How in the Galaxy Has Darth Maul Survived This Long?

The producers and stars of “Maul – Shadow Lord” tell IndieWire about this visually stunning and dark new “Star Wars” tale about a resilient former Sith.

We all feel like we’ve been sliced in half, sometimes. But there’s only one person in this or any other galaxy who has been, then put on a cybernetic bottom half and kept on trying to take down the powers that be.

Darth Maul was part of the coolest 15-minute sequence in “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace,” and that would have — indeed, perhaps should have — been enough. But Maul returned from the dead in the animated “The Clone Wars,” where he became a crime lord and even gained an apprentice in his brother Savage Opress, then made the jump back to live-action with a cameo in “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” and got a conclusion to his arc in “Star Wars Rebels.” Now, Maul is becoming the only “Star Wars” villain to get his own TV show after Boba Fett, with the animated “Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord.”

“It’s been a real surprise that the character continues to evolve and to grow,” Sam Witwer, who has voiced Maul since 2010 when the character was resurrected in “The Clone Wars,” told IndieWire. “The fun of it is reinventing him every time that we bring him out and learning new things about him.” 

“Maul – Shadow Lord” serves as both a sequel to “The Clone Wars” and also a prequel to Maul’s appearances in “Solo” and “Rebels.” The show is set in the early days of the Empire and sees a Maul that was defeated during the Siege of Mandalore, losing his seat of power, his influence, and his allies. He is now seeking revenge not only on Sidious, the Sith Lord who cast him aside in favor of a younger apprentice (Anakin), but also the crime syndicates that abandoned him. At the same time, Maul is also intrigued by the prospect of recruiting a new apprentice, a Jedi Padawan named Devon.

This show does a lot of things to stand out from previous animated “Star Wars” projects, from its darker and more violent tone to its dazzling visuals, and even its storytelling format. This is a fully serialized story, without any side adventures, and it led to many challenges for the production. As executive producer Athena Yvette Portillo, a veteran of Lucasfilm animation, explained, the serialization meant the team had to pay extra attention to consistency. A new post-production process was introduced in order to polish episodes, which weren’t fully locked until the rest of the season was ready to go.

“We didn’t want a situation where someone would say episode four looked better than the first,” Portillo said. “We would constantly go back to earlier episodes and pepper them with what we learn from later episodes. It’s like cooking. You’re taste testing the episodes, then going back in and adding spices to keep it consistent. We had a longer lead-up time for development than previous shows, so we could test different methods.”

The result speaks for itself, with “Maul – Shadow Lord” looking absolutely beautiful, with a textured, painterly look that’s nevertheless vibrant and full of color. This is the work of Joel Aron, who served as director of photography for the series. Aron was already pushing the boundaries of “Star Wars” animation in “The Bad Batch” with a more practical, even live-action approach, but he takes things up a notch in “Shadow Lord.” The show uses oil-on-canvas matte paintings, paintbrush strokes on glass panes, and even live-action, practical models for some of the spaceships. This practical approach speeds up the production process compared to rendering things like a Star Destroyer or an extensive background, and it gives the show a grittier look. 

This is perhaps most noticeable in the lightsaber action, with the blades having paintbrush strokes in them, the hand-made approach making the lightsaber appear less as an elegant weapon for a more civilized age, and more like a raging fire cutting through air (and often flesh). The lightsabers don’t just look visceral, they sound it, too. According to Portillo, sound designer David W. Collins incorporated Sam Witwer’s actual screams into the blade swishes to capture the anger and hatred of the character, even in his lightsaber attacks. 

It’s an appropriately different look for a different kind of “Star Wars” animated show, a darker story that leaves behind the sense of adventure and mission-of-the-week format of the past, and even the clear divides between good and evil. Here, there is only one certainty — the evil of the Empire — but beyond that, things aren’t as clear-cut. There’s a detective with a robot partner who follows the rules to the letter, even if it means condemning a whole planet to fall under the rule of a dictatorship. There’s a Jedi apprentice struggling with what it means to be a defender of justice and peace in a time of lawlessness. Even Maul, despite his ruthless methods, recognizes the need to fight the bigger evil in the Empire.

Given this is the first canon “Star Wars” TV show to be released since the end of “Andor,” there was a desire to keep the Empire fresh. Unlike the clear, oppressive, and quite close evil and cruelty of the Empire in “Andor,” “Maul – Shadow Lord” keeps the Empire at arm’s length. It’s a looming presence, one that every character is well aware would heavily disrupt (or outright end) their lives if it were to show up — or, a threat that some characters are blissfully ignorant of, believing the propaganda of the Empire as bringing order and safety. “We wanted to make it a menacing, strong, external force that would come in at the right time to push the story forward,” said co-creator and showrunner Matt Michnovetz.

Of course, none of this works without Maul, the main appeal of the show, and a character that continues to endure three decades after his introduction. “He’s a survivor, and dedicated to his causes,” explained supervising director Brad Rau. “He’s also a manipulator, and a very charismatic one at that. He provides a kind of devil on the shoulder of our characters, to tempt them in some ways and reveal some uncomfortable truths in some ways. He’s, in some regards, a relatable character, due to the losses he’s suffered, and the mistakes he keeps repeating.” 

When we are reintroduced to Maul in “The Clone Wars,” the character is all about vengeance against the Jedi and about amassing power for himself. But in “Shadow Lord,” after having lost his brother, his mother, and his home, Maul seems to be changing a bit. The idea of a padawan becomes his driving force throughout the season, not only to destroy Sidious and avenge those he lost, but maybe even to correct the mistakes made on him. It’s a fascinating story for the guy that started as a one-note villain, just a cool devil-looking guy. For Sam Witwer, the animated series serves as a way to fill in blanks about the character.

“I’ve always had a lot of questions about Maul, and now I feel like I finally have the full vision of his arc throughout “Star Wars” for the first time in my life,” Witwer said. We know where Maul ends, alone and deranged in “Rebels,” with vengeance being the only thing on his mind and causing his demise. This show is exploring a different side of Maul, one that is starting to reckon with the idea that he wants more than just revenge, a guy who was deeply hurt and is trying to fill the void of what he’s lost. He is, in many ways, a mirror image of Ahsoka, Anakin’s former padawan, a character who was also taken from her family and indoctrinated into a cult that later abandoned her. But where Ahsoka continues to live, to grow, and to do good, we know Maul ultimately loses everything rather tragically. And yet, Maul endures in stories like this.

As long as there is “Star Wars,” somehow, Maul may continue to show up and act angsty.