Star Wars Rebels second season finale, ‘Twilight of the Apprentice’, ended with ex-Jedi Ahsoka Tano facing off against her former master/turned Sith Lord Darth Vader in an epic and emotional battle. It was also notable for the return of the former Sith apprentice Darth Maul as he met Ezra, Kanan and Ahsoka to take control of an ancient Sith temple. While this marked a big moment in Star Wars Rebels, executive producer and showrunner Dave Filoni told IGN during Star Wars Celebration that the fallen Sith was originally going to die at Vader’s hand.
“It’s interesting,” said Filoni. “This is a little bit inside, but Maul wasn’t meant to survive the Malachor episode. There was a lot of thought given to taking him out there because a lot of the Malachor arc, originally, was more about Vader confronting Maul and it was going to be a story about that. It became clear to me as the emotional story developed and we worked on it more that that was just going to be wrong, that if anything happened to Maul it needed to have its proper time and its proper space. That’s how he kind of got a pass and survived to this season.”
One of the other reasons Maul stayed alive was because of the potential Filoni and the rest of the Rebels team realized could be mined from the character’s presence. “You learned more about the character and more things developed. His relationship with Ezra in last season’s finale was planned but also surprising because Sam (Witwer, voice of Maul) is so good at being that coercive person and then Taylor (Gray, voice of Ezra) fed off of it. Because Taylor lives in a world where he’s not as knowledgeable about Star Wars as some of the more veteran fans like Sam and I and Freddie (Prinze Jr., voice of Kanan). The pull between Freddie’s knowledge of Star Wars and Sam’s knowledge of Star Wars is very real or Sam’s knowledge of the dark side or Kanan’s knowledge of the Light side – or Maul’s knowledge of the dark side. We wanted to play that more. You’re going to see this push and pull on Ezra and Maul is kind of that influencer that’s saying maybe power is a means to the end.”
Though Maul was defeated in the finale, he escaped to fight another day and can be seen in the third season’s trailer courting Ezra to the Dark Side. As for what Maul’s future might hold, Filoni said “What’s interesting is it’s not necessarily the Empire’s side he’s fighting on. He’s just fighting straight on the side of the power and darkness and the dark side. So it’s a bit different than something we’ve seen before which makes Maul a different villain than we’ve ever seen before. He’s not straight out with the main bad guy group. If the main bad guys saw him, they’d probably go after him too so he has to be real shady and shadowy with everything he’s doing and he’s almost better off trying to hang with those Rebels because they have morality which he can work to his advantage.”
SEE ALSO: Watch the trailer for Star Wars Rebels season 3 featuring Grand Admiral Thrawn
As for whether or not Maul will one day face Darth Vader, Filoni remained coy, though fans shouldn’t hold their breath for a potential showdown. Filoni believes that Maul vs. Vader “sounds like a great idea and then you start to develop it and you worry it’s a little more fan service-y. If it makes sense, it would happen but I’d say it’s a little unlikely.”
What do you think? Would you like to see Maul confront Vader in the third season or meet his end at the hands of Kanan or Ezra?
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Originally published July 19, 2016. Updated December 16, 2019.
