Since his introduction, Darth Maul has kind of become the unsung villain of Star Wars. He doesn’t have the same gravitas as Vader or Palpatine, but he has appeared in multiple Star Wars projects, including his debut in The Phantom Menace, his survival story in The Clone Wars, his ominous cameo in Solo, and his eventual redemption arc in Rebels. Off the screen, he’s appeared in dozens of comic books and often appears in flashbacks across all forms of media.
But finally, Maul is going solo with Maul Shadow Lord, an upcoming animated series focusing on Maul in the era between The Clone Wars and Rebels, with Sam Witwer reprising the voice role. An exclusive look at the series at Star Wars Celebration Japan revealed he’s not the only focus — in fact, one of the most beloved Legends Sith will appear as well.
According to reports from Star Wars Celebration, the trailer (which has not yet been released online) reveals that Darth Maul was seen training an apprentice. Many reports claim the apprentice bears a resemblance to Darth Talon, one of the most beloved Sith characters in the non-canonical Legends timeline. Darth Talon was the focus of the mid-2000s Star Wars: Legacy comics, which were set more than a century after the original trilogy. The red-skinned Twi’lek became the poster child for that era of the Star Wars Dark Horse comics. To put her reputation in perspective, a character in The Big Bang Theory has a bust of her in his bedroom.
Pairing her with Maul, a character who existed 150 years earlier, may seem like an odd idea, but it comes from none other than George Lucas himself. In a Game Informer article about a Darth Maul video game that never came to be, a source described George Lucas walking into a room with statues of Maul and Talon to hear a pitch.
“Before they could finish their spiel, Lucas cut them off, stood up, walked over to the statues, rotated them to be facing the same direction, pushed them together, and said, ‘They’re friends!’” the source said. “He likened Darth Maul to Sonny from The Godfather, and he likened Darth Talon to Lauren Bacall.”
That wasn’t the first time Lucas would try to pair the two together despite their generational differences. In The Star Wars Archives - Episode I - III, 1999 - 2005, George Lucas described his plan for a future sequel trilogy. “Darth Maul trained a girl, Darth Talon, who was in the comic books, as his apprentice,” he said. “She was the new Darth Vader, and most of the action was with her. So these were the two main villains of the trilogy. Maul eventually becomes the godfather of crime in the universe because, as the Empire falls, he takes over.”
A certain subsect of the Star Wars fandom has decried the recent choices of Lucasfilm leadership as going against George Lucas’ vision. But if Shadow Lord is able to introduce Darth Talon into canon alongside Darth Maul, then this is exactly what Lucas intended. It may be too late for them to star in the sequel trilogy, but maybe an animated series could give his dream pairing the saga they deserve.
