Star Wars villain Darth Maul is getting his own series.
The popular character, who first appeared in 1999’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, will headline Maul: Shadow Lord, a new animated series for Disney+, it was announced at Star Wars Celebration on Friday.
The series was revealed in the final minutes of a panel spotlighting the 20th anniversary of Lucasfilm Animation, with Lucasfilm CCO Dave Filoni, who rose through the ranks via the animation division, and vp, animation Athena Portillo discussing the company’s rich output. But while they were chatty about woking with George Lucas or the animation process or past hits, when it came to discussing a future project, it was show, don’t tell. They simply dropped a trailer onto an unsuspecting crowd.
Related Stories
And when it became clear that it was a show centered on Maul, fans were sent into a rapturous ecstasy.
The show, which will tell the story of Maul teaching an apprentice, will debut in 2026. Sam Witwer, who voiced the Maul character in previous animated series, will reprise the part.
As a character, Maul has shown to have unexpected lasting power. He made for a fearsome and memorable appearance thanks to his unique look and a double-edged lightsaber, the latter blowing the minds of fans who first saw it onscreen in Phantom Menace. Played with acrobatic agility by Ray Park, the Sith Lord even managed to prove actually deadly, killing Jedi Qui-Gon, played by Liam Neeson. But he also died when he was cut in two by a young Obi-Wan Kenobi.
But Lucasfilm couldn’t keep a good bad guy down and the character was resurrected, albeit cybernetically, in the animated series The Clone Wars. With the latter, plus the animated series Star Wars Rebels, Maul was deepened and built out with a rich history (involving a whole crime underworld) and compelling story arcs.
The news of Maul’s series came during a panel looking at marking the 20th anniversary of Lucasfilm’s animation division, which in many ways kept the Star Wars mythology going during some lean years in the aughts and early 2010s.
The panel looked at the early days of the animation division and Filoni talked of working closely with Star Wars creator George Lucas, who held animation in high esteem and pushed for the development of now commonly used techniques as previsualization. The duo also showed a never-before-seen clip, in previz form, of a sequence that never made it into the Clone Wars series that showed Anakin Skywalker chasing Boba Fett through the skies and streets of Coruscant. Also shown was an episode from the upcoming animated series Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld.
Star Wars Celebration, the mostly biennial convention that assembles the faithful followers of the George Lucas-created sci-fi fantasy, is currently underway in Tokyo, Japan. At the event, Disney has revealed the title and release date of Shawn Levy and Ryan Gosling’s standalone Star Wars film and shown off the .
