Darth Maul was reportedly supposed to come back in Obi-Wan Kenobi
According to sources who worked on the Disney Plus show, the villain was written off
Aux News Darth Maul
Without Darth Vader ruling the galaxy yet, the Star Wars prequels needed a villain who’d have some lightsaber-wielding skills. Thus came Darth Maul, a guy who looked more like a rejected X-Men mutant than someone who’d be as intimidating as the masked heavy-breather, with a head adorned with horns and a Rorschach test-like black-and-red pattern on his face.
After being “killed” in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and then coming back in the Clone Wars animated series and a confusing cameo in Solo: A Star Wars Story, the Sith Lord was eventually killed by an old Obi-Wan in Star Wars Rebels. Still, the character was reportedly supposed to return in the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Hollywood Reporter spoke to several sources close to the production, who said Ray Park was supposed to reprise the role in the series.
According to one of the sources, Park “was on set for pre-production and was also involved in stunt training.” But while that source claims footage of Park as Darth Maul may have been shot, another source says it’s likely it was test footage, rather than actual scenes from the show.
It’s not said why Darth Maul was written off, but the THR story explains that The Mandalorian co-executive producer Dave Filoni was the one who “conceptually keyed in on a way for Vader to be brought back as the big bad, with the Grand Inquisitor, a character made popular by Filoni in the animated series Star Wars Rebels, also put into the story.”
But, confusingly, THR also reports that a source from Lucasfilm said Maul “was never intended to return for the series.” So, it’s unclear what actually happened to the concept of bringing back the character.
This comes nearly a year after Park, in a since-deleted Instagram post, shared a picture of Maul’s horns, with the caption “Meet me on Dathomir! SITH LIFE!” Though Park hasn’t confirmed if the production sources are right, it sure looks suspicious that he had to delete the image that seemingly confirmed he would be back.
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Eh, that’s probably for the best…he’s not half the man he used to be.
I wish his lower half had lived instead of his upper half. Robitt on top half and Maul-wang on the bottom half.
There’s a better/funnier version of this concept where the top half is a B1, but I can’t for the life of me find it.Also not the only concept for a reverse-cyborg:
The beauty is, who’s to say that didn’t happen? Like some crazy scavenger came across Maul’s lower half some time after Maul dragged his torso out of there, and decides, “I think I’ll give a C1-10P unit human legs?”
“Maul-wang”!
Finally found it. Credit to BirdyRaider on twitter.
Hilarious! I had no idea.
Really wouldn’t have made any sense if the animated shows are supposed to be canon unless it was just a quick cameo. Rebels makes it pretty clear that Maul only encounteres Obi-Wan once after the Clone Wars and it’s that final battle they have on Tatooine where Obi-Wan is considerably older than portrayed in the trailer for this show.
The Ray Park thing possibly suggests a direction change for Obi-wan but it could be a number of other things too.
Could easily be that he’s slated to appear in the Asohka series, probably in flashbacks. They have history. Also possible he could turn up in The Mandalorian at some point, again in flashbacks – he had the Darksaber for an extended period during the Clone Wars.
Another possibility is that he makes an appearance in the upcoming sequel to Jedi: Fallen Order – I think the timeline fits for that – though I’d have imagined they would use the Clone Wars / Rebels voice actor in that case.
I’m just happy Filoni can’t fuck this one up by bring back PS2 Luke Skywalker.Which means he will unnecessarily incorporate some other character from this spin off series into this show.
“One: Ahsoka needs to be louder, angrier and have access to a time machine. Two: whenever Ahsoka’s not on screen, the other characters should be saying, ‘where’s Ahsoka?’”
My guesses are:1. Park was on set as a stunt coordinator.2. Park came in and they shot a few test scenes in case they went with the Darth Maul character in the future.3. Disney planned to have Darth Maul show up in a surprise cameo but Park let the cat out of the bag and spoiled it, so they ditched the idea.4. Disney planned to have Darth Maul show up in a surprise cameo but Park let the cat out of the bag and spoiled it, so they had him delete the post and they’re now denying they ever intended Maul to be in the series. That way it’ll still be a surprise when he pops up.
If A.V. Club just spoiled Darth Maul in Kenobi for me. I will never visit this site again.
If he is still going to turn up in it, you can probably blame Disney for deliberately letting it slip to drum up publicity. They do that. On the other hand… it might just be true that he was meant to be in it, but now he’s not.
None of us are visiting this site again, but for our own beautiful reasons.
Had this argument with a fellow geek and let me tell you, if you think there is “no” chance of this happening… ummm… Here’s the problem. So this is supposed to take place 9 years after order 66 which means it’s happening 5-7 years before Kenobi meets Maul for the last time. The series is only 6 episodes (or is it…?) so in order to tie Maul into this story they’d have to make a rough decision. However, the remaining stories in the pipeline create possibilities and almost demand action.
Namely Ahsoka (and whatever the project featuring Qi’ra is going to be called if it gets made at all). If you haven’t watched Rebels all the way through, this might be some spoilery stuff but the whole reason Maul finds Kenobi is because he manipulated Ezra into tracking him down. Ezra, who is undoubtedly going to be one of, if not the focus of Ahsoka’s show, is a complete unknown for the people who didn’t watch the cartoons. You have to set him up somehow…
So the problem is they have to set-up another show by either breaking the timeline, doing a second season, or doing a prologue in Kenobi for Ezra and Maul. Of those three, which sounds the most likely?
“Test footage?” Yup, probably about 6 1/2 minutes of test footage, I’m guessing…
Simplest answer: it’s a shot for shot remake of their encounter in Rebels, used as the post-credits scene of the final episode.Literally just those 3 minutes, but live action. It’s easily inserted as an endcap set years after the events of whatever story the Kenobi series tells, and you don’t need Ezra or any other context or setup to understand it. Even people who have never seen a cartoon episode are tangentially aware of Maul’s survival and robot legs thanks to that hologram in Solo. Episode 1 does all the heavy lifting for their short conversation and their motivations for being in that desert.
For people who don’t watch the cartoons, it’s a badass scene. For people who have seen this duel already, there’s still the treat of seeing Ewan McGregor and Ray Park getting to reunite on screen and have that same “full circle” moment that the animated versions of Obi and Maul have already had. Plus I think a post-credits scene is the perfect opportunity to show an aged-up Ewan sporting the full Alec hairdo, showing the final transitional step from prequel Obi-Wan to OT Old Ben, so two birds with one stone.Maybe that’s still the plan and they’re trying to misdirect us. Maybe it was decided that this scene doesn’t mesh thematically with the rest of the series and wouldn’t work well as an epilogue. Maybe they figured that it was too superfluous to just remake an existing scene. I can easily imagine a lot of backlash to them dropping in a remade Rebels scene, and people hating it for the same reasons that I personally think it would be cool.
Add three minutes for Obi-Wan telling Ezra to get away and seek Ahsoka? Done and done.
I didn’t watch the Rebels episode where he gets killed by Kenobi. But if Kenobi goes offworld in this new show, is there anything from Rebels to preclude they had an earlier encounter away from Tatooine in which they both survive? That could be a work-around. It could even be the explanation for why Maul thinks Kenobi survived Order 66.
Not that I know of. They could possibly use ritual Ezra and Maul did to peer into the future to explain how Maul knows Kenobi’s alive but that’s a lot more setup. Like, that’d be a stinger setting up season 2.
They could just have them run in to each other somewhere other than Tatooine. They throw down, Kenobi gets away, Maul doesn’t know where he went, and it doesn’t break continuity.It just seems really unnecessary.
This whole show is essentially unnecessary, so while you’re in the sandbox why not make sure you get all the turds out? =) I made a bet with my aforementioned friend that Ezra, Maul, and Cal from Fallen Order would show up in this show. Not because I want them to but because it’s what Disney does. Feige gave them a template that made them billions upon billions of dollars and they are doing every last thing they can to replicate it. However, unlike Marvel, they’ve been pumping out middling content for Star Wars since S1 of The Mandalorian, imho.
Ezra would be the same age as Luke, so unless his parents thought Tatooine is a great place for a family vacation, I wouldn’t expect that. The Fallen Order guy, or maybe Kanan Jarrus or Hera Syndullah, yeah, that could happen.
Well, I feel like with the Inquisitors, Nur being mentioned by name in promo materials, and a visit to a non-Tatooine cityscape dropping Cal in the mix is an easy possible backdoor pilot. The Maul and Ezra stuff would all have to be handled in a flash forward… back… forward? I don’t know where I am any more.
Could’ve been great but Rebels kinda screwed the pooch with ‘Twin Sons’.Not that Maul and Kenobi’s final moments together were terrible but it was rushed and all too brief because they still had to jam in Ezra in the story for a good amount of run time because, God forbid, we have one episode that doesn’t focus on that kid.
While I agree that episode didn’t need so much Ezra in it, I never felt any part of Obi-Wan’s and Maul’s interaction was rushed. Neither has a reason to have a long conversation; what comes next is inevitable. The duel being so anti-climactic is what makes it great. A physical manifestation of how Obi-Wan’s experiences have lead to greater wisdom and made him more capable, whereas Maul’s focus on hatred and revenge has made him even less of a threat then when he first lost to Obi-Wan.Would I have loved to see the two of them get more screentime together? Yes. Would that have actually made the scene better? I doubt it. I love that scene, because I think it’s as long as it needed to be. Sometimes less is more.
The brief duel or exchange didn’t bother me. I was referring more to Maul tracking Obi-Wan down, leading up to his encounter with Kenobi but interjecting Ezra’s story periodically just ruins the pacing. I would’ve loved an episode showing more of Maul’s rage-fueled determination but clearly diminished vitality and presence as his quest for vengeance comes to a solemn end.
“Maul’s focus on hatred and revenge has made him even less of a threat”I haven’t watched that show, but getting sliced in half might have hurt his dueling too
I had thought he was very dead (never watched Clone Wars). So anyway, I take it he’s been hanging out on Exegol all this time.
I think it’s obvious they pulled him out of this so that he can star in his own show “Better Call Maul”. Set on the desert planet of Albuquerrqie, Maul gets caught up in an illicit blue Kyber crystal export business.
I could definitely see him working at a small booth in a shopping center. It’s the Maul kiosk.
Maul Chicks
Maul Rats
The Mauls of Medicine
Maul ‘n Oats
Damnit Star Wars, please stop linking stuff I might be interested in (movies, the D+ live action shows) with stuff I don’t give a crap about (Star Wars Cartoons/books/comics). The only star wars cartoons I have ever watched and likely every will watch are the Tartatosky Clone Wars shorts and the Ewoks and Droids cartoons from when I was a kid. It’s annoying enoughthat they tried to cram like 200+ episodes of cartoon backstory into The Mandalorian season 2, and so hopefully they are not doing the same with the Obi Wan show.
The best I’ve done is read Wikipedia articles to explain shit that happened in Clone Wars and Rebels, etc. The cartoons don’t intrigue me at all, but the stories sound pretty cool when they’re summarized. Either way, I don’t like having to do homework for a series where they were just as capable of creating original characters.
I am the same way. Supplementary material should be just that, it shouldn’t be something separate you need to read or watch to understand a characters back story. The thing I liked about The Mandalorian was that you only needed to watch 3 movies to understand who he was and what was going on. And even those three movies were so deeply absorbed by modern culture you probably could get away without actually watching them.The whole thing reminds me of Lost and how some major plot points/mysteries were revealed in either books or video games. Which was super annoying.
The cartoons are pretty good IMO. Clone Wars starts slow and a bit rough but eventually starts telling mini-stories over four episodes that are entertaining and add depth to characters. Rebels also starts slow but gets better and better. And Bad Batch is solid from the get-go.Honestly I like the Mandalorian just fine, but it’s not as good as Clone Wars was at its best IMO.
You should really watch Clone Wars and Rebels, they’re both pretty much the best Star Wars material to come out in the past ~20 years.
I tried to for the first time in the early pandemic after Mando 2 aired. I had to turn it off 60 seconds into episode 1 because the 1996 PlayStation One polygons were absurd and un-immersable.
Sorry you feel that way, the stories are really good and the animation gets better as it goes on.
Wikipedia tells me that Clone Wars is 133 episodes (plus a movie) and Rebels is 75. Even if I cared about the characters from those shows I have seen so far, I don’t have the time or the effort for that kind of commitment.
I got through them by watching an episode or 2 after work when I had time. Nobody said you have to binge them all in a weekend.
You can skip a lot of them. I’ve barely scratched the surface but if you’ve watched enough to know who Ahsoka and Rex are, you’ll be fine.But once you know who those two are, you should watch the final four episodes of the series. They really finished the series strong.
Yeah, I gave up on Mandalorian once it started bringing in Clone Wars people I could never care about.
Mandalorian at least explains who and what these people are when they show up. It’s not essential to watch, it fills you in. I actually really like that it’s a larger fabric of the Star Wars universe that pops up on the shows. After they turfed the Expanded Universe, everything is supposed to count as canon. Even some lit-sourced characters have popped up in Mando, Black K and Cobb Vanth’s the Marshal for one. (although there has already been some contradictions in some of the elements).Anyway it’s super cool in some of the things going on now, Emila Clarke’s Qi’Ra from Solo: A Star Wars Story is now running the Crimson Dawn crime empire in the period after Empire. And she auctioned off Han in carbonite! Cold.
Filoni isn’t up to the job. Disney is bigger than him. Do the right thing and get someone good running this ship.
Uh…
lol wat
The cockroach of the Star Wars universe.
Yeah, the show about Obi-Wan that literally has Duel of the Fates in the trailer ISN’T going to have Darth Maul in it at all. Sure.
Is there anyone else out there that feels like it was lazy to bring back Darth Maul after he was cut literally in half in The Phantom Menace? It’s not like they didn’t write a few great new characters and some generally ok ones for the cartoons (I wouldn’t count Savage Oppress in either of those categories).