Henry Gilroy, co-executive producer of the successful animated series Star Wars: Rebels and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, got to sit down with SlashFilm recently, revealing plans that Goerge Lucas’ original plan to bring back Darth Maul was a bit different from what fans got to see in The Clone Wars. Darth Maul first appeared in the live-action prequel Star Wars: The Phantom Menace which was released back in 1999, later appearing and becoming quite a prominent character in the animated Star Wars shows. Ray Park’s Darth Maul got another bout at a live-action return during the final scenes of the live-action prequel movie Solo: A Star Wars Story, however, he has yet to be seen again in live-action since.
It was later revealed that Darth Maul had actually survived being lightsabre-sliced into two pieces, going on to live on the junk planet Lotho Minor. However, his whole twelve years living on the junk planet with nothing else to think about other than his anger and hate drove him insane, with his sanity being restored later on in the Star Wars animated series The Clone Wars by his brother Talzin. However, Henry Gilroy has revealed that a different return for the character was originally proposed by George Lucas, one that is quite remarkably different from what was seen in the show.
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General Grievous Almost Became Darth Maul
Gilroy talked about how George Lucas never intended to bring back Darth Maul at the beginning, mostly due to the fact that Maul was literally cut in half by Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. In fact, George Lucas had actually spent years being vocal about his decision never to bring Maul back to life, which made the reveal in Star Wars: The Clone Wars even more surprising. Nevertheless, Lucas changed his mind and came up with the notion of Maul returning, but pitched quite a different version of events to fellow producer Dave Filoni, according to Henry Gilroy with the idea originating from concept artists who worked on Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.
“He is like, ‘Yeah, so yeah, George wants to bring back Maul.’ I’m like, ‘I knew he was going to do that. I knew it. I knew it.’ Because, the reason why is, George likes to see the things that he created. And his ideas are awesome, so you can’t argue with it.”
This became an instant challenge to think up a way to bring the menacing Sith Lord known as Darth Maul back to life, but in a way that wouldn’t anger millions of Star Wars fans. According to Gilroy “George was considering that Grievous was Maul behind the armor plate”, which would have not only been a drastic change to Maul’s return but also the overall lore behind General Grievous himself. Funnily enough, however, Gilroy wasn’t put off by this idea back in the creation process saying that “It made sense. He’s cut in half and he’s in this robot body or whatever” but continued to add that he was “glad that Grievous is his own thing anyway” and that “it was interesting that the concept guys almost talked George into that”.
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Source: SlashFilm
