Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord premieres tomorrow April 6th on Disney+. This is an animated series following Maul shortly after the end of the Clone Wars. If you haven’t been watching the shows, you might be asking how that is possible.
Yes, he definitely got sliced in half by a young Obi-Wan Kenobi at the end of the Phantom Menace.
Let’s get caught up
Spoiler Alert for pretty much all of Clone Wars, Ahsoka, more. I’ll make this quick
- Maul powered by hate lives on without a lower torso long enough to get dumped on Lotho Minor aka Junk World where he constructs a lower half for himself out of scraps
- This also drives him insane and he stays in this state until the Night Sisters dispatch Savage Opress to find him and bring him back to Dathomir
- He’s found absolutely bat shit crazy, it’s strongly suggested he’s been eating other people, and he has a spider-like lower body
- Mother Talzin fixes his brain and gives him some regular robot legs
- Maul and Savage team up with Death Watch to “help” them regain control of Mandalore
- This is also when Maul starts taking over all of the crime syndicates
- Once Death Watch has control of Mandalore, in a turn that shocks nobody except Bo-Katan, Maul takes over
- Darth Sidious shows up and absolutely kicks the shit out of Maul and Savage, then kills Savage and imprisons Maul
- The Mandalorians loyal to Maul break him out, he comes back to Mandalore
- He’s captured by Ahsoka Tano but escapes during Order 66 (which he and Ahsoka both survive)
And here we are.
What do I expect?
At the end of Season 7 of the Clone Wars, Maul talks about thriving in the chaos of the collapse of the Republic and whatever comes next (which is the Empire). I assume that will be the basis of the show. Testing the limits he can go and testing the reach of the Empire.
New Jedi
Devon Izara (Gideon Adlon) is a Jedi Padawan training under Master Eeko-Dio Daki (Dennis Haysbert), both of whom are on the run after Order 66. The trailer teases that Maul will try to manipulate Devon into joining his fight against the Empire. It’s a lot more likely that Maul is using her to see what exactly the Empire will send for a couple of Jedi. This is how I think the Inquisitors become involved, but they may just be after him.
The Inquisitors
The trailer shows both the Eleventh Brother and Marrok. If Marrok sounds familiar, I’ll assume you’ve watched the Ahsoka show. If not, you probably wanna skip past all this.
The way Marrok dies in Ahsoka looked exactly how Savage Opress died in the Clone Wars. So it’s been heavily rumored that some Night Sister magic was involved. I think we find that story out within this show.
Bounty Hunters
Dave Filoni loves bounty hunters, so I am pretty sure we see some here. And there are a lot of options from Clone Wars that he can use including Asajj Ventress and Boba Fett. But maybe they use this as a tease for one you might see in Mando & Grogu.
Darth Vader
I would be a bit surprised by this, but he does lord over the Inquisitors, so maybe we do see him pop up in the show. Vader versus Maul to end the season could be a tremendous fight.