The next big Star Wars project is the animated series Maul – Shadow Lord, which premieres on Disney+ on April 6. I’m very excited about this show. But it does seem to me a bit ironic, at the same time, that the big project at the moment is a story all about someone who very clearly died on-screen in a Star Wars movie.
Now, I know that isn’t quite the case, because Maul didn’t really die when he was cut in half and fell down a reactor shaft in The Phantom Menace. The Clone Wars explained that he survived. But that’s just the point: It was very obvious that Maul died, until a later story decided to explain how that wasn’t the case.
But if Disney were running things when The Clone Wars first ran, instead of George Lucas, Maul would likely never have been brought back to begin with.
Late last year, it was revealed that the Lucasfilm brass had developed a new movie idea, The Hunt for Ben Solo, in which they would explain how Ben Solo actually survived the events of The Rise of Skywalker. Adam Driver was heavily involved, Steven Soderbergh was attached as director, and Scott Z. Burns had written a completed screenplay. Kathy Kennedy, Dave Filoni, and Carrie Beck were enthused by the idea and felt good about the explanation for how Solo could still be alive. Yet still, Disney executives Alan Bergman and Bob Iger said no, for this simple reason: they didn’t see how Ben Solo could be alive.
Does it strike anyone else as ironic that they’re now highlighting a series about Maul?
In a recent interview with Esquire about Maul – Shadow Lord, Filoni – now Lucasfilm President – admitted that the reason bringing Maul back from the dead worked is because fans like the character.
“At the end of the day, people like that character. So they kind of will it back into existence, as long as it comes back in a form that they enjoy.”
That’s interesting, isn’t it? The idea that fans will be willing to accept that a character is back from the dead as long as they like the character? As long as the story it tells is worthwhile? Right or wrong, the story can be secondary. After all, the explanation for Maul’s survival is that he stayed alive based on his hatred. That’s only a step above “somehow, Maul returned”. Yet it worked! Why? Because Maul is cool, and the ensuing stories have made him FAR cooler than he ever was in The Phantom Menace. Fans are willing to put up with it if it winds up telling a great story.
That’s something Disney doesn’t seem to realize.
George Lucas did, though. When he was creating The Clone Wars with Filoni, he saw the vision and decided to bring Maul back. Then, he tasked Filoni with figuring out how. Filoni adds:
“Maul was a character that George wanted to bring back in Clone Wars. And I thought that’d be very difficult—since he cut him in half. But he was very confident that I would find a way to make that justifiable.”
And in the end, guess what? It worked! At the time people were skeptical, but it’s been proven worthwhile as the stories about Maul have added so much to his character and, as evidenced by this series, opened the door to lots of other stories. That’s what could happen with other characters, too, like Ben Solo. Sure, it might be debated at the time. But if the story is good enough, and the character is popular enough, it won’t be long before people stop caring about the controversy of bringing him back. That’s what is so frustrating by the blanket “how can he still be alive?” rejection given by Bergman and Iger. The Lucasfilm brass had worked on an entire story about how he survived. The issue should be “is the story good enough to justify it?”, not “could he still be alive?”
If Disney wants to continue expanding George Lucas’s universe, they also have to be willing to tell stories like George Lucas did. As of late, it seems they’ve been bound more by fear than storytelling possibility.
So as you watch Maul – Shadow Lord, and get excited about all the great stories about Maul in The Clone Wars, Rebels, and this new series, be grateful the decision to bring him back was made while Lucas still owned the company. Otherwise, none of these stories would have happened, as it would have been met with a simple, “we don’t see how Maul can be alive”.
In other words: thank you, George Lucas.
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