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

They are both voiced by Sam Witwer. There's that.

 

The director did.

https://www.starwars.com/news/interview-dave-filoni-on-star-wars-the-clone-wars-season-five-part-2

 

Oo maybe I'm on to something!

 

Pretty sure Talon and Maul would have been like Bonnie and Clyde

 

I think Lucas changed his mind when they started to make the Clone Wars, infact, even at the beginning of the Clone Wars he wasn't going to do this, after seeing Savage Opress he changed his mind. I think that's where he told Filoni to bring Maul back. Because when Filoni tells the story about how they brought Maul back, he too surprised that Lucas told him to bring Maul back, they didn't plan that until the Season 3 of the Clone Wars, which is around 2012, 13 years after Episode I.

 

Season 3 was 2010-2011.

 

I just learned that Benicio del Toro was originally cast to play Maul in TPM before his lines were cut significantly and he decided to not take the role. With Maul playing a much bigger role, how likely is it that the new role would’ve been offered to del Toro again?

I know most of us assume they’d just cast Ray Park again, as they did in Solo, with prosthetics for aging and possibly with Witwer cast for the voice. But I do find the prospect of a total recast intriguing.

 

Ian McCaig's original Darth Maul design. I could almost see Del Toro pulling that off.

 

No - he should have stayed dead too

 

I don't really agree necessarily. Not only do I think he could bring a different structure and dynamic as a villain, depending, I also think his death wasn't as important as Palpatine's in their respective trilogies, and overall story.

 

In a perfect world for the Lucas Sequel Trilogy the Villains would dont be Sith or Dark Side users since Anakin fulfilled the Prophecy so not Darth Maul not Palpatine surviving , not Darth Talon or Darth Plagueis and not Imperial Villains like the Imperial Remnant or the First Order i think that is why it was difficult to create a Sequel to Return of the Jedi that makes sense by meeting these criteria the Sith are destroyed and the Empire is defeated the Yuuzhan Vong would have been the perfect Villains since they are not Sith or the Empire or at least they should have created similar Villains like them

 

Maul can be the villain and not be a sith anymore.

 

Maul being alive post ROTJ is a terrible idea in my opinion more worse than Palpatine being alive 30 years later
Dark Side users being the Villains its getting boring i prefer something new

 

In my opinion, that's a conflict that Star Wars has a center on.

 

Yes but Anakin is supposed to destroy the Sith so there will not be Dark Side users having Dark Side users in the Galaxy but not Sith is a bad excuse

 

I'd suggest that there's a difference between dark side powers, and the sith. I think it's akin to saying that destroying all the serial killers mean that there's no evil people left.

 

The mere existence of the Sith does not cause the Force to be out of balance. The power and influence the Sith has accrued by the time of the Clone Wars, and the suffering that came from this buildup of power, is what affected the Force.

The deaths of Sidious and Vader above Endor mark the end of the Empire and the grip of the dark side on the galaxy. The Sith’s power base, centuries in the making, was undone. The Force was brought back to balance because they lost their power.

Lucas wanted Maul to come back, not merely as an agnostic dark sider but as a new Sith Lord with an apprentice. But these Sith would be in a very different position from the Sith of the prequels. They’d be starting back from square one, growing their influence in the shadows of the criminal underworld much like the Jedi Order would be regrowing in the light of the Republic.

Maul and Talon would be a future threat to the balance of the Force, but one that the heroes, the descendants of the chosen one, would defeat in the end. These sequels would show a true passing of the torch from one generation to the next, a new generation of Sith and a new generation of Jedi to stop them. This wouldn’t be the same villain returning, even if it were still the Sith.

Most intriguingly, we’d have gotten to see the Sith operating under a new master. That they use the dark side is of minimal importance—all beings are connected to the Force, so all villains would be connected to the dark side. It’s how they use the dark side that makes the difference. And Maul could have taken a very different approach from Sidious’s hidden corruptions, perhaps something more chaotic and violent, a threat that was more visible to the galaxy at large and more direct. In this particular case, the rise of the criminal underworld against the Republic.

 

Did Lucas want to bring back Maul as *Darth* Maul i.e. a Sith? I thought he was going to be treated similar to how he was in TCWC and Rebels i.e. he's a powerful darksider, but he's categorically not a Sith?

 

I think so. Lucas referred to the new villains by their full Sith names: Darth Maul and Darth Talon. It’s possible he did that for ease of reference.

But on Twitter some time ago, Pablo Hidalgo talked about the evolution of the villains for the sequel trilogy and described them as being a Sith threat when Lucas was around, becoming a dark side threat that was specifically not Sith when Abrams made TFA, and the going back the Sith route again for TROS.

Beyond that, Maul did behave as a Sith in TCW and even took on an apprentice. He and Oppress were a rival Sith Order, which is why Sidious eventually intervened and specifically told Maul that there could only be two.

So I think he was still a Sith in Lucas’s mind. I feel like the whole “technically not a Jedi/Sith” concept is something that’s more Filoni than Lucas, and specifically it feels like something that came up more with Rebels and then Filoni’s TCW season 7.

 

Exactly. At first, Maul still considered himself a Sith, and Dooku — a mere pretender. But then Palpatine showed up, and explicitly told him: "Remember, there can only be two. And you are no longer my apprentice. You have been replaced."
So, from this point, Maul was officially, so to speak, banished from the Sith Order. So it's not something Filoni came up with for Rebels, no, it was all the way back in TCW S5. Maul was no longer a Sith Lord. He was a rogue Dark Side agent.
And in The Son of Dathomir, Palpatine specifically calls Maul his former apprentice, and just Maul, without "Darth" or "Lord".
There are no technicalities here, you are either a member of the Sith/Jedi Order, or you are not. Otherwise, you are just a Force user. People just conflate good force user with Jedi, and bad force user with Sith, as if the concepts are inseparable. But those are organizations, not just your moral alignment.

As to Lucas referring to them as "Darths", that's just how Lucas is. He also calls lightsaber a "lazer sword". I think it would have been refined in the actual script/draft, as we'd seen his intentions with Maul in The Clone Wars.

 

So Darth Sidious tells Maul he’s out and that’s it. He’s done as a Sith Lord. How’s that work? What happened to all the Sith lessons Maul learned? Remember when Qui-Gon fought Darth Maul on Tatooine? Qui-Gon reports to the Jedi Council he fought a Sith Lord. Even after Maul is ‘killed’ Yoda and Mace Windu don’t know if Maul was the Sith Master or Apprentice. How can Palpatine just tell Maul he’s not a Sith and that be true if Maul has been trained as a Sith? What’s special about Darth Sidious that he makes this call? And what does Dooku or Vader have that Maul doesn’t?

Is it because Maul got cut in half he’s not a Sith? Vader was half robot. Also Maul raised an army after he came back and after a few months in the middle of the Clone Wars conquered Mandalore for himself.

 

After Vader and Sidious destroyed each other, no one was left to stop Maul from reclaiming the title of Dark Lord of the Sith. We don’t know what Lucas had planned in detail. But I don’t think there’s a good reason to not have Maul remain a Sith Lord.

 

The Sith are but two; the Master and the Apprentice… The Master is the fountain of all Sith knowledge and takes forward the Sith doctrine/code that Darth Bane first initiated. Sidious is king. If Maul disagrees he has to usurp the Master. If Maul sets up his own Sith crew, he’s not adhering to the Banite philosophy… so he could call himself a Sith, but he isn’t to all intent and purposes. Also, from what’s presented in both TCWC and Rebels, whilst Maul has a lot of hatred for Sidious, he doesn’t seem particularly interested in becoming a Sith Lord again.

I think the main reason Maul wouldn’t have been a Sith, in any sequel Lucas wrote, is because of what it means to the prophecy. Lucas was fully cognisant of Anakin’s legacy… and having just refreshed myself with the book that outlines Lucas’ plans (the ‘Archives’) , it seems he specifically wanted Maul to be a Godfather type figure, who was heading up a criminal underworld/crime syndicate. There’s no reference to Maul acting out or carrying forward any Sith style plans etc. and I suspect the use of the ‘Darth’ moniker is a carry over rather than something that would have made it to the screen. Lucas was fairly rigorous about this kind of stuff… although who knows?

The caveat being is that we don’t know the detail of what Lucas was planning. Maybe a plot thread would have been Maul trying to restart the Sith rule of two… what with Sidious being dead and all? It’s conjecture at this point, but it’s something that doesn’t seem to be outlined in Lucas’ ideas/treatments to date. Point being, IMO, I think Lucas would have touched on Maul previously being a Sith, or maybe showing Maul trying to re-establish the Sith… but I doubt he would have just been Darth Maul straight off the bat I.e. I think Lucas would have made it a key theme… *if* he wanted to incorporate the Sith into sequels.

 

TCW/Rebels give a lot more context to the Sith Rule of 2 and many other things.

Lucas led more hours of screen time in TCW than he did in his 6 SW movies. Filoni his apprentice. There interpretations really all that matter and with Filoni already ending Darth Maul's story - should be it.

 

What is the additional context TCW and Rebels gives the rule of two?