The Star Wars galaxy is full of minor characters who have taken on a life of their own. From Willrow Hood, the ice cream maker-carrying background extra in The Empire Strikes Back, to someone like Sebulba, who is inexplicably still a vital part of the franchise’s present-tense canon after several decades, Star Wars is full of one-note characters who have evolved into something far more thanks to a combination of peripheral media materials and fans’ adoration. And no single character encapsulates this unique alchemy of effects more than Darth Maul.
When he was initially introduced as the visually-striking and highly memorable antagonist in 1999’s The Phantom Menace, he was also immediately dispatched, cut in half and unceremoniously disposed of by a young Obi-Wan Kenobi. Despite only having a couple of lines of dialogue and a total of seven minutes of screen time, the character’s horned physique, double-sided lightsaber, and critical role in the “Duel of the Fates” made him a fan-favorite for years to come.
Now, after years of sneaking his way into numerous Star Wars shows and movies over the years, Maul is coming back in full force, getting his own animated series in the form of Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord. It can be a bit confusing attempting to make sense of Maul’s story, considering just how disparate the whole thing is, so before his new series begins, let’s break down how, when, and why Maul is even alive at this point.
Maul – Shadow Lord picks up Darth Maul’s story just after the events of The Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith have concluded, in the year 18 BBY (If this number is immediately confusing to you, fret not, I’ll explain: the Star Wars timeline is measured in relativity to the ‘Battle of Yavin,’ a.k.a. the events of A New Hope. Thus, if something is taking place 18 BBY, it’s eighteen years before A New Hope.) So what has happened to Maul prior to this show? Well, infamously, he was cut in half by Obi-Wan in The Phantom Menace, which is set in 32 BBY. Then, in The Clone Wars animated series, it was revealed that Maul had actually survived that fall and gone through a couple of different pairs of metal legs, as he re-entered the fight shortly after 22 BBY (when Attack of the Clones is happening).
A lot happens to Maul during Clone Wars: he squares off against Obi-Wan, he challenges Darth Sidious, his brother named Savage Opress (the name is not relevant, it's just too funny to not include) is killed, etc. But then, when Clone Wars was canceled amidst the Disney Corporation’s acquisition of Lucasfilm, it left Maul’s storyline on an ambiguous cliffhanger. So, when the creator of that series, Dave Filoni, began work on a different animated series for this new era of the franchise, it wasn’t long at all (read: barely a season) before he roped Maul into that show as well. Thus, Maul became a regular player on Filoni’s Star Wars Rebels, which was set between 5 BBY and 2 BBY. Here, Maul was a straggler of sorts, attempting to accumulate power through trickery and deceit. However, the character ultimately met his end in the final season of Rebels, seeking out Obi-Wan Kenobi one last time on Tattooine and challenging him to a duel, in which Obi-Wan kills him in a single stroke (again, not really relevant, but very funny.)
So that’s the end of Darth Maul right? Killed for the second time by Obi-Wan Kenobi, the end? Wrong. The next time Maul would show up would be in 2018, in one of the final scenes of Solo: A Star Wars Story. That film is set in 10 BBY and depicts Maul as the leader of a fearsome intergalactic gang known as Crimson Dawn. He’s only in the film for a matter of seconds, and is deliberate sequel-bait for a story that wound up never getting a mainline continuation, but it did add a whole new layer of depth and/or confusion to Maul’s whole story. So apparently, between the cliffhanger of Clone Wars and the start of Rebels, he both became a crime kingpin and lost it all? Fantastic.
But wait, there’s more! Because shortly after the Solo scene, Filoni returned and delivered a final season of The Clone Wars, which heavily featured Darth Maul, chronicling his whole attack on Mandalore and his duel with Ahoska Tano, which happens concurrently with the events of Revenge of the Sith.
All of this to say that, in many ways, Maul – Shadow Lord is truly a follow-up to that final season of Clone Wars. That show ends with Maul escaping containment and running amok, leading directly into where audiences will find the character in his new show. Will Maul – Shadow Lord actually tackle the monumental task of explaining how Maul became the leader of a crime syndicate? Viewers will have to wait and see, but one thing is for certain; whatever happens is destined to only make Maul’s illustrious history that much more complicated, dense, and kind of funny.