Star Wars Clone Wars Season 4 Closer Darth Maul

Before there was Darth Vader, there was someone so hardcore that he could survive being cut in half. That’s right, Darth Maul is making a comeback. Long thought deceased, Darth Maul will make a triumphant re-entry into the Star Wars universe on the Cartoon Network’s animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Darth Maul will make his return in the epic four-part season finale of The Clone Wars which began on Friday and it sounds like Darth Maul will have a lot of revenge on his mind. Originally portrayed by Ray Park in Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, the Cartoon Networks’ Darth Maul will be voiced by Sam Witwer who plays Aiden on SyFy’s Being Human. This is not Witwer’s first bout with Star Wars voices. He has also given a voice to Darth Vader’s apprentice Starkiller in The Force Unleashed video games.

Darth Maul had a very brief life in Phantom Menace, being hacked in half by Obi-Wan Kenobi near the end, but the brief screen time was all fans needed.  Phantom Menace turned Darth Maul into a scene stealing, breakout character that fans went crazy over.   Clone Wars supervising director Dave Filoni says fans will not only see a new side of Darth Maul, they will likely see him stick around for a while. When talking about Darth Maul’s Phantom Menace appearance Filoni said, “We saw the warrior, definitely. But what we weren’t as aware of was how trained Darth Maul was — not fighting using the ways of the Dark Side, but his intellect and his cunning as he learned from Darth Sidious.” Looks like Clone Wars will be digging deep for character development. They are aiming to create a character with more depth, perhaps making him the “big bad” for a while?

Filoni is also saying that the Sith Lord will have some changes for his debut, beginning with how he survived being cut in half. Filoni referred to the story of Maul’s survival as dark and dramatic and promises fans will find out the secret behind his new lower body. Get a glimpse of some of these changes by viewing the Clone Wars trailer below courtesy of  USAToday.com.

The lightsabre that gave Darth Maul that extra edge – literally – will not be present in the animated series. Since it was damaged in battle, Maul will only have a fragment of it left. Filoni admits that the lightsaber was a tricky subject to broach, “You want him to have a lightsaber, but there’s no Lightsaber Mart he can go to and buy himself a new one.”

With the re-entrance of Darth Maul fans can get a taste of something more sinister and cunning in a villain. And it looks as though Maul will be setting up shop for a while, “To go through all the trouble and believability to bring this character back, it would be a shame if it was once again a short-lived thing,” Filoni says. “A lot of effort went into the resurrection of Darth Maul, and I’m going to make it worthwhile for the fans, that’s for sure.”