Lucasfilm's new CEO, Dave Filoni, wanted Maul: Shadow Lord to achieve one major thing. This year's Darth Maul Disney+ show serves as a ten-episode direct sequel to his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the seven-season series that gave Filoni his start at Lucasfilm as creator George Lucas' real-world Padawan. He went on to create Rebels, Ahsoka, and much of the MandoVerse before recently being promoted to lead Lucasfilm, replacing Kathleen Kennedy.
Star Wars Insider's penultimate issue included an interview with Darth Maul's voice actor Sam Witwer, who discussed Dave Filoni's "mandate" for Maul: Shadow Lord. The newly-placed Lucasfilm CEO created the 2026 Clone Wars sequel, while Matt Michnovetz is on board as its head writer and supervising director.
The Disney+ star confirmed Filoni's request was simply "to do everything better" in all areas and to "push everything further" than ever before:
"Dave Filoni gave us the mandate to do everything better: acting, scripts, story, cinematography, sound. He told us to push everything further."
Ultimately, Witwer made it clear that the biggest goal for him and the entire team was to "make this the best thing [they’ve] ever done." The actor's biggest Star Wars credits to date were as Maul in The Clone Wars and Rebels, but also notably voiced Starkiller in the beloved non-canon The Force Unleashed games.
It sounds as if the actor was more involved than ever for Maul's first solo outing, including shooting live-action footage for "complex, emotional scenes," allowing the animators to replicate those moments as best as possible:
"We’ve tried things you wouldn’t imagine, like me shooting reference footage for complex, emotional scenes, so the animators see how my eyes and expressions worked."
Witwer even got involved on the creative side, noting a "strange, emotional" subplot that wasn't in the scripts and was among his favorite Maul storylines yet:
"We built this subplot that wasn’t in the scripts and what came out of it is one of my favorite things we’ve ever done with the character. It’s strange, emotional, and absolutely Star Wars."
Maul: Shadow Lord will premiere on April 6 with two episodes dropping weekly on Disney+ until the finale hits the service on Star Wars Day, May 4, marking a unique and historic release schedule for the galaxy far, far away.
How Maul: Shadow Lord Will Push Star Wars' Limits
Despite his debut in The Phantom Menace being regarded as one of the worse Star Wars movies, Darth Maul, originally played by Ray Park, has long been listed among franchise's greatest Sith villains. He stood out from the get-go thanks to his strikingly menacing design, his unique double-bladed lightsaber, and badass combat in the movie's final duel where he killed Liam Neeson's Qui-Gon Jinn.
He only became more intriguing through The Clone Wars and Rebels, which resurrected the beloved foe and turned him into one of the galaxy's most complex villains, turning his back on the Sith while maintaining a vendetta with Kenobi.
Shadow Lord has the potential to be one of Star Wars' most popular Disney+ shows, capitalizing on the villain's popularity with a fairly dark and gritty tale of the galaxy's criminal underbelly, closer to Andor than The Clone Wars.
Excitingly, the Disney+ sequel looks to be abandoning one of The Clone Wars' worst traits, being its season structure of multiple shorter arcs. As Maul: Shadow Lord has been touted as a ten-episode serialized tale, Lucasfilm seems to be prioritizing one larger story of the galaxy's worst, centered on Maul himself.
