First let’s get the obvious out of the way, Darth Maul is very much alive and for those of you that watch just the movies and can’t understand how, let’s unveil the movie magic. Yes, Obi-Wan cut him in half and sent him tumbling down a very long shaft. Yes, he should have died, but the dark side was so strong in him that he managed to subsist on a diet of rats and eventually found a way to graft a set of spider-like robotic legs to serve as his lower half. He did go fairly insane for a while and was considered a mythical monster, but in the Clone Wars animated saga he am back and regained his former self. He even teamed up with his brother Savage and did some serious damage after receiving the legs you see in the clip below. Those of us that have been following this story know that Maul has caused a great deal of grief in his time as a Sith lord, but being unaffiliated with Palpatine has made him even more dangerous, and once Palpatine murdered his brother Savage after a fight Maul had to go on the run again.
The time line might not make much sense to some but in truth it makes perfect sense. Solo takes place about 11 to 14 years after the Phantom Menace, which means that Maul had that much time to acclimate to his new life, team up with his brother, fight the emperor, lose his brother, and then start his own criminal empire. Now if you think that’s all far fetched then you might be the type that thought the movies don’t add because you’ve never seen the filler that has been created to link the movies together. Honestly, some folks don’t even see how Rogue One matches up to A New Hope, and some of those people are fans. By this point you’d think that people would realize just how expansive the Star Wars universe really is and how much room there is for explanation and exploration, but I digress.
We were talking about Maul’s story after all.
Maul has had a lot of time to spend getting his criminal empire under way and he’s obviously been able to stay a step ahead of the emperor or to at least stay out of his line of sight. Being that Darth Vader has actually taken Maul in a fantasy fight, yes it’s true, he was obviously wise to say on the down low and work through subordinates that could operate his business for him while maintaining control through fear and guile. But all those years in between being sliced in two and finally meeting his end at Kenobi’s hands, if that canon is going to be kept, could be interesting to see in a solo movie. Yes, in the Clone Wars saga he and Kenobi throw down again, and once more Kenobi gets the best of him since by this time Kenobi is still a Jedi Master and probably closer to a Grandmaster if you wanted to fix a label to him. Obi-wan was never really one to stand on ceremony that much but at the same time he’s remained so tied to the Force and to his principles that it seemed fitting that he should be the one the be the end of Maul the first and last time.
This would perhaps make an epic end for a villain that was only made this way by the dark side of the Force without ever knowing just what he could have been had he gone the other way. People have only ever seen Maul as the villain since, let’s face it, he was the perfect bad guy at the time. He could take on a trained Jedi and his apprentice at the same time and dominate them, which was why so many people were so upset that he got cut in half so easily by Obi-wan. Of course if you read the book you’d get a better feeling of what was going on, of how deep into the Force that Obi-wan had to go. But in the movie it’s still epic enough of a tale between these two that it should be counted as worthy of its own movie. If nothing else it would be a tale that would bring back one of the favorite villains of the fans and allow his story to truly play out to the end as it deserves.
Maul has almost become a tragic villain in the course of Star Wars history since he was at the top of his game and was cut down, literally, by someone that shouldn’t have been seen as his equal, only to rise again and be relegated to the shadows thanks to the Clone Wars saga. If nothing else it would prove that he’s worthy of being part of the Star Wars legend and not just an impressive footnote.
