For ages, Sam Witwer has been the vocal backbone behind Darth Maul across the Star Wars franchise, and now, he is back at it once more with the new Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord series.
Witwer first appeared as Maul in The Clone Wars and later reprised his character in Rebels. He also did the voice work for Maul in Solo: A Star Wars Story and many of the LEGO-related specials. Recently, the actor shared his thoughts on Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord as an animated series compared to all of the things that have come before.
In a recent interview with ScreenRant’s Ash Crossan, Witwer explained that the reason Shadow Lord feels so different comes down entirely to timing. This Star Wars show is set in a period of Maul’s life that has never been explored on screen before, sitting right between The Clone Wars and Rebels in the Star Wars timeline, and that gap, according to Witwer, is the most important stretch of Maul’s entire story.
“This is the story where he is discovering himself,” he said, and that is a version of Maul that audiences have simply never seen before.
Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord, the newest Star Wars series, will be available on Disney+ on April 6, 2026. It will have 2 episodes dropped every week for a total of 10 episodes through May 4. A second season has already been ordered by Disney.
How is this version of Maul in Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord different from what we have already seen?
To understand why Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord feels different, it helps to look at what Maul was like in his earlier appearances. In The Clone Wars, Witwer described his version of Maul as someone who is essentially just doing what his master, Emperor Palpatine, programmed him to do. He is not really thinking for himself yet. He is dangerous and calculating, yes, but he is operating within the rules and identity that someone else gave him. He is not yet his own person.
Then, if you skip forward to Rebels, Maul is at the complete other end of the spectrum. He is old by then, worn down, and running out of time. He has been through everything life could throw at him, and he is just trying to reach the end of his story with something that resembles purpose. That version of Maul is compelling in a different way; it is sad and desperate, but it is not a character who still has things to figure out about himself.
Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord lands in the middle of those two extremes, and Witwer clearly feels that is where the most interesting storytelling lives. Maul is in his prime here. He is powerful, he is free from his master’s direct control for the first time, and he is realising that everything around him, the whole world, the whole Empire, has the fingerprints of Darth Sidious on it.
The emperor raised him, shaped him, and now the empire Maul is living in is also the emperor’s creation. Wherever Maul looks, he sees his father’s influence. Witwer described Palpatine almost like a father figure to Maul, someone who raised him to be an assassin, and now Maul is in full rebellion against that identity. He needs to figure out who he actually is when nobody else is defining him.
The new character and what Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord is building toward?
Part of how Maul goes about carving out that new identity in Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord is by looking for an apprentice of his own. Palpatine had apprentices; Maul himself was one, and so were Count Dooku and Anakin Skywalker.
Now, Maul wants someone he can shape, someone he can pass things on to, and in this series, he believes he has found that person in a brand new character named Devon Izara, voiced by Gideon Adlon. Devon thought she knew where her life was headed, but things went sideways, and now she finds herself with Maul right there beside her, pushing her toward something darker.
The rest of the voice cast around them is genuinely impressive. Wagner Moura plays a police detective named Brander Lawson, Richard Ayoade plays Lawson’s droid partner called Two-Boots, Dennis Haysbert plays a character named Master Eeko-Dio-Daki, and Chris Diamantopoulos, Charlie Bushnell, Vanessa Marshall, David W. Collins, A.J. LoCascio, and Steve Blum all round out the ensemble.
Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord was created by Dave Filoni, the Lucasfilm president who has been deeply involved in Star Wars animated storytelling going all the way back to The Clone Wars, and the animation style has been described as darker and more textured than previous shows, Witwer himself called it “more edgy and jagged and dangerous,” with thick shadows and heavy reds and purples running through the visuals.
Edited by Nimisha