How STAR WARS: MAUL – SHADOW LORD Revives Two Major STAR WARS Stories George Lucas Never Made

When Lucasfilm announced that Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord was officially happening, it didn’t just feel like another animated spinoff. Not only does it finally put Darth Maul front and center, it also revives two massive George Lucas ideas that never made it to the screen. In a lot of ways, this show is the closest thing we’ll ever get to those lost stories.

Maul’s return is pretty wild when you think about it. Back in 1999, audiences walked out of The Phantom Menace assuming Maul was done for. Lucas later realized killing him off was a mistake, which led to Maul’s resurrection in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Even then, the idea that Maul would eventually headline his own show probably never crossed Lucas’ mind. Yet here we are, with Maul stepping into the spotlight as the outright lead of a Star Wars series for the first time.

When the first trailer for Maul – Shadow Lord was released, the visual style felt darker and moodier, perfectly matched to a story set during the Dark Times. The series follows Maul as he tries to rebuild himself as a crime lord during the Imperial era. We already know pieces of where this road leads.

By the time of Solo, Maul is running Crimson Dawn in Solo: A Star Wars Story, and by Star Wars Rebels, that empire has crumbled. Watching how he climbs back up is where the fun lies.

A huge part of that journey takes place on Janix, a brand-new planet that instantly stands out. It’s been described as “one part Gotham, one part Metropolis and a hundred percent Star Wars.”

Janix is a lawless city built inside a crater, untouched by Imperial rule and overflowing with criminals and gangsters. For Maul, it’s both a hiding place and a fresh start. The show leans hard into the underworld, shining a light on a corner of the galaxy Star Wars rarely slows down to explore.

That underworld focus is exactly why Maul – Shadow Lord feels like a spiritual successor to a project Lucas once desperately wanted to make. In 2005, he announced plans for a live-action series called Star Wars: Underworld.

The idea was to dive deep into the criminal side of the galaxy, specifically the lower levels of Coruscant. The scope was massive, and the costs eventually killed the project before it could happen.

Pieces of Underworld have surfaced during the Disney era, but Maul – Shadow Lord comes closer than anything else. Even the show’s artistic direction echoes the few glimpses we’ve seen of Underworld concepts and Lucas’ stylized vision of Coruscant. It isn’t Underworld, and it never claims to be, but it absolutely feels like its DNA lives on here.

The Lucas influence doesn’t stop there. As detailed in The Star Wars Archives 1999-2005 by Paul Duncan, Lucas’ original sequel trilogy plans were far removed from what we eventually got. In those early ideas, Maul survived the fall of the Empire and became the main villain of the post-Imperial era.

He was envisioned as a crime boss who would ultimately be defeated by Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa. While Lucas later reworked elements of this concept into The Clone Wars, the core idea of Maul as a long-term underworld power remained.

One detail Lucas was especially attached to was Maul taking on an apprentice. He was fascinated by the design of Darth Talon, a red-skinned Twi’lek Sith from Legends, and reimagined her as Maul’s enforcer.

The Maul – Shadow Lord trailer reveals a red-skinned Twi’lek named Devon Izara, a former Jedi who survived Order 66 and is now being trained by Maul under the Sith Code. It’s a clear evolution of that unused concept, retooled to fit canon while staying true to Lucas’ intent.

For a while, many fans believed Star Wars: The Bad Batch marked the end of Lucas’ direct creative legacy in Star Wars, especially since Clone Force 99 was his idea. But, under the guidance of Dave Filoni, Lucasfilm has found a way to keep honoring those abandoned ideas without feeling stuck in the past.

Maul – Shadow Lord isn’t just Maul’s story. It’s some of Lucas’ unfinished business, finally getting its moment.