The Star Wars franchise is chock full of exciting animated projects that do an excellent job of expanding the vast and beloved live-action universe established by George Lucas back in 1977 with Star Wars: A New Hope. But it looks like fans can anticipate at least one more animated series to add to the mix in Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord, which was just announced at Star Wars Celebration Japan. Voice actor Sam Witwer, who has voiced Maul in all of his animated appearances over the years, opened up to IGN about developing the project during an exclusive interview out of the festival.
Witwer, who will star as Darth Maul in this new series, revealed to IGN not only where Shadow Lord falls in the overall Star Wars timeline, but also Maul’s headspace at this point in the story.
“It takes place a year after the Clone Wars have ended, and Maul is in a very challenging place, because the people that he had around him, a lot of them scattered or betrayed him during the Clone Wars. So we’re dealing with a guy who is trying to figure out well, my God, what is my purpose? Maul, you have to remember, is a classically trained force user, a classically trained Sith,” Witwer explained.
“He comes from a time of magic, knights, passion, enthusiasm, aggression, fire – magic. Now he is seeing an empire that he knew was coming, and the magic and the color is being sucked out of the universe. How does he feel about that? Did he see that that was going to be the way that it was? Is this different than what he expected and how does he feel that affects him? What does he wanna do about it? Can he do anything about it? He’s not very equipped right now. So this is a guy who’s trying to figure out what his destiny is.”
Witwer also noted that Maul’s perspective at this point was shaped by his upbringing. “Something else, he was trained his entire life to hate and kill Jedi, and he killed more Jedi than people were aware of in the Clone Wars. You know, there [were] indications that [he] and Savage Opress went off on a rampage as well. It was worse than you think. And now they’re gone. How does he feel about the Jedi, his sworn enemy – how does he feel about them now that they are gone? You know? All of these things, so we’re challenging this perspective. So what is his destiny? What is who is he without his greatest enemy to fight and destroy? And he learns that perhaps part of his destiny is to inspire a young person; train an apprentice.”
Unfortunately, the only tidbit Witwer would share about the mysterious apprentice is that she is a “very surprising” character. “I can’t tell you that much more,” he teased. “But she’s quite something.”
Witwer, who is also well-known for past roles in Battlestar Galactica and Smallville, has stepped into a development role with this project, and it seems to have proven fruitful to work directly with Lucasfilm CCO Dave Filoni. “Dave has always been very collaborative, wonderfully collaborative in fact, and this one, they were like, well, listen, you’ve been playing this character for 15 years,” the voice actor revealed. “So, you have to be in this deeper than you’ve ever been before, because we need you to weigh in on stuff, we need to have people to debate these things. So it’s been kind of thrilling in that way, having constant phone calls and emails and discussions. and it’s been educational.”
The actor has done a lot of work on Maul’s arc, which he opened up about from his “death” in The Phantom Menace to resurfacing during Clone Wars and his final showdown with Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars Rebels. “Well, if we’re developing this chapter it’s important to review all of that information and watch it closer than we ever have, because we must learn new things about this character or it’s not worth too much,” Witwer told IGN in Japan. “Looking at those previous works, I’ve always had a lot of questions about this character. There were things that the audience I haven’t seen them pick up on yet but that I feel are really worth talking about. For example, why did Maul never give up Palpatine?”
And why didn’t he, then? Witwer made it a point to delve into the realities of this question. “You have a show where the Jedi are like, ‘We know that there is someone named Darth Sidious. We know that he is manipulating things, and we’re trying to figure out who this is, who is the Sith lord. Maul through all those years knows exactly who the Sith lord is; he could go to a phone booth, call up the Jedi and say, ‘It’s Palpatine’ and hang up the phone and really screw Palpatine’s plans. He never does that. Why? Why doesn’t he turn on Palpatine?”
He added, “The only moment he finally decides, OK, I’m gonna turn on Palpatine is at the very end, right before the world ends, Order 66 and the Clone Wars end, he becomes so freaked out that in a desperation he reaches out to Ahsoka Tano. But Palpatine has caused so much suffering for this guy. Palpatine took away Savage Opress. Palpatine killed his family. Palpatine took away his mother. Palpatine showed no loyalty to Maul, and the moment Maul found loyalty in Savage Opress, he took that from him. So what is it? Why did Maul maintain this loyalty? What is it about that character? What is it about Maul that we are learning from things like that?”
For Witwer and the team developing this project, Maul’s past is crucial to who he is in the present. “These are the types of questions that I have been asking for years, and in this show, we get to create stories about them. I mean, not flashbacks – we don’t literally tell these stories, but there are aspects of that character that have not been explored, traits that that character has that people wouldn’t think he has, because he’s different than Palpatine,” the actor explained.
“Palpatine is a 10 out of 10 mythic villain – he’s as bad as you get. Maul is not that. If you watch The Clone Wars very closely, he does not kill unnecessarily. I’m saying too much. He’s a bad, bad guy in this show, but our show is bad guys versus worse guys. So Maul is every bit as bad as he was before, in some ways even worse.”
Bad guys turned worse? Sounds like our cup of tea! This series is obviously still in development, which means we’re far off from a release date at this point — but for now, we can dream about how killer it seems like it will be.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
