Maul eventually becomes the godfather of crime in the universe because as the Empire fails, he takes over,” Lucas explained. Presumably these were still part of a sequel draft he passed on to Disney in 2012.
Star Wars canon has taken a very different approach. In canon, Maul doesn’t live until the sequel era; he met his end in one of the best Obi-Wan Kenobi stories, the Star Wars Rebels episode “Twin Suns.” This is set shortly before the events of A New Hope, which means there’s a large gap between Maul’s Clone Wars return and his death. Maul – Shadow Lord slots into this, and it’s telling a subtly different version of the same story. Maul is a crime lord, but in canon he’s struggling to survive the Empire’s rise to power.
Darth Maul Is Seeking an Apprentice
Maul – Shadow Lord reveals the Sith is seeking an apprentice of his own. He believes he’s found one in Devon Izara, a pink-or-red-skinned Twi’lek (depending on the lighting) and Order 66 survivor. Devon and her mentor Master Eeko-Dio Daki have traveled to Janix in the hopes of finding a safe haven from the Empire, which is already establishing its grip on the wider galaxy. Janix has been largely undisturbed by the Empire so far, allowing criminal cartels to flourish there. Maul, seeking vengeance on crime lords who betrayed him, has arrived on Janix – and he senses the possibility of finding an apprentice.
Lucas originally intended Maul to take on an apprentice, a Sith Lord he lifted straight from the old Expanded Universe. In these (non-canon) stories, Darth Talon was a red-skinned Twi’lek who lived a full century after the Skywalker saga, during a Sith resurgence. As Paul Duncan notes, Lucas was impressed enough with Darth Talon’s design to want to make her part of his sequel trilogy. The Sith Rule of Two would have been re-established under Darth Maul, with Darth Talon serving as the apprentice and Maul as the master.
The similarities between Devon Izara and Darth Talon are striking. We don’t yet know whether Maul will actually take on Devon as his apprentice (although the recent confirmation of Maul – Shadow Lord Season 2 makes it seem likely). Whether he achieves his goal or not, though, it’s so very appropriate that he’s become focused on a red-skinned Twi’lek Force-sensitive who he believes would make a good apprentice. The core of Maul – Shadow Lord really is lifted straight from Lucas.
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