{"id":431001,"date":"2026-01-24T21:15:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T21:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/431001\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T21:15:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T21:15:07","slug":"darth-maul-is-my-glup-shitto-and-im-happy-hes-back-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/431001\/","title":{"rendered":"Darth Maul Is My Glup Shitto, and I’m Happy He’s Back (Again)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1999, Lucasfilm\u2019s\u00a0Star Wars: The Phantom Menace<\/a>\u00a0introduced audiences to Darth Maul. Played by then-unknown Ray Park, the red-and-black Sith was defined more by aura than anything else: he had very little dialogue, but he looked cool as hell and looked great in his one fight scene. Whether you were just coming into\u00a0Star Wars\u00a0or excited for the franchise\u2019s first movie in decades, he seemed poised to be a scene-stealer.<\/p>\n

And then\u2026 he got cut in half, his bisected halves falling down a veeeeeeeeery long hole. Some comics played around with the idea of him coming back, and he was referenced in video games, but otherwise? Just a blip on the radar when it came to the larger Prequel narrative establishing Anakin Skywalker\u2019s descent into Darth Vader. We likely wouldn\u2019t be talking about him today, but then Star Wars: The Clone Wars<\/a>\u00a0went and brought him back. In a few months, he\u2019ll headline his first solo television project in\u00a0Maul\u2014Shadow Lord<\/a>,\u00a0set between his final (plural) appearance in\u00a0Clone Wars\u00a0and his eventual resurgence in Star Wars Rebels<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Like in Big Two comics, death\u2019s always been a bit of a funny thing in\u00a0Star Wars,\u00a0with many a character coming back after it seemed like we saw the last of them. When it comes to the current era of the franchise, which itself technically began in the episodes of\u00a0Clone Wars,\u00a0Darth Maul is ground zero or close to it. Midway through the show\u2019s third season in 2011, audiences were introduced to Savage Oppress, Maul\u2019s brother and effectively a reskin with a lighter skin tone. What initially seemed like a more fleshed out version of the dead Darth and a fascinating antagonist in his own right turned out to be a stealth operation to bring back the actual Maul the following season.<\/p>\n

Over the rest of\u00a0Clone Wars\u2019 and later Rebels, Maul ends up surprisingly involved<\/a> in the state of the galaxy and characters like Obi-Wan and Palpatine come Revenge of the SIth and the Original Trilogy. In a lot of ways, it feels like a flex on behalf of Dave Filoni and George Lucas: not only does Maul get to come back, he\u2019s allowed several rematches with the man who ruined his life, throws in with the Mandalorians and becomes a crime lord with his brother, and\u00a0is aware of Anakin\u2019s importance. That Maul\u2019s up-to-date on the lore of Star Wars and gets to have all this happen to him would be eye-rollingly dumb (and in some cases it is) if it weren\u2019t for a small, but key constant of his characterization: Star Wars never forgets to remind you that from his first appearance up to his last, he\u2019s a loser.<\/p>\n

A problem with several once-dead, now returned characters like Boba Fett<\/a> and Ahsoka is that the forces involved are aware they have to look cool to justify bringing them back. They\u2019re inherently booked to be awesome and come out on top at the end of the day, and any time they\u2019re not posing for an action shot is just dead air with flickers of potential. Fortunately, Darth Maul doesn\u2019t have this problem because there\u2019s a degree of self-awareness in everything surrounding him. He looks great in fights<\/a> and he\u2019s got fans, but he\u2019s far from a load-bearing pillar, even when he\u2019s being positioned as such. In terms of screentime, he\u2019s only in three of the many arcs that make up Clone Wars and in five of Rebels\u2019 75 episodes.<\/p>\n

If anything, Maul\u2019s appearances across both shows underline how his continued survival only comes because he keeps entering other characters\u2019 orbit: every time he face off with Obi-Wan ends in defeat, and the only person he can completely relate to is a 16-year-old he\u2019s tried manipulating twice. He got his brother killed because they were both too loud for Palpatine to ignore, and he himself dies in the arms<\/a> of the man he spent years fixated on, whose name he shouted into the endless desert like a scorned lover after doing a Shakespearean monologue to himself<\/a>. Maul\u2019s not so much the hero of his own story as he is someone looking to get back into others\u2019 so he can warrant his own mention in the wiki. The tragedy and hilarity of his character is how much he fights to matter and doesn\u2019t see how he\u2019d be better off\u00a0not\u00a0mattering in the grand\u00a0scheme of things.<\/p>\n

\"DarthLucasfilm <\/p>\n

All of that is to say that Filoni and company have spent years knowing that Maul sucks, striking a fine balance between making him worth the return while still punching him down every now and again to humble him. (He gets thrown off the ledge by a man he blinded<\/a> two minutes earlier, for crying out loud.)\u00a0But therein lies the question with\u00a0Shadow Lord:\u00a0on a \u201cnew for the franchise\u201d planet full of criminals, cops, and a potential apprentice to take on, can the Maul we\u2019ll see there gel with the Maul we\u2019ve seen get beaten down across two shows in the 2010s? Will he maintain his loser energy or get some kind of proverbial glow up as he tries to become a crime lord?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll find out when Maul\u2014Shadow Lord\u00a0hits Disney+ on April 6.<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1999, Lucasfilm\u2019s\u00a0Star Wars: The Phantom Menace\u00a0introduced audiences to Darth Maul. Played by then-unknown Ray Park, the red-and-black…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,178143,75,337,21883,133025,178217],"class_list":{"0":"post-431001","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-darth-maul","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-star-wars","14":"tag-star-wars-rebels","15":"tag-star-wars-maul-shadow-lord"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}