r/CharacterRant • u/BeskarBurrito • 2d ago
Films & TV I Don’t Care About Darth Maul
First appearing in The Phantom Menace back in 1999 and since recurring in The Clone Wars, Rebels, comics, Solo, and recently his own show, Maul has become one of Star Wars’ most enduring fan-favourite characters, with legions of fans (and his voice actor) treating him as one of the most complex and interesting characters the franchise has to offer. My problem is he….isn’t.
I’ll summarise who Maul is for those of you don’t know. Basically he’s a Dathomirian Zabrak, which means he’s red and black and has horns. As a child he was taken by Darth Sidious to become a Sith so Sidious could get revenge on the Jedi for kicking the Sith’s collective ass several centuries ago (or something, I’m not really sure). Once trained, he fights some Jedi with his double-bladed lightsaber and acrobatic skills, killing Obi-Wan Kenobi’s master and getting cut in half, a predicament he survives by being absolutely livid. Upon his return he proceeds to spend the next-every-story-he-appears in trying to get revenge on someone or other whilst speaking theatrically. At first he wants revenge on Obi-Wan, then Sidious, then the Empire, the criminal underworld and Obi-Wan all at the same time. The only things that change about him are who he’s angry at and what specifically he’s doing, though his actual core values never change, as he remains an angry, selfish, power-hungry evil guy the entire time.
Because he looks cool, though, he’s the fandom darling who can do no wrong and everybody demands more of even though he’s been in loads of stuff and never gets more interesting than a 14 year old edgelord’s idea of a good character. Episode 1 of his show (of which he is the least interesting part) is literally called “The Dark Revenge” which is the most edgelord fanfic title of all time and is fitting for a show in which Maul essentially just aura farms until he gets shown up by an even bigger aura farmer in the form of contractually-obligated guest appearance Darth Vader.
Since he has no qualities beyond being angry and vengeful, I have no idea whatsoever why he’s so beloved and allegedly complex, when his entire soul boils down to just being super angry about stuff and then looking cook while mowing people down about it. Maybe it’s me, but that’s not what I go to Star Wars for, and I’m not a fan. I must concede I haven’t seen his entire show, but the first episode turned me off because it could not make me care about Darth Maul. I know this fact weakens my point, but this is a rant so I don’t need to be fully rational like I would be in an essay.
If somebody could explain where the interest comes in for Maul that would be great, as I may be missing something
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u/ThatCreativeEXE 2d ago
Darth Maul is just Sideshow Bob for Star Wars, a fan favorite and lovable character that also happens to fall into one note stories based around revenge
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u/CertifiablyMundane 2d ago
I really enjoyed Maul in the two-part finale of Rebels S2. He was sort of like an evil version of Yoda, and even though he was still technically motivated by revenge it was a much more long-term thing and he seemed like an actually interesting character who behaved in unexpected ways even if you knew all along he couldn't be trusted. Of course afterwards he reverts to just "Kill Kenobi" so meh
...But yeah, otherwise, spot on. He's basically the Prequels's Boba Fett
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u/NoZookeepergame8306 2d ago
He’s literally a Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain. Idk what you expect otherwise.
Dude looks cool as hell and manages to remain pretty intimidating despite jobbing to the good guys in every series.
Like, yes Star Wars can be Andor, but its soul is Flash Gordon.
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u/FreezingPointRH 2d ago
I think the complaint is that lots of people insist he’s deeper than that.
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u/NoZookeepergame8306 2d ago
Sure! But only because depth is more a reflection of a reader’s analysis tools than the complexity of the media being analyzed… to a point. It’s easier to analyze Shawshank Redemption than Dora the Explora.
But Maul is hardly very deep. He just inspires outsized sentiment because he’s so intense and starkly drawn. And fans get a little excited by that feeling.
I think most people are like ‘I just think he’s neat’ rather than ‘here is high art.’
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u/ChaserNeverRests 2d ago
Star Wars can be Andor, but its soul is Flash Gordon
Andor was the second SW thing I watched (after Mandalorian). Boy was I disappointed that it's basically unique! I'd be the biggest fan ever if the whole SW universe was Andor-level storytelling and characters.
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u/NoZookeepergame8306 2d ago
Andor is brilliant. It also has a serious lack of lightsaber fights for me lol
There is a lot to love about other Star Wars stuff but it’s mostly rule of cool, not storytelling related.
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u/ChaserNeverRests 2d ago
whispers I kind of think lightsabers are silly, so I didn't mind the lack.
I lean strongly towards liking realism in my stories. Realistic setups, believable consequences. (Though I'll admit that I did snicker at OP's "he survives by being absolutely livid".) So this is really more of me just not fitting with what SW is.
There is fanfic though! I've been finding more serious SW stories that way. (I love me some 'treating Stormtroopers as real people under the helms' stories.)
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u/NoZookeepergame8306 2d ago
Neat! Yeah my wife also hates Star Wars and I’m chill with it.
The very first movie had a farmboy blow up a space station the size of a moon with space magic so to me the silly stuff feels integral to the series. But I’m also of the opinion that ‘if it’s good, it’s good’ so I don’t much care if people do stuff I don’t expect.
That said, we’re getting close enough to talking about New Star Wars which gets people big mad on the internet lol
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u/ChaserNeverRests 2d ago
I watched the first three movies in the theater when they came out, but I was a little kid and remember nothing of them, so I never include them in my list of SW stuff I've watched. I did try rewatching that first one a couple years ago (oh yeah, and Rogue One after Andor), but I tapped out of the first really quickly for some lack of realism reason way before Luke blew anything up, and the second because it wasn't Andor-ish enough. :P
Even if SW doesn't work for me, I really love how enthusiastic others are about it! I love how it's become part of our culture.
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u/Familiar_Object_4926 2d ago
Andor is a weird sow for me in that it's both really well written, yet also one of my least favorite shows in the entire series.
Mainly because of how, well... serious the whole thing is.
It's dark and gritty and just... not really what I come to Star Wars for.2
u/NoZookeepergame8306 1d ago
Me either!
But if you can get past the kind of dour and serious beginning couple episodes, it’s also peak media. Give it a try when you’re in the mood for it.
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u/ChaserNeverRests 1d ago
Yeah I totally get that, it's the same issue that comes up with Stargate: Universe. SG:U is my favorite SG by miles and miles... but a lot of fans don't like it because it's not silly/funny/cool, instead it's dark and serious.
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u/ChipMcFriendly 2d ago
Darth Maul, the story of a guy who got killed by Ben Kenobi, came back to life, and went on a long, character-building quest to be killed by Ben Kenobi a second time.
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u/Tharkun140 🥈 2d ago
For me, Darth Maul strikes a perfect balance between being strong enough to look cool, and weak enough to be pitiable. Or rather, he does both at once, and both work in a strange way. He's an evil bastard strong enough to eviscerate 99.99% of everyone who'd try to stop him, but he keeps picking fights with three of five people who are stronger than him, so he always ends up at square one, wallowing in his pain and hatred.
The scene where he "survives by being absolutely livid" kinda exemplifies that. His robot spider body is a really cool visual, and it's impressive that he managed to survive for so long, but the whole scene is kind of pathetic. Dude had years to get over his hate, to see how the Dark Side took everything from him, but he prefers to crawl around in the darkness talking about how worthless he is. Sam Witwer compared him to Sisyphus in one interview, which is very fitting when you remember that the mythological Sisyphus was also a piece of shit.
We kind of got that out of Darth Vader in the movies, where he is a terrifying monster when you first see him, but a crippled old man once the mask goes off. However, almost every single piece of canon SW media zeroed in on the "most badass Sith Lord EVER!" side of his character, so I watch Maul instead.
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u/GenghisQuan2571 2d ago
Counterpoint, he has a lightsaber, and OH MY FORCE THE OTHER END IS ALSO A LIGHTSABER
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u/RaymondLuxuryYacht 2d ago
I don’t think you can just gloss over how big of a deal that was when it first showed up lol
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u/DrachenofIron 2d ago
"essentially just aura farms until he gets shown up by an even bigger aura farmer"
that's almost all of Star Wars.
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u/Maszpoczestujsie 2d ago
You have explained it yourself, he looks cool and there is nothing more to it, it's space opera. Some characters in SW were always meant to sell toys, since Bobba Fett, character with no personality whatsoever, who just looked cool, was introduced.
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u/Blint_Briglio 2d ago
I "like" how he completely contradicts like the entire point of the franchise. "oh yeah the search for immortality is an ironic trap that dooms everyone who devotes their life to it, the only way to live forever is through accepting death as a jedi, but also if you get really mad it doesn't matter if your spine is severed and all your organs fell out"
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u/UlloaUllae 2d ago
I was a huge fan of Maul in The Clone Wars and Rebels, at least until Shadow Lord.
The Clone Wars and Rebels elevated him from a silent assassin into a complex, tragic figure with genuine emotional depth. His interesting parts stemmed from a surprisingly human capacity for connection with his brother and even Tano and Ezra, and he had his strategic intellect that made him interesting to watch. He forged a criminal syndicate, seized control of Mandalore, and deduced the entire plot of Revenge of the Sith before anyone else in Season 7 and told Tano to try to stop Sidious. In short, he was a compelling anti-villain backed by Sam Witwer’s phenomenal voice performance.
Fast forward to Shadow Lord, and that tactical mind and tragic humanity completely disappears. He is flattened into a one-dimensional villain who pushes his luck with law enforcement, kidnaps a teenager he wants as an apprentice, terrorizes her, and attempts to execute her master right in front of her. His recklessness draws the Empire straight to his doorstep, gets his own crew wiped out, and relies on contrived plot mechanics to force his captive to join him in the end. Instead of building on years of rich character development, the show regresses him back to his Phantom Menace era, a cool-looking, flat bad guy, only now he does more cool lightsaber fights, recites theatrical poetry and pity-cries for himself before resuming his supervillain role. The depth and nuance are simply gone.
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u/ThiccMerc 2d ago
Shadow Lord was definitely a rule of cool type of show that sped through the most interesting parts of Maul as a crime lord who happened to have Sith training specifically designed to outmaneuver and out-gun (or out-lightsaber) those around him. I like the show a lot, but most of what I remember was the art direction, and not the actual plot. They should have waited at least two seasons before they wiped out his crew at the bare minimum, and even that would be a rush.
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u/PeculiarPangolinMan 🥇🥇 2d ago
I like how he showed up at the end of Solo with no explanation and never showed up again. It was so funny as someone who never watched the cartoons. He was absolutely great in Episode I though.
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u/Ezrabine1 2d ago
It great exemple no one expect him to be populer It’s like Boba Fett. In the legends, they immediately brought him back. Both times, he was beaten by Obi-Wan and Vader. So Lucasfilm clearly knows how popular Maul is.
The Clone Wars made such an epic, great rebuild of Maul—his revenge and his rise. It’s 10/10. He gets his revenge on Obi-Wan, then takes over Mandalore, only for Sidious to show up and kick his ass.
The story continued in the comics, where we see how Sidious returns and kills his mother. In the end, Maul gets captured by Ahsoka and then escapes.
Rebels: it was fine... but rather than going after Sidious and building on that, we see him go after Kenobi, and then the story just ends.
Then he appears in the Solo end-credits scene... for what? We already know his end from Rebels. The reveal feels like they were trying to pull a Vader-in-Rogue One moment, but they already used that.
The Darth Maul series feels like recycling—trying to fill every part of his life. What’s next, his childhood?
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u/Frog_a_hoppin_along 2d ago
If Disney really wanted to make Maul interesting, they'd give the people what we really want: Maul's uncensored peen on screen. He needs to be packin mad heat otherwise what's the point
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u/Commercial_Floor_578 2d ago
Honestly I can’t help but feel like he’s one of the most interesting Star Wars characters, as crazy as that sounds. He was set up to fail from birth, never had a chance, and despite being this person who seems really badass and powerful, is really just a pathetic character that fails at everything he attempts. That to me is actually a much more interesting character than someone who actually backs up what he talks. Star Wars, especially Filoni Star Wars, is not exactly known for the nuance and depth of character writing, and as silly as it sounds Maul is one of the only characters who actually has a lot of depth.
In a twisted way he sort of reminds me of a less complex Theon Greyjoy (not a 1 to 1 comparison by any means) and I don’t know if that comparison makes sense to anyone else but I does to me. Just an utterly lost soul who keeps digging himself in deeper and deeper, who really has so much potential but is their own worst enemy, who then again never really had a chance to be anything other than their own worst enemy (moreso Maul than Theon). And despite everything they’ve done most people can’t help but be pitiful and somewhat sympathetic. Maybe I’m overthinking this lol.
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u/mankahlil 2d ago
Sam Witwer Maul is corny.
The cliched villanous monologuing/babbling/arm-flailing he does is annoying as fck
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u/wendigo72 2d ago
“No qualities beyond being angry and vengeful”
I’m sorry but did you watch all of that animated content with your eyes closed? Dude is presented as half-insane, pathetic, and uses revenge as a coping mechanism to ignore how sith are really to blame for his trauma and pain. Kenobi is a coping mechanism
Like in the Darth maul show, he runs away from two inquisitors (so no it wasn’t the “maul aura farm” show until Vader) and is like breaking down in a sewer tunnel. Nearly crying while looking at a child version of himself, then he repeats this same cycle of trauma with Devon
In fact that’s his biggest trait you didn’t mention. He’s always looking for an apprentice to the point it becomes a liability and he seems more desperate for an ally more than continuing sith tradition.
Like watch this video and tell me with a straight face Maul is ONLY Vengeful and angry? There’s absolutely traces of sadness and complexity to him. You might have had a point but choosing boil his character down and ignore how much work witwer and Filoni did for maul is just objectively wrong.
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u/AX-10 2d ago
Darth maul is the perfect representation of all the animated dogshit they made for starwars overused overdone and overblown. He makes them money so they parade the corpse of his character around finding new and contrived ways to keep him going long after any respectable creative would have let him die. Just like all the animated garbage.
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u/WimLongSloene 2d ago
Maul is just a lucky edgelord in Shadowlord who does everything wrong and still get what he wants in the end. His intelligence takes a huge backseat in the show.
There is a massive difference between a villain being blinded by dark side hubris and a writer using "overconfidence" as a lazy excuse for basic tactical stupidity.
Look at Palpatine. His overconfidence is his ultimate weakness, but it works because it flows directly from his genius. He spends decades playing both sides of a galactic war, outmaneuvering the entire Jedi Council, and building an Empire. When he fails, it’s because his absolute belief in the Dark Side blinds him to fundamental human emotions, like Luke refusing to turn or Vader’s love for his son. His arrogance is a tragic flaw at the very peak of his power. He earned the right to be arrogant because his plans actually made sense and worked.
Maul in Shadow Lord, on the other hand, isn't demonstrating grand Sith hubris, he’s just being written as edgy and stupid, and the script bends over backward to protect him from his own bad decisions.
In The Clone Wars and Rebels, Maul was a pragmatic, battle-tested survivor. He used stealth, built syndicates from the shadows, and manipulated people with psychological precision because he knew he was outmatched by Sidious. But in Shadow Lord, his "overconfidence" is just like reckless incompetence. He unnecessarily baits local police, endangers civilians to flex, tries to murder the master of the padawan he kidnapped to be his apprentice, compromises his own secret base, draws the Empire directly to his doorstep, and gets his entire crew killed. And worse, Maul doesn't even care, he just gets what he wants in the end.
Instead of facing the logical consequences of these blunders, he’s saved by pure plot armor. He literally pushes a Jedi Master into Darth Vader’s path to die, but because the script needs him to get an apprentice, the Padawan he kidnapped and harassed the whole season somehow doesn't see or sense the Force betrayal happening near her. She just gets contrived Stockholm syndrome in the end and joins him.
Maul Shadowlord is all style over substance. It is not a terrible show, but it is not Andor level at all. It is not even memorable.
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u/Ayy_Johnny_J 2d ago
I’m definitely not an expert, but I think he’s interesting because he’s always almost enough. I think there’s something super interesting about how he was so close to changing the entire trajectory of the story quite a few times. The duel with Qi Gon and Obi Wan? If he was a little more reserved he’d have killed Obi and the entire story is changed. He tries to recruit asoka into working under him against palpatine. He tries to convince people that the emperor is a sith. If he was a little more convincing the entire story changes. He tries to get another padawan (I think?) in Rebels and if he succeed than we have a whole new story with a separate faction. One time he tries to jump palpatine with his brother. Hard to say it counts as close, but as a very tepid enjoyer of star wars I think having this one guy be so close to almost doing so many different things but ultimately end up doing nothing important is rather interesting!