Gold Coast
April 11-12, 2026
Gold Coast Convention & Exhibition Centre
“At last, we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi. At last, we will have our revenge.” In 1999 these words would be the ones to introduce fans to one of Star Wars’ most enigmatic and fascinating villains. In a galaxy filled with memorable bad guys, the dual-bladed lightsaber-wielding Sith Lord ranks high among the pantheon of fan favourites.
So much so, in fact, that George Lucas himself would prompt Clone Wars showrunner and current Lucasfilm President Dave Filoni to bring him back despite falling victim to Obi-Wan Kenobi’s martial prowess in The Phantom Menace. Since then, Maul has managed to keep crawling back out of the shadows on cybernetic legs against all odds, time and again.
And now, he’s back again, front and centre of his own show in Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord. With the Sith Lord turned criminal mastermind’s triumphant return on Disney+, we caught up with supervising director Brad Rau, writer Matt Michnovetz and executive producer Athena Yvette Portillo to talk all things Maul and the Star Wars underworld.
“The mystery,” Portillo explains when asked what it is that keeps drawing everyone back to Maul. “I think the same way I felt about Boba Fett, even though he was only on screen for six minutes, so was Maul in The Phantom Menace. So, the idea of providing more character depth for a mysterious character, I think, is appealing.”
“He’s the right kind of complicated guy,” Rau joins in. “He’s also very charismatic, I think, as well.”
And much of that onscreen charisma, developed over the span of decades courtesy of long-term Star Wars legend Sam Witwer, is on full display in this latest continuation of the story that first began 14 years ago with Maul’s official resurrection in Season 4 of The Clone Wars.
“Sam’s an awesome collaborator,” Michnovetz explains of the actor who has helped shape Maul for nearly a decade and a half. “[He’s an] incredible actor, and we just have fun hanging out and talking about stuff that’s not even Star Wars sometimes.”
“He’s great,” Rau enthuses. “Sam is so delightful, and he’s so brilliant, and it’s like we joke that despite him playing a former Sith, he’s a lot like our Jedi Master. He’s an expert on the lore, he’s fun to work with, and he’s so talented.”
“It’s been so much fun to see the collaboration between Matt, Brad, and Sam,” Portillo also praises their series star. “Sam brings authenticity to the character. He has a lot of ideas. It has just been like our own personal podcast, getting an opportunity to speak to him almost on a daily basis.”
Of course, Maul is not steering the ship alone when it comes to this latest Lucasfilm Animation outing, set between the events of The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels, during the early days of the Empire’s reign.
“One thing that we tried to accomplish on this show [is] we want to make sure that fans have some new information,” Michnovetz explains about the show’s latest revelations and cast additions. “That they get things they’ve never seen before, and we’ve got that.”
“But also,” he continues, “Maybe even more important, we wanted to make sure that if you’ve never seen anything about Star Wars or Maul and you have no idea what this is, you can watch this show and you’ll get everything you need to know just in the body of the show. And a lot of that has to do with the new characters and new points of view.”
However, the initial reveal of one of those new characters, the Twi’lek padawan Devon Izara (voiced by Terminator Zero’s Gideon Adlon), immediately sent fans into a flurry of speculation, given what they knew about the Legends character Darth Talon, and George Lucas’ own reported plans for Episode VII.
“It’s always nice to have fan speculation,” Rau admits coyly when pressed about the potential connection. “And we want them to continue to have their theories.”
Whether or not Izara does indeed transform into Maul’s future dark side apprentice remains to be seen. Still, there is also more than enough other lore and hanging questions left over from other Star Wars projects for Shadow Lord to sink its Sith teeth into.
“We always want to tell the story organically,” Michnovetz says. “But we always have those [hanging threads] in mind. We have such a rich tapestry to draw from that, as long as the story and the characters feel natural in their choices and the direction that it goes, we don’t want to have to force anything to fit.”
Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord is exclusively on Disney+, with new episodes dropping weekly until the season finale on Star Wars Day, May 4th.
