Star Wars Celebration Japan: Lucasfilm announce Maul: Shadow Lord animated series

April 18th, 2025 by Marc Comments

“At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi, at last we will have revenge…”

All the way from Star Wars Celebration Japan, we have learned that in 2026, we will be seeing the return of everyone’s second favourite Sith, Darth Maul… or rather, just Maul.

Lucasfilm officially announced Maul: Shadow Lord, a new animated series taking place about a year after the events of Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith.

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While not available to the public, attendees at Celebration were treated to footage from the series which saw Maul, voiced once again by Sam Witwer, training his own Twi’lek apprentice along with footage of him fighting an Inquisitor and glimses of various bounty hunters.

First look at Maul in the series:

While it’s not confirmed, it would imagine that the apprentice is Darth Talon, left, a villain originally conceived by George Lucas as the villain in his planned sequel trilogy before Disney took the reins.

This is interesting because in an interview at Celebration, which you can watch below, Witwer makes reference to the series and Star Wars overseer Dave Filoni drawing from lore created by George Lucas, so it seems possible, maybe even likely, that Talon will finally make her canon appearance in the new series.

While we have Tales of the Underworld dropping on May the Fourth and a third season of Star Wars: Visions off in the near distance, Maul: Shadow Lord will be the first new ongoing animated series since The Bad Batch ended last year, so it will be very welcome.

Speaking about the series, Witwer said: “We learn some different things about [Maul]. He’s got some different traits that you wouldn’t necessarily think he has that make perfect sense from what he’s been through.”

A Maul series has been rumoured and in the pipeline for a number of years at this stage with Ray Park, who played him in The Phantom Menace and again in Solo: A Star Wars Story even looking to get a live-action series at one stage but this is the first solo outing for the character.

Over the years, despite his ‘death’ in The Phantom Menace, Maul returned in the Clone Wars and later appeared in Rebels and Solo too, and his arc became one of the mst interesting and fleshed out in the who Star Wars lore, so having him in his own show? Yes, please.

Thoughts, guys? I know you have them and I want to hear them all!

Watch Sam Witwer and showrunner Athena Portillo talking about the new show at Star Wars: Celebration:

Watch the celebration of Star Wars Animation, 20 years young this year:

Finally, a gorgeous poster celebrating the anniversary… can you spot your favourite character?

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Marc

Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….