Darth Maul is back and better than ever!

by James Herrera

Ever since I was a kid, Darth Maul had me completely captivated. I remember the anticipation leading up to The Phantom Menace in 1999 — all I could think about was how that double-bladed red lightsaber was going to look on the big screen. I’d wander the grocery store aisles hunting for just the right Pepsi or Mountain Dew can or bottle, hoping to score one with Maul’s menacing face on it. He was everywhere that summer, and rightfully so.
Then the ending happened. When Obi-Wan cut him down at the end of Episode I, I was genuinely heartbroken. In my mind, Maul was supposed to be a constant — a looming threat woven through the entire prequel trilogy, ultimately meeting his end at the hands of Anakin Skywalker himself. That felt like the perfect symmetry: Maul’s defeat being the moment that cemented Anakin’s power and foreshadowed his dark destiny. But that’s the thing about head canon — it doesn’t always make it to the screen. I made my peace with it, and admittedly, Count Dooku turned out to be a worthy successor. The prequels told the story they needed to tell.

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When The Clone Wars brought him back in 2012, my reaction was equal parts excitement and skepticism. I didn’t know what to think. It could have been a cheap retcon — a desperate ratings grab that cheapened one of cinema’s most striking villain introductions. But it wasn’t. Not even close. What the writers did with Maul in The Clone Wars — and later in Rebels — was nothing short of extraordinary. They took a character who barely spoke a word in his debut and gave him depth, rage, tragedy, and purpose. His arc across both shows remains some of the finest character work the Star Wars universe has ever produced.
It’s exactly what Luke Skywalker meant when he said, “No one is ever truly gone.” With the right writers and a story worth telling, any character can not only return — they can become something greater than anyone imagined.

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I had the incredible good fortune of attending Star Wars Celebration Japan in April 2025, and one of the highlights of the entire event was the Lucasfilm Animation 20th Anniversary panel. I was there with the amazing Mari, and together we settled in for what turned out to be one of the most memorable moments at Celebration Tokyo.

​The panel was moderated by David W. Collins, with Dave Filoni — Lucasfilm’s Chief Creative Officer — and Athena Yvette Portillo, Vice President of Animation Production at Lucasfilm, taking the stage to walk the audience through two decades of storytelling magic. It was a genuine love letter to the animation department — a sweeping look back at how The Clone Wars laid the foundation for everything that followed, from Rebels to The Bad Batch and beyond. You could feel the pride and passion in the room as the history of Lucasfilm Animation unfolded before us.
Then, just as the panel seemed to be winding down, Dave Filoni paused and looked out at the crowd. With that trademark calm confidence of his, he said something along the lines of — “We’ve talked about the past of Lucasfilm Animation, and the present… but what about the future?” The room stirred. And then the trailer dropped.
Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord.
The reaction was immediate and electric. The crowd absolutely erupted. CinemaBlend reported that the response from attendees was “the most I’ve seen Star Wars fans lose their minds” during the entire Celebration. And they weren’t wrong. Every frame of that trailer felt like a gift — dark, stylish, and unmistakably Maul.
Then, just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, surprise guest Sam Witwer took the stage — and in that unmistakable, bone-chilling Darth Maul voice, he looked out at the crowd and simply said…
“Play it again.”
The room lost it all over again. The trailer rolled a second time to another round of thunderous applause, and honestly, it hit even harder the second time around. Sitting there in that room with Mari, surrounded by thousands of fans who had grown up with this character, it was one of those rare moments where you realize you’re witnessing something special — a fandom united in pure, unfiltered excitement for what’s to come.

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Having said all of this — the history, the passion, the weight of what this character means to so many of us — attempting a solo show centered on Maul is a monumentally challenging undertaking. The bar is high. The expectations are even higher. And I’m thrilled to tell you: they absolutely nailed it.
The first two episodes hit the ground running and never let up. As George Lucas himself once famously said about Star Wars storytelling, it needs to be “faster and more intense” — and that’s exactly what Shadow Lord delivers right out of the gate. Episode one wastes no time, with Maul — back alongside his loyal Mandalorian allies — immediately setting his sights on the crime syndicates that betrayed him after his capture by Darth Sidious, pitting gangster against gangster in a calculated scheme of revenge while simultaneously discovering a Force vision pulling him toward a surviving Jedi Padawan named Devon Izara. Episode two escalates the chaos with a breathtaking high-speed freeway chase, a tense confrontation between Maul and Devon’s Jedi Master, and the deepening of a detective noir subplot as the overworked Officer Brander Lawson closes in on a criminal threat far beyond anything he’s ever faced.
The action is extraordinary. Flat out, some of the best kinetic, purposeful action Star Wars has ever produced in animation. And the look of this show — where do I even begin? The animation has come an incredibly long way since The Clone Wars first debuted back in 2008. What Lucasfilm Animation has achieved here is genuinely stunning. Cinematography and effects lead Joel Aron drew inspiration from classic filmmaking, incorporating hand-painted brush strokes and physical matte paintings into the digital animation to create something that feels cinematic in a way animated Star Wars never quite has before. My immediate reaction watching the first episode was visceral: this feels and looks like Blade Runner. The rain-soaked streets, the shadowy interiors, the deep purples and reds bleeding through every frame — it is an absolute feast for the eyes, and frankly, some of the finest animation I’ve seen in years.
And then there’s Maul himself. Sam Witwer remains the only person who should ever voice this character — full stop. The Maul we get in Shadow Lord is cold, calculated, and utterly sinister. He doesn’t storm into rooms, he materializes in them. Every entrance feels like a shift in the atmosphere. When Maul arrives somewhere, you feel it before you see it. This is the ultimate villain operating at his most terrifying — patient, methodical, and completely in control.
The supporting cast is equally compelling. Gideon Adlon voices Devon Izara, the disillusioned Jedi Padawan at the center of Maul’s dark designs — a character whose internal conflict between the light and the pull of the dark side promises to be one of the season’s most gripping threads. Wagner Moura brings Brander Lawson to life, the dogged, world-weary detective whose pursuit of Maul gives the series its unmistakable noir heartbeat. And Dennis Haysbert as Jedi Master Eeko-Dio-Daki — Devon’s quietly powerful mentor — provides a moral counterweight to Maul’s darkness that already feels essential to where this story is headed.
As someone who keeps a fairly casual relationship with the deeper lore of this era, I find myself genuinely hungry to see what comes next — and that is perhaps the best compliment I can give a premiere. If these first two episodes are any indication of where the remaining eight are headed, every Star Wars fan is in for something truly special. And knowing that a second season is already confirmed and in development? Even better.
This one is worth every bit of the wait.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐  9/10

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