Everyone’s favorite cyborg Sith apprentice is getting his very own animated show. Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord is slated for a 2026 release. Details are currently few and far between, but we know that the series will take place in the Imperial era and that Maul may take on an apprentice of his own.
For now, we are left only to speculate on what the plot details are, but we are able to piece together quite a bit from what little we know, much in thanks to Darth Maul’s longtime voice actor Sam Witwer.
Witwer, who has played various Star Wars roles, first came to be the voice of Maul in season four of The Clone Wars and has portrayed the character ever since. His return in the animated show gave us a deeply expanded view of the character who previously had very little depth. Indeed, in his first appearance in The Phantom Menace, Maul only had about three lines of dialogue. His reemergence in the animated series gave us a drastically different Sith apprentice.
Several years ago at Melbourne Comic-con, I had the opportunity to ask Witwer if his portrayal of a more manic Maul was his idea or if he was instructed to notch up the crazy. He told me that it was, in fact, George Lucas’s idea, and even treated the panel audience with a very authentic impersonation of the Maker himself.
Fellow Star Wars actor Katee Sackhoff, who plays Bo-Katan Kryze in various Star Wars shows, recently had Witwer as a guest on her podcast, The Sackhoff Show, to discuss the show's announcement.
"Maul’s like, ‘Is that what Sidious had in mind? ... This is a little scary.’ … Maul comes from a time of swords, sorcery, magic and knights, and now all of that color of the universe is being sucked out of this mechanized Empire. And Maul’s like, ‘Is this right? Is this the universe we were trying to build?’”
Sam Witwer shares details on 'Maul - Shadow Lord' 🔴
— Culture Crave 🍿 (@CultureCrave) May 28, 2025
"It's about bad guys vs worse guys ... This isn’t going to be a show where you find out Maul is a real teddy bear, man … We’re not doing that ... but is he as bad as Sidious or Vader? Actually no ... from the Sith… pic.twitter.com/tHxhvyawPP
This may mean we will be seeing a direct confrontation between Maul and the Empire that dominates the galaxy by the time the show is supposedly set. Maul, of course, has already battled his former master during the Clone Wars, where he established a criminal alliance called the Shadow Collective after taking over the world of Mandalore. Later, as depicted in Solo: A Star Wars Story, we learn that Maul has again overseen the creation of a similar criminal empire, Crimson Dawn.
It's very possible the events of the show will reveal to audiences how Maul came to a position of such influence. Even more tantalizing would be how he then came to lose it all… again. By the time we see Maul towards the end of his story in season two of Star Wars Rebels, he has seemingly returned to a state of destitution and is trapped on the abandoned Sith world of Malachor.
Of course, all of this takes place over the course of nearly twenty years between the end of the Clone Wars and the destruction of the Death Star, so there's plenty of Maul’s life to be explored. The number of episodes, or even number of seasons, has yet to be revealed, but the team at Lucasfilm surely has plenty of story potential to cover and should have no trouble bringing the dark take of Maul to life once again.
Maul: Shadow Lord is slated for release in 2026.