We’re a little over two months away from the long awaited debut of the Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney+. This limited series, set between Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: A New Hope, will continue and deepen the story of one of the franchise’s most iconic characters. However, the series has gone through multiple changes in direction during its formation. One major change was the removal of Darth Maul from the series, as revealed by The Hollywood Reporter.
What’s Happening:
- Darth Maul, who first appeared in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, was initially slated to appear in Obi-Wan Kenobi, played by Ray Park, the actor who portrayed the character in the 1999 film.
- While Maul was shown to be cut in half by Kenobi in The Phantom Menace, it was later revealed in Star Wars: The Clone Wars that Maul did in fact survive, becoming a cyborg. He and Kenobi met a few times in that series, before Kenobi ultimately killed Maul once and for all in a later stage in his life, in Star Wars Rebels.
- Amid a creative overhaul to Obi-Wan Kenobi, Maul’s scenes were dropped in favor of bringing in Darth Vader and other antagonists.
- Hossein Amini was the original writer who worked with director Deborah Chow on the six-episode series. And while it was reported that pre-production paused in early 2020 because Lucasfilm was unhappy with the scripts, the reasoning behind the pause was a little more layered.
- According to sources to The Hollywood Reporter, Chow showed the scripts to Star Wars stewards Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau, who were coming off the success of The Mandalorian, freshly launched in November 2019, and deep into work on season two. The duo were concerned that the series was too similar to The Mandalorian, prompting a rework.
- The original idea saw Kenobi coming out of hiding to protect a young Luke Skywalker, and Maul was one of the villains who would participate in the hunt for the pair.
- Vader was nowhere to be found in this faraway galaxy at this stage, according to those with knowledge of the project.
- Filoni and Favreau pushed Chow and the show to “go bigger,” and those concerns made their way to Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy, who pressed the pause button.
- One source says it was Filoni that conceptually keyed in on a way for Vader to be brought back as the big bad, with the Grand Inquisitor, a character made popular by Filoni in the animated series Star Wars Rebels, also put into the story.
- A Lucasfilm source contradicted the account, saying Maul was never intended to return for the series.
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