ST Darth Maul as the big bad in Lucas's ST?

I don’t think it’s about official titles. That never made sense, although I guess considering how annoying prophecies can be in terms of wordplay, maybe that’d be a way to get out of it. But Maul is essentially still a Sith Lord, even if Sidious excommunicated him. He may not be as knowledgeable as his master, but then no other Sith Lord was. That doesn’t make any of them any less a Sith.

What did happen in Return of the Jedi was that Sidious was killed and his Empire fell. The grip the dark side held over the galaxy was broken. The Sith’s power-base was eliminated and they were effectively destroyed as a major threat, regardless of who lived or died. Maul’s return, even as a Sith Lord, would not automatically mean the Force was unbalanced once more. Maul was building a criminal empire, threatening the rise of the Republic. But this was essentially like being back at square one for the Sith.

 

Still prefer the Sequel we got than what Lucas was going for in all honesty and honestly don't think Lucas's story was really worth telling either. But then again I think all stories post ROTJ be it Legends, or Lucas aren't worth telling.

Honestly i say the Sequels we got was the best case scenario.

Honestly all the ideas of reconstruction and stuff...Star Wars should just avoid.

 

Maul would have been a squashed evil, unable to flourish because the Emperor's iron grip on the galaxy. While he was a Sith, the fact that he could not take on Darth Sidious and Darth Vader meant that he was essentially a Sith-wannabe by this point. And there would be plenty of Sith wannabes. Maul in Rebels in fact said that he was formerly Darth, now he's just Maul.

Vader killing Sidious and then dying himself would destroy years of Sith knowledge accumulated and for Maul to literally pick up the pieces would mean a long set back that would take another thousand years to get another shot. And let's not forget that Maul has no Empire to enforce his fascist will.

So really, Maul represents the possibility of the prophecy being undone if he's left unchecked. The Force is balanced after the Emperor's death since new Jedi and force users can now come out in the open without fear of being killed by the Empire. But among those force users would be Maul, who would seize this chance to establish himself as the new Sith Lord (even if he's no longer part of the Rule of Two).

 

I think what unbalances the force is what the Sith are doing during this time period. Namely, trying to create life - their own chosen one super sith figure, and finding the keys to immortality. Let alone, dominating the galaxy with evil.

These two unnatural desires and powers unbalances the delicate harmony of the Force, and forces the Force to create the Chosen One, a being with off the charts midis who's job it is to eventually wipe out the Sith and restore balance. And perhaps, ironically, the Chosen One - created unnaturally by the Force - is actually part of the very reason why the force is unbalanced. And so, for that restoration to happen, the Chosen One was always meant to die in the process. Anakin - even if he hadn't become Vader - could not have lived, while also balancing the Force. His death was predicated on it.

So Maul could be around, doing dark side things, and Maul could all be but a Sith without a title, and it wouldn't matter. He's not part of the wildly power mad beings that tossed everything out of balance. And without a Chosen One around, there's also no imbalance.

What may be even cooler is Lucas' ideas about the ST, about destiny, about the microbial, about the Whills, about finding the true puppet masters. What if Luke realizes this. What if Luke realizes that the Chosen One is just a puppet of the Force. That he was created to die. Where would that leave Luke in his beliefs? Is he really free? Is anyone?

 

Darth Maul wasn’t a sith anymore because he was replaced by Sidious with Dooku . There can only be two sith at a time: a master to possess the power, and an apprentice to crave it . I like the idea of Maul rising up in power with crimson dawn and ruling the crime syndicates which rise up and take power in the vacuum left by the destruction of the empire . It beats what we got for sure, a first order that just rises out of nothing being led by Palpatine who somehow survived getting blown up, and it turns out he actually killed Anakin rather then the other way around .

 

It’s about what they represent. The Sith are the anthesis of all that is good… they want to dominate, expunge the galaxy of every and any Jedi, and by virtue, quash the lightside of the force… that was part of their doctrine (as exists in the films/EU). Maul wasn’t particularly about that. His revenge was primarily focused on Obi-Wan, but other than that, he just wanted to create chaos. Also it’s worth noting that the force was already out of balance before Palpatine got his hands on clonetrooper armies, fleets and Death Star’s etc., as ‘balance’ was (IMO) more bound up in what Palpatine was planning, his increasing influence (for the worse) on galactic politics, and the Jedi’s move away from the living force etc., as they became more entrenched in their own dogma. So *if* Maul had still been a Sith he could have caused as much unbalance as Palpatine did *if* his objectives had been the same… but I don’t believe they were… which is why unbalance is much more aligned to the Sith’s relative power/influence in the galaxy, as opposed to someone whom doesn’t have the goal/ambition to destroy all Jedi and diminish the lightside.

 

The irony about balance is that Sheev also did genocide on Dark Side Force users that are not under his thumb, like the Nightsisters of Dathomir. In a sense, the Sith are the extremists even by Dark Side standards. They wouldn't even allow other fellow Dark Side users to thrive out of fear of rivalry. The greater irony is that the Nightsisters operate as a family clan, they actually care for one another in their own twisted way. And they seem content with what they have on Dathomir.

The Sith are a plague that had to be eradicated from the galaxy because their very nature will not allow anyone but themselves to exist. And the Sith philosophy is so toxic that it could only function if they are two Sith at best, Master and Apprentice. And the Master isn't willing to give up their power to the Apprentice if they have achieved immortality.

The Dark Side always exists as a natural part of the Force that must be kept in check. The Sith represents a philosophy that will lead to severe imbalance of the Force, with Darth Sidious himself being the worst of the worst, a black hole of pure evil that spreads like cancer as he consumes more and more power.

 

Yes - exactly that. And I really digged the idea that the Sith were 'unnatural' and looked to 'unnatural' ways to extend their power/life, whilst the Jedi got to the point where they could let go and retain their identity naturally.

 

There's no way to know without details. Obviously Lucas worked it out to his satisfaction.

On the surface level there is no reason Maul reclaiming the title of Darth or taking on an apprentice and calling her Darth Talon is in itself simply going to do anything on a cosmic level. These aren't the Sith the prophecy was looking for.

The primary Sith that needed to be destroyed to bring balance back to the Force was THE Dark Lord of the Sith himself Darth Sidious. It's not like Maul was the apprentice to Darth Sidious anymore. It was Sidious and his master Plagueis who were the ones behind the events that lead up to the shroud of the Dark side falling starting in the pre-TPM days.

The Force doesn't go out of balance on a dime. Maul being a crime lord who is just doing normal Sith greed and acquisition mode isn't throwing the galaxy into darkness. The Sith were around and terrorized the galaxy previously but the Force didn't go out of balance and no Chosen One was required because the Sith fell apart on their own. As Lucas said there was no war between them.

 

I always looked at it this way--Once Sidious wiped his hands of Maul, removing the Darth title, taking on a new apprentice just meant that Maul was a dark side user rather than a Sith. Just like there were potential light side force users all over the galaxy who were undiscovered, the same could be said for those gifted with force abilities but used them for dark side purposes. I never thought that Anakin's status as the Chosen One meant that he was responsible for ridding the galaxy of every dark side user; that would have been pretty impossible.

Maul can be a big bad crime lord for ST purposes and still be force sensitive with dark side tendencies. I mean, didn't Ahsoka walk away from the Jedi, saying " I am no Jedi" but still using the force when she wanted to?

 

Yes others obviously have the Force and use it throughout the galaxy every day. Some seek a title of Jedi or Sith and some don't.
Maul and Talon in the ST, as interesting as it sounds especially developed from Lucas, would take away, although not as much as Sidious returning, from the prophecy in my mind. Either way, the ST contains some Sith survivor and creates a conundrum of the OT as Anakin eradicated the Sith. Yes it's not meant to last forever but just 30 years is pushing it. Moving on from the Sith is obviously where TFA went with just a dark side user who inherited the KOR and their new leader, Kylo Ren. Works fine. No mention of Sith was ever done until TLJ. As much as I would like to see more Maul, leave him to the underground pre OT stories or pre PT. Talon would have worked fine, can anyone turn down a Rhianna like beauty scantily clad dark sider seducing a Jedi...? Not me.
Having her and Snoke seduce Ben, then turning on Luke would have been a better TFA in my opinion. Then many years later start off with TLJ and Luke, Leia and Han all have to get back together with Rey and Finn to stop this new (non Sith) power.

 

I think only if Maul would be a sith and I don't think he has to be.

 

I never felt the need to see Maul brought back to life after TPM. But I suppose it could've been better than what we got. The Darth Talon storyboards were more interesting to me than the ST antagonists we got.

 

A big part of the allure of bringing back Maul and pairing him with Talon was having these two visually striking characters appear together as a team on film. Maul had developed into a full character in animation, a villain as interesting psychologically as he had been visually. But as much as Lucas loved his animated series, I think he always wanted to take some of those concepts to their full cinematic potential by putting them on the big screen.

The animated series did its fair share of experiments with genre, giving Lucas a better idea of how to use different visual and cinematic styles to tell his Star Wars stories. The animated format was more flexible for this purpose than feature film had been so far. As an example that's relevant to the sequels, Episode II was Lucas experimenting with making a noir film, a genre close to his heart. But arguably there were a lot of issues with that movie. And I think at least one of these sequel movies would've been his attempts at a re-do with noir, only this time with the benefit of experience and the absence of prequel narrative limitations.

What little we know of Lucas's Episode VII makes it sound like it would've been another mystery tale dealing with criminals. The world of the newly created Republic is a morally complex one, with heroes attempting to revitalize a civilization that had been destroyed first by tyranny and then by war. The government is corrupted by the criminal underworld, and while we don't know the details of the storyline, we do know the crime boss at the end would've been revealed as Maul. All of which fits perfectly with the darker, morally confusing tales that were the specialty of noir films.

And on the purely visual level, Maul and Talon look like members of some kind of ancient warrior tribe. Which, in a way, they are. These are the Sith brought back to square one, fresh off the destruction of their dominion, and relegated to being what they really are: mere criminals. And I think it would've been fascinating to see the Sith stripped of the aura that Star Wars had built for them, to see them as the greedy and fallible people that they are, rather than as the shadowy and legendary demons that they've appeared to be.

 

I dislike Maul being the main villain he was already one in TPM and there should be not Sith after Return of Jedi my perfect type of villain for a Sequel Trilogy is something that is not Sith or Imperial like the Yuuzhan Vong i like the idea of underworld corporation being the Villain someone like Xizor replacing Maul could be cool

 

He can not be a sith.

 

No. There's been enough done with Maul.

 

That too

 

There’s been very little actually. He was only in TPM for about 20 mins… and had a cameo in Solo of course…

 

^That, and TCW, and Rebels. Pretty sure he's had books/ comics too.

 

That applies to pretty much every popular character in SW. Point being, only fandom is really cognisant of his appearances outside of live action, and Maul (even though he's hugely popular within general popular culture and fandom) has only circa 20 mins in TPM and 30 seconds in Solo... and given this thread is specifically about his apparent inclusion in Lucas' live action ST... appearances in comics, books and animation is largely moot.... unless one wants to argue that any appearances in live action would contradict aforementioend comics, books etc.

 

Well, I don't think it's moot, seeing as I'm one of those fans who has seen him in all those things.

I thought Maul should've died in TPM and stayed dead. Then he didn't. I thought he should've died in TCW and stayed dead. Again he didn't. Point is, I'm tired of Maul and don't want him back. I don't want any dead Sith Lords coming back. I think Maul would be a better choice than Palpatine, but I don't know if that's saying much.

 

It’s moot because the topic is about Maul in LIVE ACTION SEQUELS and not a cartoon or comic. It’s as moot as arguing that Luke, Leia and Han should have never appeared in sequels because they appeared in lots of books, comics and games post the 1980’s… However, yes, it does stretch incredulity that Maul survived being cut in half… and as a reason to be against a Maul resurrection in live action. I think that would a reasonable view. But Maul has been under-utilised in live action IMO.

 

I don't think you can compare the screentime of a character like Darth Maul to the OT 3, much less their appearances in other media.

Maul's been in two films; I don't think that makes him under-utilized. And I'm not saying there's no story that could possibly work with him, I've just personally seen enough of the character.

 

Why not? Whom made you the arbiter of the characters which warrant more screen time? Han Solo doesn’t do much after TESB, but I don’t see many folk arguing that he shouldn’t have appeared in other films.

That you’ve had enough of Maul is your prerogative, and you’re entirely free to hold that view. I was talking objectively about the films, and the screen time that’s been historically proportioned to popular/significant characters. Sio Bibble has been in more films than Maul.