The vast galactic story of Star Wars begins with Episode I: The Phantom Menace – a relatively tame chapter in the extraordinary mythology of George Lucas. By the time The Clone Wars enters the picture, a monumental shift can be recognized within each character who has already begun to be molded toward their destinies. Among them lies a fleeting but unforgettable arc of Darth Maul.
However, given his short-lived arc as a sinister villain in Star Wars: Episode I, it was his return as a shadowy presence in Star Wars: The Clone Wars that turned him into a subject of Senecan tragedy.
The Clone Wars Does Justice to a Deadly Sith Lord
Evolution may be a product of time, but without a necessary cause to back it up, it is simply a nuisance to those who end up on its inevitable path. Darth Maul was one such character whose existence ended even before he could evolve and answer his true calling. But, The Clone Wars proved that wrong by turning the Sith Lord around from a defeated villain to one of the most fearsome creatures ever to step foot in the galaxy.
Through The Clone Wars, Darth Maul was no longer a two-dimensional character with no past or future. Instead, he was a child of the shadows whose need for revenge was driven by the darkness that stalked him for his entire life – making Maul an integral piece of the Star Wars lore whose arc now hits ten times as hard in the gut than his first appearance on screen in The Phantom Menace.
The Clone Wars Brings Back an Old Star Wars Legend
Despite the hurdles in animation, the Star Wars team unanimously arrived at one conclusion when the story demanded the return of a long-gone Sith Lord, the menacing Darth Maul. The team then wanted to bring back Ray Park from The Phantom Menace, even if it meant having to separately incorporate the physicality of the original actor into the villainous character’s animated model.
He is Darth Maul. That was so cool. Maul lives as sort of this really great character with a really nice arc going through Clone Wars up through Rebels, when you see him fight Obi-Wan. We really study the movies and what came before us, but we’ve had to create a lot of Maul, because he’s in, I think, eight minutes of the movie.
Certain ways he’ll lift his leg, or he’ll do a double jump, or the foot plant that he’ll do… little things like that I certainly wouldn’t have thought of in terms of what we would do in animation. Even the way he stalks people when he’s Maul — he’d sort of become this kind of predator — to be able to take that and add it to what we already have was really a pretty epic pairing.
The end result was a true exploration of this character who was kidnapped at birth, groomed and brainwashed to become the ultimate, lethal weapon of Darth Sidious, discarded due to his failure, and resurrected as a vicious, blood-thirsty, criminal mastermind who became the most recognizable villain of the franchise, after Darth Vader.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace are available for streaming on Disney+