[REDACTED] is Alive? Explaining Solo: A Star Wars Story's surprise cameo

SPOILERS FOR SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY, STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS, AND STAR WARS: REBELS 

While the release of any new Star Wars movie is sure to be chockfull of shout-outs, easter eggs, and call-backs to other stories from the franchise, the recent Solo: A Star Wars Story caught every fan worth their salt off guard with a surprise cameo from a character we never expected to see onscreen again. Though I'm not the first person, Star Wars fan or not, to rush to the Internet to explain how this character can make this appearance, most of them are missing out on the full story. Because while this character doesn't show up until the end of Solo, it's really the middle of their own story.

Last chance to avoid spoilers,

Maul Lives.

Darth Maul is still alive. Yes, the infamous tattoo-faced Sith Lord from Episode 1 makes his first reappearance in a Star Wars movie at the end of Solo. Some context; throughout the film our main villain, Paul Bettany's Dryden Voss, makes reference to the head of Crimson Dawn, the crime syndicate he and Han Solo's childhood crush Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) work for. We the audience are given no clues as to this person's identity during the film, just hints that as dangerous and threatening as Voss is to our heroes his boss is worse. His identity as Darth Maul is revealed at the end after Qi'ra kills Voss to both protect Han from the wrath of Crimson Dawn and usurp Voss' position in the syndicate for herself. Maul's appearance is brief, just long enough to establish that he is indeed still alive, he's got some robot legs to replace the ones Obi-Wan sliced off, and that's he carved out a little criminal empire for himself. He's intimidating and the reveal really works as a surprise.

I mean that on two levels because Maul's cameo was surprising to both general audiences and hardcore Star Wars fans, though for different reasons. Fans knew he was still alive but as this point in the timeline, being the head of a crime syndicate was the last place we thought Maul would be. I'll get into why in a minute, first here's the short version of how Darth Maul is still alive for those wondering.

After the events of Episode 1, Maul kept himself alive through the force, cobbling together some robot spider legs to replace his missing lower half. The effort and the corrupting nature of the Dark Side were too much of a strain however and he slowly went insane living in squalor. Maul was eventually found by his brother Savage Oppress during the Clone Wars, who took him back to their homeward of Dathomir where their mother used some Dark Side magic to heal Maul's mind and built the injured Sith Lord some better prosthetic legs. Whole again, Maul vowed revenge on both Palpatine for using and abandoning him and on Obi-Wan Kenobi for nearly killing him in the first place. Alongside his brother Savage, Maul joined up with a Mandalorian terrorist group called Death Watch and built an alliance of criminal syndicates that eventually took over the planet Mandalore placing Maul as ruler of it and its vassal planets. It was the seizing of Mandalore that finally caught Palpatine's attention. Not yet Emperor and still in disguise as Darth Sidious; Palpatine travelled to Mandalore, killed Maul's brother and brought his former apprentice to heel. All of this can be seen in the The Clone Wars TV Series. The alliance of criminal factions he built fell apart after that and Mandalore was eventually freed by the newly-formed Empire.

Maul as the ruler of Mandalore with a few of his
criminal lieutenants.

Chronologically, that was the last time we saw Maul before his appearance in Solo. Given his status as the head of the Crimson Dawn syndicate in that film, we can assume a few things about what's happened in between. Maul has clearly escaped whatever fate Darth Sidious had planned for him and has returned to the criminal underworld, building or usurping a new faction in Crimson Dawn to replace the one he led during the Clone Wars. And it's here where I have to divert from everyone else writing articles like these about Maul's return. While those other articles lay out much the same backstory I just did and speculate about what Lucasfilm's plans for the character are now, they're missing something important. We already know what happens to Maul, we've seen where he ends up after Solo.

A quick explanation on the Star Wars timeline before we continue. Solo is set roughly ten years before Episode 4: A New Hope a.k.a. the original Star Wars. Episode 3, which I'm using as the end date for the Clone Wars, is set twenty years before Episode 4. And the TV series Star Wars: Rebels is set five years before Episode 4. Why do I mention Rebels? Because chronologically, that's the next time we see Maul in canon and he's not doing so hot. In his first appearance in Rebels, Maul is an old man stranded on the ancient Sith planet of Malachor. Any power or prestige he had is now gone. He's still seeking revenge on Obi-Wan, and is still hell with a lightsaber, but now has taken to trying to seduce the series' protagonist, Jedi-in-training Ezra Bridger, to the Dark Side and use him to further  Maul's own plans. Maul escaped Malachor and continued to harass Ezra, trying to find any info on where Obi-Wan might be hiding, but the places Maul is hiding out are all rundown and abandoned. He's making do with stolen and scavenged tools and materials in his quest. Eventually, Maul discovered Obi-Wan was hiding on Tatooine, watching over young Luke Skywalker, and travelled there to goad the Jedi master into a final duel. Obi-Wan defeated Maul, killing the one-time Sith Lord and helping him find some semblance of peace before he died.

An older Maul, stranded on Malachor

It was a fitting and tragic end for such an iconic and long-time Star Wars villain, becoming so consumed with anger and revenge that it ultimately ended up killing him. But here's the thing about all those circumstances from Rebels I just described, do they really sound like the actions of the head of a powerful crime syndicate? Clearly something happened in the five years between Solo, where Maul is the leader of Crimson Dawn, and Rebels where Maul is a bitter, broken man with few resources and an all-consuming desire for revenge. I've been seeing a lot of speculation that Maul is going to do something terrible to Qi'ra now that she's his second in command, that he's got some big scheme now that's a big shot crime lord. Given what we see of him in Rebels, I'm not so sure. I'm more of the mind that Qi'ra is going to do the same thing to Maul that she did to Dryden Voss; get close to him, make herself indispensable and seemingly loyal, then wait for the perfect opportunity to manipulate the situation and take power for herself. After all, dumping your boss' ass on a dead planet with no way to get off is a good way to get rid of him. Especially if it's a planet like Malachor  that's closely watched by the deadliest and most ruthless arm of the Empire, Vader and his Jedi-hunting Inquisitors. Of course, five years is a long time and there's still a lot we don't know about what Maul was up to between the end of the Clone Wars and his reappearance on Malachor. That is just personally how I'm seeing the arc of Maul's life right now.

Who knows? Darth Maul is still a very popular character and fans like myself would be happy to get new stories with the character, especially now that he has a definitive end. Lucasfilm clearly chose to give him a cameo in Solo for more reason than fan service. Maybe his relationship with both Qi'ra and Crimson Dawn will go differently than I think.