If George Lucas had made the Star Wars sequel trilogy, it may not have been Palpatine that returned, but another Sith instead.
As revealed years ago in the publication of The Star Wars Archives, Lucas apparently had the idea of making Darth Maul the main villain of the new trilogy of films – “the godfather of crime in the universe” – who grabbed power after the fall of the Empire. In this way, Maul would have played the role that Emperor Palpatine played in the original trilogy. So who would play the Darth Vader role? In Lucas’s ideas, that would have been Darth Talon – a Twi’lek Sith from Star Wars Legends who lived over one hundred years after the events of A New Hope. In this way, Lucas would have brought back Maul as the master, and pulled in a Sith from Legends as his apprentice.
Now, let’s be clear that George Lucas was never exactly one to stick to a plan, and he was notorious for changing things up as he went – so the likelihood of this being the exact sequel trilogy he would have made is impossible to really know. But what is certainly noteworthy is the fact that Lucas had ideas of bringing Maul back as the main villain down the road, with Talon as his apprentice.
The reason I bring all of this up is because of a recent comment from Lucas’s own apprentice, Lucasfilm’s new President and long-time creative Dave Filoni. He worked with Lucas on The Clone Wars, and he created and developed the newest Star Wars animated series, Maul – Shadow Lord, premiering April 6. In an interview with StarWars.com, Filoni said:
“Maul is a character that’s our responsibility. George and I had had some talks about Maul over the years and what his plans for Maul had been. And so I felt it was a way of honoring that future that we were going to have and finally bringing some of it to light.”
That’s a very interesting quote, knowing some of those broad strokes about Lucas’s ideas for Maul. I have no doubt that Filoni and Lucas had far more conversations about these ideas than have been made public, but let’s just entertain these big ideas we do know about.
Maul had a red-skinned Twi-lek apprentice in Lucas’s ideas for the sequel trilogy, and guess what? In Maul – Shadow Lord, it appears Maul targets a red-skinned Twi-lek apprentice in Devon Izara. While there isn’t any indication (yet) that this is meant to be Darth Talon, it certainly seems like this is meant to pull some of Lucas’s ideas in to the story.
Additionally, Maul was meant to be “the godfather of crime” in Lucas’s ideas, and that has become a major part of the character’s story. From him assembling a criminal enterprise in The Clone Wars, to him running Crimson Dawn in Solo, Maul is a crime boss. But his efforts are always doomed to fail; he doesn’t attain galactic dominance – he just keeps striving and falling. Yet the ideas of Maul as a crime boss go directly back to Lucas, and I’m guessing this series will help to connect the dots to Maul running Crimson Dawn.
I’m sure there’s a lot more to the ideas George Lucas toyed around with about Maul, but just giving what we know and have seen of the series so far, Filoni’s comments are more than enough to pique interest. It really does seem like this is more than just a coincident, but that instead Filoni is taking some of Lucas’s ideas that would have been a sequel trilogy and working them into a different part of the timeline instead.
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