Star Wars will be giving fans of the prequel trilogy a hot piece of new content with Maul – Shadow Lord, the next Star Wars animated series coming to Disney+. As the title implies, Shadow Lord will fill in a key chapter of Darth Maul’s story arc, set in the era between his escape from Order 66 (in the Clone Wars animated series) and his final days as a crime lord, as the Rebel Alliance was first taking shape. Lucasfilm and Disney+ previously announced that the series would follow Maul attempting to take on his own dark side apprentice, but a new report suggests that Maul himself won’t be quite the same nefarious villain we know and love (to hate).
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Actor Sam Witwer has done more to make Maul famous than anyone, thanks to his impeccable voice acting as the animated version of the character. In many ways, Shadow Lord represents Witwer getting his proper flowers from the Star Wars franchise, by finally getting to lead one installment. Witwer recently appeared on the podcast of his fellow Star Wars co-star Katee Sackhoff (who plays both the animated and live-action versions of Bo-Katan Kryze), and he tried to explain the nuance of how the series will examine Maul’s moral lines.
“It’s [a story] about bad guys vs worse guys,” Witwer explained. “This isn’t going to be a show where you find out Maul is a real teddy bear, man … We’re not doing that. But is he as bad as Sidious or Vader? Actually no. From the Sith perspective, this guy has flaws … [there’s] humanity that seeps in at various points because of things that have happened to him.”
Star Wars Rebels and the final seasons of Clone Wars have arguably laid some of the groundwork for Maul to have a more complex psychology as a character. Those series took a character who had no more personality than a fearsome look and attitude, and a game-changing double-sided saber, and gave him much deeper lore. That’s not to mention an actual voice to speak with – and one that has proven to be as lasting and iconic as any of the other major villains in Star Wars.
In both animated shows, we saw Maul either building his own clan (of criminals), seeking reconnection with his brother, Savage Opress, or trying to build new connections by serving as a master to wayward Force-users like Ahsoka Tano or Ezra Bridger after Opress was dead. While those arcs definitely felt like Maul trying to lure young, impressionable souls into the corruption of the dark side, they also revealed that Maul is deeply damaged and haunted from his time as Darth Sidious’ apprentice, his near-death in the duel against Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the decimation of his Dathomirian people. According to Witwer, Shadow Lord will be examining that tarnished side of his character:
“Maul will question whether creating the Empire was a good idea,” Witwer explained. “[Maul’s] like, ‘Is that what [Sidious] had in mind? This is a little scary.’ Maul comes from a time of swords, sorcery, magic and knights, and now all of that color of the universe is being sucked out of this mechanized Empire. And Maul’s like, ‘Is this right? Is this the universe we were trying to build?’”
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As you can see from that quote above, Maul will be walking that wonderfully twisted line of thinking that the Empire is bad simply because it is not his form of evil rule and control. It’s a curious angle for the series to take, as the entire role of Dathomir and the roots of its mysticism are becoming a much bigger story motif in the Star Wars universe. Clone Wars, Rebels, Tales of the Empire, Tales of the Underworld, The Acolyte and Ahsoka, have all been expanding the roles and mythos of the Nightsisters of Dathomir and other Force-based religions based in magic; it sounds like Shadow Lord could reveal a more pivotal story about how Maul led a crusade to preserve and control old mystical powers in the Imperial era. That mission syncs perfectly with where we find Maul in Rebels later on, trying to secure his own Sith holocron from an ancient temple before Vader and Sidious get to it. How it fits with his time as the head of the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate (which is now a major part of lore) remains to be seen.
Often, the best villain stories are the ones where the bad guy not only believes that they’re wrong, but that they’re on some noble mission to “fix things” (see: Thanos). Shadow Lord sounds like it could not only delight in that ironic humor, but also go the extra step of having Maul try to sell that twisted vision to an apprentice. We’re here for it.
Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord is set to premiere on Disney+ in 2026.
