Maul – Shadow Lord is a character-driven series built around a moment in Star Wars history that fans have wondered about for years. What did Darth Maul actually do in the years following the fall of the Republic? The show just premiered on Disney+ with two episodes and picks up roughly one year after the events of The Clone Wars. This makes one wonder where the show falls in the Star Wars timeline.
When Maul – Shadow Lord Takes Place on Star Wars Timeline
Finally, we have a definitive answer as Disney+ has now placed Maul – Shadow Lord in its official Star Wars Timeline Order section within the Star Wars hub on the streaming platform. The show slots between The Bad Batch and Solo: A Star Wars Story in the chronological viewing order.
This placement is interesting because Solo is the other major Star Wars project in which Maul appears during the Reign of the Empire era, and with Shadow Lord sitting directly ahead of it on the timeline, Maul now occupies two consecutive entries in that stretch of the galaxy's history. It's the first time the character holds back-to-back slots on the official Disney+ timeline.
The Star Wars canon organizes its projects across six distinct eras, and Maul: Shadow Lord lands in the Reign of the Empire era, which covers the period between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. The series is the fourth entry in that era chronologically, out of 13 total projects within it.
So the chronological viewing order for the full Reign of the Empire order is as follows: Tales of the Underworld, Tales of the Empire, The Bad Batch, Maul: Shadow Lord, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, Star Wars Rebels, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Set on the urban planet of Janix, Shadow Lord follows Maul as he tries to reassemble a criminal empire in the early days of Imperial rule, away from the Emperor's reach. Created by Dave Filoni, the show picks up the thread left dangling at the end of The Clone Wars Season 7, when Maul escaped Ahsoka Tano's custody during Order 66.
How Important is Maul – Shadow Lord's Timeline Placement?
The gap between Maul's exit from The Clone Wars and his brief cameo in Solo has been one of the more puzzling stretches in his arc. When audiences saw him at the end of Solo, he was already operating as the mastermind behind Crimson Dawn, the crime syndicate pulling the strings around the Pyke Syndicate and the rest of the Shadow Collective. Shadow Lord is positioned to show exactly how he got there, rebuilding power from the ground up while the Empire consolidated control across the galaxy.
Solo is set roughly a decade before A New Hope, which puts it at least six or seven years after the events of Shadow Lord. This gap gives the new series room to show a version of Maul still in the early stages of his criminal ambitions, well before he becomes the calculating underworld boss seen in the Han Solo film.
After Solo, Maul next appears in Star Wars Rebels, where his involvement with Crimson Dawn is dropped entirely in favor of his obsessive hunt for Obi-Wan Kenobi. The timeline placement of Shadow Lord means fans can now follow the full arc in order, from his escape during Order 66, through the construction of his empire on Janix, into his cameo at the head of Crimson Dawn in Solo, and eventually to his death at Obi-Wan's hands on Tatooine in Rebels.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
