One of the most popular villains in Star Wars history will finally headline his own television series.
Lucasfilm announced at Star Wars Celebration that Darth Maul will be the subject of their next animated series on Disney+. According to StarWars.com, the show — officially titled Maul: Shadow Lord — is “set after the events of the final season of The Clone Wars, [when] Maul rises again to lead the underworld factions” and “plots to rebuild his criminal syndicate on a planet untouched by the Empire.”
Maul will be played by Sam Witwer, who voiced Maul during his appearances on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, as well as in his brief live-action cameo in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
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Maul first debuted in Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace, where he was physically portrayed by Ray Park (after the original actor cast in the role, Benicio del Toro, dropped out of the project as the character became more and more of a silent, physical presence) and voiced by Peter Serafinowicz. The apprentice to the evil Emperor Palpatine, Maul appeared to die in the film — not too many people come back from “getting cut literally in half” — but his popularity with fans led George Lucas to bring him back as a character on the animated Clone Wars series, where Maul was now armed (or, uh, legged) with a cyborg lower half.
Maul later appeared on Star Wars: Rebels, where he had a second (animated) duel with Obi-Wan, the guy who sliced him in half in the first place. The character has also appeared in numerous Star Wars novels and comics. Given how they kept shoehorning Maul into projects that didn’t necessarily need him, like Clone Wars and Solo, it’s kind of surprising it’s taken this long to give him his own animated series.
Maul: Shadow Lord will debut on Disney+ in 2026. Unless you count anthology series like Star Wars Visions or Star Wars Tales, or the kid-centric Young Jedi Adventures, this will be the first new Star Wars animated series on the service since the conclusion of Star Wars: The Bad Batch.
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