Sam Witwer shares first details about Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord

Dave Filoni is creating yet another prequel-era series. Set a year after the end of the Clone Wars and before the events of Star Wars Rebels, Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord will follow the former Sith Lord as he builds and establishes his criminal syndicate, Crimson Dawn.

Sam Witwer, who has portrayed Maul since the character's return in The Clone Wars, will reprise the role in the tentative 2026 release.

Maul met a fitting end for the second time at the hands of Obi-Wan Kenobi, his lifelong arch-nemesis, in the sands of Tatooine. But the death and complexity of the character are gifts that seemingly keep giving, and now we stand on the precipice of having an entire show on him. If you can't believe it, neither could Witwer himself.

During a recent appearance on Katee Sackhoff's (Bo-Katan Kryze) The Sackhoff Show, the 47-year-old actor revealed that the series will finally give life to the story ideas he came up with for Maul while filming The Clone Wars and Rebels with Filoni.

"There were ideas that I had back in Clone Wars that I would present to Dave, or even in Rebels," Witwer said. "And I also know things that Dave wanted to do."

"I’d say, ‘Dave, what if this happens?’ And he goes, ‘It’s not Maul’s show. You can’t go into that little level of detail. We’re seeing this from Ezra’s perspective or Ahsoka’s perspective.’ And every time he said, ‘This isn’t Maul’s show,’ it never occurred to me that Maul could have a show. So I just took those ideas, and I’m like, well, I guess we’ll never see that. And now he’s like, 'Well, it’s Maul’s show.'"

The show will delve deeper into Maul's anger and feelings of betrayal towards the Empire. We will perceive Emperor Palpatine's grand schemes from the perspective of a former Sith Lord who previously worked with him before getting cut in half by Obi-Wan in The Phantom Menace.

Witwer got into how Maul knew that the Empire would come, but was not in on the entire plan. "You killed a bunch of Jedi during the Clone Wars, but you did not work with Sidious," he said. "You didn’t know the whole plan. And in fact, you got so scared about his plan that you tried to stop it at the last second.”

"Now the Empire’s here, which Maul would have known that that was his master’s intent. But now that he’s seeing it, he’s like, ‘Is this what he had in mind? Because this isn’t what I thought it would be…'"

Maul - Shadow Lord is a show about bad guys vs. worse guys

Sam Witwer said that the show isn't meant to add any new nuances to Maul's character that could potentially give him a redemption arc. There is simply no chance of that. However, he also fought the empire in his own way.

"It truly is a show about bad guys versus worse guys. And our bad guys are still bad guys. This isn’t going to be a show where you go, oh, you find out Maul is just a real teddy bear, man. He’s just misunderstood… But the idea is, in fact, that even though he’s a bad guy, is he as bad as Sidious or Vader? And the answer is actually no. From the Sith perspective, this guy has flaws. And these flaws are… the humanity that seeps in at various points. And some of this is humanity he did not have, maybe, early in the Clone Wars. But because of things that happened to him, he’s rethought a lot of things."

Announced during Star Wars Celebration 2025, the Disney+ show is rumored to feature a Twi'lek padawan, who everyone believes is Darth Talon from Star Wars Legends. It was also reported that Maul will fight Marrok, the mysterious warrior who accompanied Baylan Skoll and Shin Hati in Ahsoka.

Maul - Shadow Lord will come some time in 2026.