Maul: Shadow Lord does a whole lot more than just fill in a big gap in the former Sith apprentice’s story. The show pushes Star Wars animation to a whole new level. Why was it important to Lucasfilm to raise the bar on its animated side? What were some of the inspirations behind its incredible aesthetics and tone? And why was Darth Maul worthy of being the vessel to make that happen? How will the show balance having making Maul sympathetic but not a hero? To find out, Nerdist spoke to three of the most important people behind the scenes of Maul: Shadow Lord, executive producer Athena Portillo, head writer Matt Michnovetz, and supervising director Brad Rau.
Note: We conducted this interview before Disney announced the show will get a second season.
Nerdist: Why was this exact Star Wars story, this missing chapter of Darth Maul’s life, worth giving the character his own show in Maul: Shadow Lord?
Matt Michnovetz: Dave (Filoni) came to me with an idea, and we had a great conversation, and we just spun off from there. We wanted to create a story set in this time period with Maul and some new characters that was just a shot of adrenaline, a rollercoaster ride, a thrill ride, about difficult times for interesting characters faced with unique challenges that we hadn’t told before.
Maul has become a standout character in Star Wars, almost entirely because of the animation side. Why do you think he’s resonated so much with fans as they’ve gotten to see more of his story?
Athena Portillo: He’s a complicated, conflicted character. Also, we tend to resonate with him in the sense that he’s made mistakes. He’s lost certain things in his life that have been important to him, like a mother, a brother. So we empathize with that piece of it. What we don’t empathize with is how he goes about getting those emotions out by way of revenge.
Michnovetz: No big deal. A little revenge. (Portillo laughs) I think we can all identify with some of his mistakes. Plus, Sam (Witwer longtime voice of Maul) is amazing. So charming and charismatic. So good.
I don’t want to give too many spoilers away about Maul: Shadow Lord, but any worry about making him almost too sympathetic with this show?
Brad Rau: We talked about it a lot. A lot of it went into the tone of the show. We call it a “pulpy noir,” so the action can be a little heightened. We didn’t want it to get too dark and gritty, because it could quickly go down that road. You’ve only seen up to episode eight, right?
Yeah, I have not seen the last two. (Note: Disney only gave us screeners for the first eight episodes.)
Rau: So there’s a lot going on in the last two. There’s a lot going on. And there are a few things that happen on purpose to shed a very clear light. This is not a good guy. He’s doing bad things. And that was really important. We had to make sure that that was really clear.
I’m genuinely blown away by how good this Darth Maul series looks. There are sequences so realistic you can forget you’re watching animation. Obviously, you always want your show to look the best it can, but why the commitment to making this show, Maul: Shadow Lord, look so cinematic and downright expensive?
Portillo: Thank you for saying that. So before Filoni went to shoot Ahsoka season two, he basically said, “I really want you to focus on elevating the sophistication and cinematic quality of this show.” He said, “Do whatever it takes to get there,” kind of thing. And because we’ve been working with the same leadership for the past 20 years almost, everybody was up for the challenge.
Some of the things we wanted to incorporate was that old school way of doing things by way of building practical models. Oil on canvas, map paintings, brush strokes on glass paints, getting those shot and incorporating them into the show. We also created a new post-process for the show for polishing purposes, something we hadn’t done previously, per se. Per se would be like the color grades. This time it was color grade and adding the extra camera shakes, adding the extra vignetting.
Filoni had called out how much he loved the backgrounds, that it just looked like a paint quality/noir kind of look. We had a lot of influence from (artist) Jeremy Mann’s Cityscapes, Blade Runner, even old school John Singer Sargent for the textures. It was very challenging, but a lot of fun. I just thought it was great. I love it.
What did Lucasfilm, Disney, and all of you, the people who made the show, learn about the future of animated Star Wars series from Maul: Shadow Lord?
Portillo: That we’re up for the challenge. That we could create any type of aesthetic as long as you allow us to. We’re always developing new tools, new methodologies, and new efficiencies. And just keeping certain episodes open so that we could then go back into them and polish those up.
Rau: Yeah. Sky’s the limit.
Maul: Shadow Lord utilizes everyone’s favorite recurring Star Wars bit, secret Jedi survivors of Order 66! Was there ever any worry about revealing even more Jedi, who, it turns out, were in hiding after the fall of the Republic?
Michnovetz: No, I don’t think so. I mean, we’re not too far after Order 66. So I think it’s more inconceivable that they were all wiped out all of a sudden. So it was important that we tell this story. And again, we don’t know what our new characters’ fates are. And they were the right characters at the right time for this particular time period and the challenges that they face. It’s a big galaxy.
Rau: And it’s also one reason we wanted to create a brand new location that you haven’t seen before. That’s where sometimes it can feel that we’re treading on old territory. We wanted all new and vibrant. Everything we’re talking about, the characters and the style, the way we filmed it, the music, everything, we want it to feel new and fresh and vibrant so that you can just go along for the ride.
I want to come back to the new planet, but I do have a quick follow-up. Was there any consideration into using known Order 66 survivors, especially because this show is not shy about pulling from characters that are a part of the expanded universe?
Michnovetz: We discussed everything. Everything was on the table. But we were primarily concentrated on creating new characters whose fates were unknown and being able to tell stories that we hadn’t told before with them.
As you said, new planet, the show takes place on Janix. It looks a lot like Coruscant, but over the course of the first season, you really learn all the meaningful ways it’s different. What other locations, real or fictional, Star Wars or otherwise, inspired Janix on Maul: Shadow Lord?
Rau: We always look heavily at real-life references of places. We were in Chiba, Japan for Star Wars Celebration last year. Athena was on stage. It was awesome. And Mattie and I went to Golden Gai in Tokyo, and that (area) definitely. We were snapping photos, and there are parts of Janix that look like Golden Gai from our crazy adventures there.
Portillo: In terms of the real world, a few of us went to Kyoto, and we witnessed the tea ceremony. Sam took a lot of what he learned in that and executed that through his performance in episode three.
Rau: We try to bring in grounded real-world references, but also make things crazy and strange. You see Maul’s safe house is in an old abandoned rail station, essentially. So we used a lot of turn-of-the-century New York subway references for that. I mean, there’s so much reference in Janix. Really, the big thing is we wanted it to be a character of its own. So, not just a backdrop, but to have this vibrant feeling to it, the way it sounds, the way it looks, the food, the chicken parm in the first episode. We wanted it to feel real. As real as possible. (everyone laughs)
Maul: Shadow Lord premieres at Disney+ on April 6, 2026.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He would like to eat the animated chicken parm. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.