Star Wars is officially back with a brand-new show, this time centering on Darth Maul. The franchise just officially dropped the teaser for Maul: Shadow Lord, which implies that this will further explore his backstory and what we have not yet seen on-screen. For now, all we have is the one teaser, but more info is sure to come very soon.
Star Wars Returns with Animated Darth Maul Show
This is going to be the first project led by Maul in the history of this franchise. He was the primary antagonist in one movie, and he’s popped up in various other projects, but he has not yet been the central figure in any project. Here’s the first official teaser.
Fans with good ears will have immediately picked up on “Duel of the Fates,” the iconic theme from Episode I. It is almost synonymous with Maul at this point, which immediately keyed everyone into who this show would be about. The splash of red only hammered it home, as did the unsheathing of his iconic lightsaber.
It is otherwise an incredibly abstract teaser, promising only a full trailer tomorrow. It’s full of nice imagery and what appears to be a unique animation style to this franchise. We’ll know more tomorrow, but it’s more than enough to whet the appetites of fans everywhere.
It’s going to be a Disney+ original, which essentially every single new show in this franchise is. It is highly likely to be a weekly release, since most Disney+ shows are and pretty much all the other streaming shows in this franchise have been as well.
Why a New Maul Project is so Fun
Darth Maul is arguably the coolest villain in Star Wars. Darth Vader is the most terrifying and iconic, but Maul is so much cooler. He’s got a double-bladed lightsaber and a red face. The worst thing this franchise did was kill him off immediately in Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace.
Dave Filoni, who is now one of the studio heads, saw that for the glaring mistake it was and rectified it. He retconned the death in The Clone Wars, and then Maul also returned in a few other projects, such as Solo: A Star Wars Story and Star Wars Rebels.
There’s a ton of backstory available now for Maul, making him arguably the deepest and most interesting villain outside of Vader himself. Nothing beats Anakin’s turn to the Dark Side, but Maul’s tragic journey is a pretty great story, too.
It is perhaps emblematic of a larger problem within the franchise. They cannot let go of the Skywalker Saga. It’s officially over, but everything since then has, by and large, been about characters from within that range or filling in timeline gaps. The few new things, like Acolyte, are not well-liked by fans.
So the problem lies with both the creatives and the fans. Creatives are unwilling to try new things and expand this galaxy far, far away, and fans are unwilling to even consider the few attempts to do so. It is a big reason Star Wars is the way it is now.
So while it’s amazing to get more on Darth Maul, one of my favorite characters in this series, it may not bode terribly well for the future of Star Wars if we are just continuously reusing the same characters, timelines, and more.
Conclusion
While there are reasons to be somewhat concerned about the future of this franchise, Maul: Shadow Lord does at least represent something somewhat fresh within the confines of the Skywalker Saga. He’s not a new character, but he is a new protagonist, and that’s at least sort of interesting!
