We’ve finally gotten our first good look at Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord, the latest animated series in this ever-expanding franchise. Shadow Lord follows Sam Witwer’s iconic villain as he sets about rebuilding his criminal empire in the era of the Empire. And while he may be the star of the show, there are a few other familiar faces popping up in this series.
Let’s take a deep dive into the new Shadow Lord trailer to break down both the returning favorites and the new additions to the Star Wars ranks. How does this series fit into Maul’s complex storyline? Here’s what you need to know.
Sam Witwer as Maul
Naturally, the former Darth Maul is the star of the show with this new series. For a character that was seemingly killed off in his first appearance back in 1999’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Maul has certainly taken on a second life thanks to The Clone Wars and other animated series. Shadow Lord aims to fill in some major blanks with Maul’s story and connect the dots between the end of The Clone Wars and Maul’s cameo appearance in 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story.
For those who haven’t been following Maul’s journey over the past decade-and-a-half, the character made his unexpected return in The Clone Wars, where we learned that he survived his duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi through the power of sheer hate. Maul was restored to some semblance of sanity and health and set about building a criminal empire called the Shadow Collective with the help of his brother, Savage Opress, and the Mandalorian faction known as Death Watch.
And yet, fate still hasn’t been kind to Maul in the years since. He narrowly survived a reunion with his old master, Darth Sidious (though Savage wasn’t so lucky). In the final Clone Wars story arc, “The Siege of Mandalore,” Maul was defeated by Ahsoka Tano and taken into Republic custody. He narrowly escaped after the events of Order 66 played out, and that’s pretty much where we find him now in Shadow Lord. He’s a free man again, but his criminal organization is in shambles, and the newly formed Empire is hunting him along with the other surviving Jedi.
As the series opens, Maul’s journey to rebuild the Shadow Collective takes him to a new Star Wars planet called Janix. This advanced planetary metropolis has mostly been a free player in the larger galactic order up till now, meaning there’s a lot of opportunity for an ambitious crime lord looking to re-stake his claim on the underworld.
“It’s one part Gotham, one part Metropolis and a hundred percent Star Wars with all these different levels and layers,” Executive Producer Matt Michnovetz told StarWars.com. “It’s a city essentially built into a crater on this planet that is untouched by the Empire. It’s got a functioning democracy and law enforcement doing a good job of policing their own community. It’s a rich environment for crime and gangsters, but so far there’s been a very peaceful accord between all of them in the interest of business.”
Shadow Lord is set early on in the reign of Palpatine’s Empire, at least in Season 1. The question is how much time the show will ultimately cover. Will we see Maul grow to become the master of the powerful Crimson Dawn organization, as he is in Solo: A Star Wars Story (which is set about 10 years before A New Hope)? Will the series advance even further to reveal what happens after and why Maul becomes stranded on Malchor in Star Wars Rebels? There are a lot of blanks the series can fill in with this character, even if we already know how his story ultimately ends.
Gideon Adlon as Devon Izara
Maul: Shadow Lord will introduce a number of new characters to the Star Wars canon, but probably the most important of these is Devon Izara. From what we can glean from the trailer, Devon is one of the Jedi who survives the Jedi Purge, only to find herself on the run and battling against Stormtroopers and the Sith Inquisitorius.
It appears that Devon becomes an unlikely ally of Maul’s in this series, despite the two characters coming from opposite sides of the Jedi/Sith tracks. As Devon is sure to learn, the old rivalries don’t necessarily matter in this new era where survival is everything.
“Devon is a young person who’s living through challenging times and realizes that the future she once thought she was going to have is no longer possible, and so she has to adapt,” said Michnovetz.
Maul is certainly fond of recruiting minions to become his latest Sith apprentice. He did it with his brother, and he tried to do it with Ahsoka on Mandalore. We suspect he sees a similar opportunity in Devon, a chance to shepherd an impressionable young Force user and, in turn, forge himself into a true Sith master capable of exacting vengeance on Sidious.
Whether he ultimately proves successful in turning Devon to the Dark Side will probably be one of the key questions in the series. But some fans are already speculating that we’re about to see Lucasfilm add another popular Expanded Universe character to the modern Disney canon. The theory is that Devon will eventually become Darth Talon, another Force-sensitive Twi’lek and a major villain from the comic book series Star Wars Legacy.
In those comics, Talon is active more than a hundred years after the fall of the Empire, but that hasn’t stopped the fires of speculation from burning. And it’s worth remembering that George Lucas himself was a big fan of Talon and reportedly wanted her included in the canceled Darth Maul video game. Maybe he’ll finally see a version of that desire realized.
Wagner Moura as Brander Lawson
While Maul will face plenty of opposition of the lightsaber-wielding variety (and we’ll get to those characters shortly), it looks as though one of his main new antagonists in the series is a humble cop named Captain Brander Lawson. Brander is a police detective on Janix, one who has so far managed to keep the peace in the chaotic early years of the Empire’s reign. Maul’s arrival surely threatens that fragile peace.
Brander wears a uniform similar to that of Kyle Soller’s Syril Karn in Season 1 of Star Wars: Andor. That gives us a clearer picture of what his place is in the law enforcement hierarchy. He’s not an Imperial officer, but part of the local Janix police force. We suspect that, as much as Brander and the Empire are aligned in their desire to see Maul brought to justice, he’ll be butting heads with them as they start to assert more dominance over the Janix sector.
Richard Ayoade as Two-Boots
Richard Ayoade is adding another Star Wars role to his repertoire with Shadow Lord. Just as he voiced the droid Q9-0 in The Mandalorian, Ayoade will play a different droid character called Two-Boots in Shadow Lord. Two-Boots is Brander Lawson’s faithful partner and companion. He gets his name from – you guess it – the unusual pair of boots he wears on the job.
Star Wars fans will get a chance to become acquainted with both Brander and Two-Boots before the animated series premieres in April. They’re also central figures in the Marvel Comics prequel series Star Wars: Shadow of Maul.
“This is a sci-fi story, but it’s also a crime story,” writer Benjamin Percy told Marvel.com. “It’s a story about cops, criminal syndicates, a neon-lit, shadow-alleyed city that hides many sins and secrets. I’m teamed up with an artist who’s already a Star Wars veteran and legend: Madibek Musabeckov. His art is gritty and grounded and perfectly matches the noir tone. We’ve been in close contact with Lucasfilm—reading scripts and watching episodes of this fantastic new animated series—and our story will serve as a prelude to what viewers will see play out on the screen.”
Vanessa Marshall as Rook Kast
Maul will have at least one other ally in his early quest to rebuild his shattered empire. It turns out some Mandalorians are still loyal to him, even after the fall of their world. Vanessa Marshall will reprise her role as Rook Kast, the leader of Maul’s Mandalorian super commandos. She’s likely a fugitive from the law, like Maul himself, and sees an opportunity in Maul’s criminal scheme.
A.J. LoCascio as Marrok
We first encountered the mysterious Marrok in Ahsoka Season 1, where he was one of several lightsaber-wielding villains going up against Rosario Dawson’s Ahsoka Tano and Natasha Liu Bordizzo’s Sabine Wren. Marrok proved to be a silent but deadly mercenary, and we eventually learned that the reason is that he was resurrected as a zombie by Nightsister magic.
But at this earlier stage in the Star Wars timeline, Marrok is still (as far as we know) an ordinary flesh-and-blood member of the Sith Inquisitorius. He even carries the esteemed rank of First Brother. He’ll even have actual dialogue this time around, with A.J. LoCascio cast in the role for the first time.
“The Empire is consolidating the galaxy from the core worlds out, and the Inquisitorius is stronger than ever,” Michnovetz said. “They’re hunting Jedi and other Force users, doing all kinds of nasty work. The galaxy at large is sort of dealing with this slow rise of the Empire and different groups have different understandings of what the Empire is. The same thing goes for the Inquisitors. They’re secret mercenaries that show up out of the darkness.”
We may even learn how Marrok dies his original death in this series. The safe bet is that either Maul himself or Devon gets the upper hand on this character.
Clancy Brown (?) as Eleventh Brother
Marrok won’t be the only Sith Inquisitor to appear in Season 1 of Shadow Lord. We also catch a glimpse of Eleventh Brother, a character who previously appeared in the anthology series Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi and Tales of the Empire. We assume Clancy Brown will once again voice Eleventh Brother.
Like Marrok, it appears that Eleventh Brother has been tasked with hunting down Maul and bringing him to Imperial justice. Unlike Marrok, though, we know he won’t be getting killed off in this show. That honor was already claimed by Ahsoka in Tales of the Jedi.
The Other Shadow Lord Characters
Disney’s press release for Maul: Shadow Lord drops several other key names. We know that the cast also includes Dennis Haysbert as Master Eeko-Dio-Daki, Chris Diamantopoulos as Looti Vario, Charlie Bushnell as Rylee Lawson, David C. Collins as Spybot, and Steve Blum as Icarus. For now, it’s hard to put those names to faces we see in the trailer, but let us know in the comments if you have any ideas.
For more on the future of the Star Wars franchise, find out what to expect from Star Wars in 2026 and see why we only need one thing from Lucasfilm’s new Presidents.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
