Obi-Wan Kenobi director credits Maul’s ‘beautiful’ ending for his series absence

Darth Maul and Obi-Wan Kenobi had a rivalry that ended up lasting for decades — especially since, for the majority of their remaining lives, neither one knew the other had survived.

Many Star Wars fans wanted this to be included in the story Deborah Chow told in the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series. But the director said, as far as she knows, he was never part of the plan.

In a recent interview with Total Film, Chow discussed the decision to include Vader in the upcoming series — but also touched on the reason Maul was never part of her vision when doing her part in crafting the story. And it’s all because of a little animated Star Wars show you may or may not have heard of.

“As long as I’ve been involved, we’ve never had Darth Maul in any of it,” the director told the magazine recently. “Dave [Filoni] did a beautiful job of telling that story already.”

Chow is, of course, referring to Star Wars Rebels Season 3, Episode 20 “Twin Suns,” in which Obi-Wan Kenobi and Maul have a years-in-the-making confrontation on Tatooine. This ended up being the conclusion of Maul’s story, and Chow isn’t the only one satisfied with the story told there. It’s not the only reason the villain didn’t make it into this show, though.

“For anybody trying to tell a story in the middle of these two trilogies, there were only certain elements that made sense in where [Obi-Wan] is,” the director continued. “With a lot of the legacy aspects, the decision to bring Vader into it was not made lightly.” But Maul was very purposefully kept out of these discussions.

Including Maul in Obi-Wan Kenobi would change the story told in Rebels, which included Maul discovering Obi-Wan was still alive … and where he was hiding at the time. The character simply didn’t fit into this story. But that doesn’t mean he can’t appear in other on-screen stories in the future.

Obi-Wan Kenobi stars Ewan McGregor with appearances by Hayden Christensen and Kumail Nanjiani and is directed by Deborah Chow, who previously directed an episode of The Mandalorian. The series is set to premiere May 27, 2022 exclusively on Disney+.

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